When children acquire irony: The role of epistemic vigilance

IF 1.8 2区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Intercultural Pragmatics Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI:10.1515/ip-2023-3006

Caterina Scianna

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Irony is a mechanism that, at the same time, says and does not say. It is a case in which the speaker literally expresses a sense that is not what the speaker wants to communicate. It is a case of implicit echoic mention that conveys an attitude toward what is mentioned. Therefore, an utterance that, to be understood, needs contextual elements, meta-communicative elements and a mutual attribution of knowledge, intentions and affective states between speaker and hearer; the elaboration of which requires specific capacities – linguistics as well as cognitive – that allow to recognize the unsaid intentions of the speaker. Even if the ironic speaker expresses an attitude and, in doing this, s/he is ‘honest’ (s/he wants the hearer to recognize the falsehood or the irrelevance of the expressed proposition and to grasp the attitude towards it), most of the time, ironic expressions are sentences that are apparently false. To be able to distinguish between irony and lying, the hearer must determine that the ironic speaker wants the listener to disbelieve the statement, whereas the liar wants the listener to believe just what is said. Distinguishing between a false observation said with a misleading intent and an untrue sentence proffered/uttered with an ironic intent, requires a right attribution of a second-order belief, but it also requires the capacity of epistemic vigilance, an ability that allows us to evaluate the accuracy of the content of the information provided by others, and to discriminate the reliability of the source of information. The complex abilities, required by irony elaboration, make irony learning during childhood particularly difficult. Acquisition of irony comprehension is more complex than any other form of non-literal speech and, during growth, it reaches its complete development later than many other complex linguistic aspects, only about at the age of ten-twelve. The article wants to show how difficulties of irony elaboration in children are linked not only to the full development of meta-representational abilities, but in addition and especially to the development of epistemic vigilance.

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儿童习得反讽:认知警觉性的作用

反讽是一种既能说又能不说的机制。在这种情况下，说话者确实表达了一种感觉，而不是说话者想要传达的感觉。这是一种含蓄的回声提及，传达了对被提及事物的态度。因此，话语要被理解，需要语境因素、元交际因素以及说话者和听话者之间知识、意图和情感状态的相互归因;这需要特定的能力——语言学和认知能力——来识别说话者未说出口的意图。即使讽刺的说话者表达了一种态度，而且在这样做的过程中，他/她是“诚实的”(他/她希望听者认识到所表达的命题的虚假或不相关，并掌握对它的态度)，大多数时候，讽刺的表达是明显错误的句子。为了能够区分讽刺和说谎，听者必须确定讽刺的说话者希望听者不相信自己的陈述，而说谎者希望听者只相信自己所说的话。区分带有误导意图的虚假观察和带有讽刺意图的不真实句子，需要二级信念的正确属性，但它也需要认知警惕的能力，这种能力使我们能够评估他人提供的信息内容的准确性，并区分信息来源的可靠性。反语精练所需要的复杂能力，使得儿童时期的反语学习尤为困难。反讽理解的习得比任何其他形式的非字面言语都要复杂，在成长过程中，它比许多其他复杂的语言方面要晚，大约在10 - 12岁时才达到完全发展。本文试图说明儿童反语阐述的困难不仅与元表征能力的全面发展有关，而且与认知警觉性的发展尤其有关。

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来源期刊

Intercultural Pragmatics Multiple-

CiteScore

3.10

自引率

36.40%

发文量

期刊介绍： Intercultural Pragmatics is a fully peer-reviewed forum for theoretical and applied pragmatics research. The goal of the journal is to promote the development and understanding of pragmatic theory and intercultural competence by publishing research that focuses on general theoretical issues, more than one language and culture, or varieties of one language. Intercultural Pragmatics encourages ‘interculturality’ both within the discipline and in pragmatic research. It supports interaction and scholarly debate between researchers representing different subfields of pragmatics including the linguistic, cognitive, social, and interlanguage paradigms. The intercultural perspective is relevant not only to each line of research within pragmatics but also extends to several other disciplines such as anthropology, theoretical and applied linguistics, psychology, communication, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and bi- and multilingualism. Intercultural Pragmatics makes a special effort to cross disciplinary boundaries. What we primarily look for is innovative approaches and ideas that do not always fit into existing paradigms, and lead to new ways of thinking about language. Intercultural Pragmatics has always encouraged the publication of theoretical papers including linguistic and philosophical pragmatics that are very important for research in intercultural pragmatics.