Herbert L. Colston

Gender Differences in Verbal Irony Use

Potential causes of gender differences in perceived and reported verbal irony use are investigated. The study first presented written scenarios of speakers with indeterminate gender who made sarcastic comments. These speakers are judged to be more likely male than female, by both male and female participants. In a separate task, male participants also report a greater likelihood of using verbal irony relative to female participants. The study then investigated potential explanations of this gender difference. The results revealed support for an explanation based on a match between the generally greater riskiness of males over females, and a relatively greater risk of miscomprehension of verbal irony, rather than an explanation that males use verbal irony because its pragmatic functions fit better with their discourse goals versus those reported by females. A discussion of other potential underpinnings to gender differences in verbal irony use and a call for further research are presented.

Figurative Language Development Research and Popular Children's Literature: Why We Should Know, "Where the Wild Things Are"

Concerns have arisen recently over the ecological validity of materials used to study childrens figurative language comprehension abilities. Materials commonly used in studies that evaluate childrens comprehension of metaphorical language, for instance, are not as frequently found in popular childrens literature (Broderick, 1992). In the following study, we first present arguments against the basis for this concern over ecological validity, but then we maintain for other important reasons that language development researchers should nevertheless have knowledge of the figurative language content of the popular childrens literature. We then present a quantitative metaphorical-content analysis of the popular childrens literature across historical, genre, and audience-age variables. We discuss the findings as important for understanding (a) whether the figurative language comprehension abilities of young children are still being underestimated, (b) the contextual backdrop that the popular childrens literature provides for language development, and (c) potential opportunity costs of a literature that might be out of sync with childrens comprehension.

Chapter 21 – Figurative Language

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a new look at the continuing debates in psycholinguistics over what is special about figurative language use. Figurative language does not constitute a unified class of linguistic materials that are understood by special figurative processes. Nonetheless, the indeterminate nature of many aspects of figurative meaning, a fact that is not properly acknowledged in many psycholinguistic studies, raises important issues about the possible trade-off between minimizing cognitive effort and maximizing cognitive effects during figurative language processing. This trade-off can be empirically studied and form the basis for future psycholinguistic research on figurative language. One of the continuing difficulties with the psycholinguistics literature on figurative language understanding is that few scholars ever attempt to define the terms literal and figurative. A traditional assumption in many academic disciplines is that literal meaning is primary and the product of default language comprehension. Thus, in psycholinguistic terms, the human language processor is designed for the analysis of literal meanings. Nonliteral, indirect, and figurative meanings are secondary products, and dependent on some prior analysis of what words and expressions literally mean. This general theory implies that nonliteral meanings should always take more time to interpret than are literal meanings.