Is the victim of irony identified by echoic mention?

Abstract

Sperber and Wilson (1981) proposed that the speaker who uttered the expectation that is contradicted by irony is identified as the victim of the irony by the echoic mention of his/her utterance. We conducted two experiments to explore whether the victim of irony is identified by echoic mention. Experiment 1 examined the validity of this hypothesis using three conditions. In the Hearer (H) echo condition, the speaker who is echoed is the hearer of the potential irony. In the No-Hearer (NH) echo condition, the speaker who is echoed is not the hearer of the potential irony. The third condition is the no-echo condition. The result supported the hypothesis. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the H echo factor and the NH echo factor in 4 conditions. The results replicated Experiment 1, and showed that the NH is identified as the victim of irony more than the H. These results suggest that echoic mention and also status in the discourse are factors in the comprehension of irony.