As a linguistic device, irony has many functions, such as criticizing the hearer by sincere statements, showing the stinging satire on the dark side of the society, or producing humor to make the language more vivid and interesting.
Different classification criteria categorize irony into several types; for example, based on the pragmatic function of irony or the intention that irony conveys, irony can be classified into sarcastic irony and kind irony (Hancock et al., 2000; Huang, 2015).
2.2 Related Theories About Sarcasm Perception
2.2.1 Related Theories About Written Sarcasm Perception
Sarcasm is a common everyday experience in all known cultures; on the other hand, it is a complex language phenomenon that expresses the “unstated, opposing evaluation” with the “explicit evaluative utterance” (Bryant, 2012, p. 673).
Amounts of studies have discussed the processing of written sarcasm and put forward different meaning processing models, such as the echoic reminder theory (Ktruz & Glucksberg, 1989), the allusional pretense theory (Kumon-Nakamura et al., 1995), and the implicit theory (Utsumi, 2000). Until now, these models can be generalized into four pattens: Linear Access Model, Direct Access Model, and Dynamic Construction Model. These models discuss one essential question of pragmatic research: the function of context.
Linear Access Model (Grice, 1975) concludes that sarcasm perception is a linear process. The literal meaning of words is accessed first in an automatic and bottom-up way, and then the implied meaning will be processed. Specifically, Linear Access Model believes that the literal meaning is always be activated first and context functions later; therefore, the sarcasm perception process has three steps: literal meaning processing, literal meaning refuse, and implied meaning construction. The Standard Pragmatic Model (Grice, 1975; Searle, 1979), the Pretense Theory (Clark & Gerrig, 1984), and the Muting Hypothesis (Dew & Winner, 1995) all support the Linear Access Model.
Chapter Three Methodology.............................. 26
3.1 The First Part of Experiment 1 ............................... 26
3.1.1 Research Question and Presumption ............................ 26
3.1.2 Stimuli .............................. 27
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ......................... 49
4.1 Results ................................. 49
4.1.1 Results of Selective Bias in NN Group and PP Group .......................... 49
4.1.2 Results of RT ........................ 50
Chapter Five Conclusion ........................... 61
5.1 Major Findings ........................ 61
5.2 Implications ............................. 62
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Results
E-prime 1.0 collected 80 participants’ choices and RT for each&