Description

ILCLI Seminar.  Yolanda García Lorenzo (ILCLI ): "The Ironic Attitude and Its Victims: An Empirical Study."  

Decembre 12, 2025. 15:00.

Venue: Carlos Santamaria Zentroa, room 4.

Abstract:
It is widely accepted that irony communicates an attitude—often dissociative or critical (Grice 1989 [1967b]; Wilson and Sperber 2012)—yet there is debate about both its valence and toward whom (or what) it is directed. While some authors claim that irony conveys only negative evaluations (Dynel 2018; Garmendia 2015), others argue that it can also express positive (Bruntsch and Ruch 2017; Clark and Gerrig 1984; Kumon-Nakamura et al. 1995) or mixed attitudes (Alba-Juez and Attardo 2014). Competing accounts also differ on what or whom the attitude can be directed at: the echoic account holds that speakers express a dissociative stance toward an utterance, thought, or expectation—and potentially toward its source (Wilson 2006; Wilson and Sperber 2012), whereas neo-Gricean approaches allow broader targets, including states of affairs and those responsible for them (Attardo 2000; Garmendia 2015; Dynel 2017; Martin 1992).
This talk presents an empirical study investigating (a) the range of attitudes irony can convey—including the possibility of purely positive irony—and (b) the potential victims of the ironic attitude. The study also examines how these attitudes relate to humor perception.
In an online experiment, 216 adults read chat-style conversations containing either literal or ironic remarks. In the ironic stories, the victim of the ironic attitude varied across four conditions: the speaker could criticize (1) the interlocutor (who previously uttered a similar remark), (2) a third party responsible for the state of affairs, (3) both, or (4) neither. These configurations correspond to different attitudinal combinations: (1) mixed positive–negative, (2) mixed negative–neutral, (3) purely negative, and (4) potentially purely positive irony. Participants assessed speakers’ beliefs, rated the speaker’s attitudes toward each character and humorous intent, and their reading and reaction times were recorded.
Results indicate that irony can express positive and mixed attitudes, though these uses incur greater cognitive effort. Negative attitudes in irony can target the source of the echo, the person responsible for the state of affairs, both, or no one. Finally, stronger negative attitude ratings correlated with higher humor judgments, in both ironic and literal stimuli