Huang Mian, Li Zijian, Zheng Yu, Yang Caini
School of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China.
College of Computer and Information Science, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Aug 26;16:1619358. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1619358. eCollection 2025.
Traditional theories of irony, such as Grice's Standard Pragmatic Model and Sperber and Wilson's echoic mention theory, inadequately explain culture-specific irony processing in Mandarin. This study, building on Huang's framework which posits that irony comprehension relies on recognizing gradient reverse adjacency relations within conceptual hierarchies, investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying the comprehension of Chinese verbal irony by employing a self-paced reading and judgment task via an online platform (Wenjuanxing) with 75 native Mandarin speakers, focusing on the role of reverse adjacency relations in reaction time (RT) and accuracy. Participants were required to evaluate 60 sentences whether they are positive or negative comments. These sentences are divided into three conditions: experimental (irony with reverse adjacency relations), control (irony without such relations), and baseline (non-ironic). Results revealed statistically significant difference across conditions, for experimental ironic sentences (6,012 ms) compared to control (4,901 ms) and baseline sentences (3,987 ms all < 0.001). Accuracy rates followed a similar pattern, with the experimental condition (64.1%) lower than the control (73.6%) and baseline (82.3%, all < 0.01). These findings highlight the cognitive cost of resolving reverse adjacency relations, supporting Huang's framework, challenging universalist models and emphasizing the need for culture-sensitive frameworks in figurative language studies. Additionally, this study suggests un explored factors influencing irony comprehension in terms of a speed-accuracy tradeoff by a moderate positive correlation ( = 0.4, < 0.001) between RT and accuracy cross all conditions and advances cognitive pragmatics by integrating relational hierarchies into irony theories and offers implications for cross-cultural communication, language pedagogy, and NLP systems.
传统的反讽理论，如格赖斯的标准语用模型以及斯珀伯和威尔逊的回声提及理论，无法充分解释汉语中特定文化的反讽处理。本研究基于黄的框架（该框架假定反讽理解依赖于识别概念层次结构内的梯度反向邻接关系），通过在线平台（问卷星）对75名以汉语为母语的人进行自定步速阅读和判断任务，研究汉语言语反讽理解背后的认知机制，重点关注反向邻接关系在反应时间（RT）和准确性方面的作用。参与者被要求评估60个句子是正面还是负面评论。这些句子分为三种条件：实验性（具有反向邻接关系的反讽）、控制性（不具有此类关系的反讽）和基线（非反讽）。结果显示，各条件之间存在统计学上的显著差异，实验性反讽句子（6012毫秒）与控制性句子（4901毫秒）和基线句子（均为3987毫秒，所有P<0.001）相比。准确率遵循类似模式，实验条件（64.1%）低于控制条件（73.6%）和基线条件（82.3%，所有P<0.01）。这些发现突出了解决反向邻接关系的认知成本，支持了黄的框架，挑战了普遍主义模型，并强调了在比喻语言研究中需要对文化敏感的框架。此外，本研究表明，在所有条件下，反应时间和准确性之间存在适度正相关（r = 0.4，P<0.001），这表明在速度 - 准确性权衡方面存在未被探索的影响反讽理解的因素，通过将关系层次结构整合到反讽理论中推进了认知语用学，并为跨文化交流、语言教学和自然语言处理系统提供了启示。
