School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK.
Cognition. 2010 Sep;116(3):421-36. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.06.005. Epub 2010 Jul 3.
We report an eye-tracking study in which we investigate the on-line processing of written irony. Specifically, participants' eye movements were recorded while they read sentences which were either intended ironically, or non-ironically, and subsequent text which contained pronominal reference to the ironic (or non-ironic) phrase. Results showed longer reading times for ironic comments compared to a non-ironic baseline, suggesting that additional processing was required in ironic compared to non-ironic conditions. Reading times for subsequent pronominal reference indicated that for ironic materials, both the ironic and literal interpretations of the text were equally accessible during on-line language comprehension. This finding is most in-line with predictions of the graded salience hypothesis, which, in conjunction with the retention hypothesis, states that readers represent both the literal and ironic interpretation of an ironic utterance.
我们报告了一项眼动研究，旨在调查书面反讽的在线处理。具体来说，参与者在阅读句子时记录了他们的眼动，这些句子要么是有意讽刺的，要么是非讽刺的，然后是包含对讽刺（或非讽刺）短语的代词引用的文本。结果表明，与非讽刺性基线相比，讽刺性评论的阅读时间更长，这表明在讽刺性条件下需要额外的处理。对后续代词引用的阅读时间表明，对于讽刺性材料，在在线语言理解过程中，文本的讽刺性和字面性解释同样容易理解。这一发现最符合渐变显著性假说的预测，该假说结合保留假说，表明读者既代表了一个讽刺性话语的字面和讽刺性解释。
