Journal of Child Language

Table of Contents - 2010 - Volume 37, Issue 02  

Brief Research Report

Development of children's ability to distinguish sarcasm and verbal irony*

MELANIE GLENWRIGHTa1 c1 and PENNY M. PEXMANa2

a1 University of Manitoba

a2 University of Calgary

ABSTRACT

Adults distinguish between ironic remarks directed at targets (sarcasm) and ironic remarks not directed at specific targets. We investigated the development of children's appreciation for this distinction by presenting these speech acts to 71 five- to six-year-olds and 71 nine- to ten-year-olds. Five- to six-year-olds were beginning to understand the non-literal meanings of sarcastic speakers and ironic speakers but did not distinguish ironic and sarcastic speakers' intentions. Nine- to ten-year-olds were more accurate at understanding sarcastic and ironic speakers and they distinguished these speakers' intentions, rating sarcastic criticisms as more ‘mean’ than ironic criticisms. These results show that children can determine the non-literal meanings of sarcasm and irony by six years of age but do not distinguish the pragmatic purposes of these speech acts until later in middle childhood.

(Received June 14 2007)

(Revised November 11 2008)

(Online publication June 15 2009)

Correspondence:

c1 Address for correspondence: Melanie Glenwright, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, P517B Duff Roblin Bldg, 190 Dysart Rd, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA, R3T 2N2. tel: 1 (204) 474-9726; fax: (204) 474-7599; e-mail: glenwrig@cc.umanitoba.ca.