IN CHE SENSO L’IRONIA DICE IL CONTRARIO? I VINCOLI COGNITIVI DELL’IRONIA VERBALE

Verbal irony is a widely discussed phenomenon in two major areas: pragmatics and literary criticism. Recently, cognitive science has highlighted the cognitive processes underlying verbal irony. In this latter general framework research has demonstrated that verbal irony comprehension is affected by some rules of perception. Given these findings it seemed promising to apply results from experimental phenomenology on contrariety to verbal irony. Manipulating levels of contrast between a comment and the referent situation, on the basis of perceptual rules of contrariety, could be useful to better understand mechanisms of verbal irony processing. Three studies were conducted to investigate these mechanisms, two of them involved the use of rating tasks (pencil-paper task) and the third study involved a yes/no computer based reaction time task. Results from Study 1 & 2 showed that degrees of irony perceived by subjects (all Italian native speakers) are related to the basic structure of the dimension (i.e. from the Italian “in cima-in fondo” and “salita-discesa”, respectively “at the top-at the bottom” and “ascending-descending” in English) involved in the comment-situation relationship. Furthermore, it emerged that some degrees of irony are perceived even when the situation is not polarized (intermediate). Study 3 showed that response times are higher when the comment contrasts with an intermediate situation with respect to a polarized situation. Besides, it has been highlighted an effect of the point-range nature of polarities and intermediates to determine response times. In summary, results of the studies conducted indicate that irony is not built only between polarized contraries, but it involves intermediates too. In other words, it seems that irony, in order to say the contrary, does not need to literally say the contrary, but it can do that also by pointing at something that is towards the contrary and that is the contrary. Results are discussed within the framework of the major theories on verbal irony, enlightening limits and possible further research and application in advertising communications.