METAPHOR AND SYMBOL, 12(1), 19-41 Copyright O 1997, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Interpreting Figurative Statements : Speaker Occupation Can Change

Metaphor to Irony

Albert N. Katz and Penny M. Pexman University of Western Ontario

Quintilian (35-100 AD; trans. 1959) pointed out that we use knowledge of the speaker in attributing ironic intent. We examine this possibility by studying the interpretation given to statements of the form "Children are precious gems," in which the speaker could intend to make either a metaphor or a sarcastic-ironic comment on the metaphor. In two studies, we show that the speaker's occupation can influence our interpretation of a figurative statement. Some statements that in a neutral context are taken to be affirming a metaphor are taken to be irony when spoken by members of some occupations (such as comedian or cab driver) that are thought to involve considerable use of irony. This switch in interpretation is especially evident when the statement is a familiar one and when the occupation is made salient. These data indicate that the recognition of ironic (sarcastic) intent is sensitive to information about a sociocultural factor (speaker occupation) and that this information interacts with knowledge about the pragmatic uses of a statement.

In the course of everyday conversation, people sometimes speak ambiguously. In this study, the ambiguity we discuss arises with respect to speaker's intent. Consider the following example:

( 1 ) "Children are precious gems."

This sentence might be meant as an endorsement (children are to be valued) or as irony (children misbehave and need vigorous correction). Here, we examine

Requests for reprints should be sent to Albert N. Katz, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2. E-mail: katz@sscl.uwo.ca

20 KATZ AND PEXMAN

statements that switch in this fashion from the endorsement of a metaphoric contrast to ironies that undermine the metaphor.

Quintilian (35-100 AD; trans. 1959) wrote:

[Irony] is made evident to understanding either by the delivery, character of the speaker, or nature of the topic. For if any one of these is out of keeping with the words, it at once becomes clear that the intention of the speaker is other than what he actually says. (Institutio Oratorio, VIII, vi, 54ff)

As we understand it, Quintilian was suggesting that a cue to the ironic intent of an utterance is the incongruence between what a person says and our beliefs about that person or the topic under discussion. Quintilian placed the processing emphasis on beliefs held by the hearer about the speaker. "Children are precious gems" would surely be affirmed if spoken by a priest, but it may well come across as sarcasm if spoken by a comedian. Interpersonal context affects our interpretations of many, if not all, kinds of language (Clark, 1992). To show the effects of social roles on interpretation of tropes, we first determine which occupations are taken to involve considerable use of metaphor and which are thought to be associated with irony. Then we show that statements attributed to speakers from "high-irony" occupations are judged more likely to be ironic. We provide familiar and unfamiliar statements, expecting that the effect of speaker occupation will be particularly striking when the statement's customary use is well-known to the research participants. In a second experiment, we make the speaker's occupation especially salient, to show that the effect of occupation can be emphatic.

THE EFFECT OF WHO MAKES AN UTTERANCE: SPEAKER OCCUPATION

The question here is whether our knowledge about who makes an utterance influences the interpretation that we give to the utterance as suggested so long ago by Quintilian: Are some people perceived as being high-irony users and others as less likely to use irony in discourse? To our knowledge this principle has not been subjected to experimental test, though there is reason to believe that, in general, knowledge of the speaker influences comprehension processes. For instance, Gibbs, Kushner, and Mills (1991) found that metaphors were understood as being more meaningful when the listener believed they were produced by a poet rather than by a computer program.

Memory-based measures of comprehension also implicate the nature of the speaker as being important to the comprehension process. For instance, Kemper and Thissen (1981; also see Holtgraves, 1994, Experiment 1) found that recall for indirect requests varied as a function of social status. Recall was best for polite

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 2 1

requests made by high-status speakers and for impolite requests made by low-status speakers, whereas recall was poor for polite requests made by low-status speakers and for impolite requests made by high-status speakers. These results were taken to show that recall was best for statements that violated social conventions, such as when a low-status speaker commits the socially unexpected act of being impolite to a superior.

Taken together, these studies indicate that who makes the statement has an influence on how it is understood. In our studies, we assess the effects of speaker occupation on participants' judgments of speaker intent and also on participants' memory for these statements.

THE EFFECT OF WHAT IS SAID: STATEMENT FAM ILlARlTY

Since irony tends to use what has been previously said or thought-as theories such as ironic mention suggest-familiarity is implicit in irony. Therefore, the more familiar the statement is, the more readily it may lend itself to an interpretation as irony. In the current studies, familiarity ratings were obtained for a set of items that are instantiations of root metaphors identified in Lakoff and Johnson (1980). We expect that familiar items are in part familiar because they more easily access the underlying root metaphor on which they are based. These items, when placed in context, could be understood as either the metaphor or as an ironic use of the metaphor.

THE EFFECT OF DISCOURSE CONTEXT

Consider the following statement:

(2 ) "George is the life of the party."

When presented without context, (2) can be ambiguous: either a metaphor or a sarcastic comment using the metaphor. However, the speaker's intended sarcasti- cally-ironic meaning becomes more clear when (2) is made in a counterfactual context, such as the following:

George spent most of the evening sitting in a corner alone, while the party went on around him. After leaving the party early with a headache, Samantha commented to her husband Jim: "George is the life of the party."

22 KATZ AND PEXMAN

Presumably, a cue to the intended irony in this statement is the incongruity between the metaphorical use of the phrase and the non-endorsing context in which it is uttered (e.g., Katz & Lee, 1993; Kreuz, 1996; Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989). Because the conventional sense of the target sentence does not follow from the experiential context, the hearer (Jim) would draw the conversational implication that Samantha was using the statement to make some other point, most likely the sarcastic evaluation that George is not the life of the party.

In the studies reported here, equivocal statements such as (2) were presented in either a proposition-endorsing (metaphor-inducing) context, which we expected would lead participants to take the statement to be a metaphor, or a proposition-re- jecting (irony-inducing) context, which we anticipated would lead participants to interpret the statement as irony. This manipulation had proven to be effective in the past and here operated as a base for an examination of the main focus--occupation effects.

STUDY 1

The task was simple. Participants read a set of short paragraphs; in each of these, one of the characters made a statement that could be understood as a metaphoric assertion or as metaphor-based irony. After reading each paragraph, participants rated the intent of the speaker uttering the target statement along several dimensions of interest. Finally, after all the paragraphs had been read and rated for speaker intent, an unexpected memory test for the target statements was administered.

The experimental manipulations occurred within the short paragraphs. The occupation of the character who made the statement was also manipulated such that in half of the paragraphs the speaker was a member of an occupation rated as high in irony use, whereas in the other half the speaker was rated as high in metaphor use. Statement familiarity was manipulated such that in half of the paragraphs the statement was relatively familiar and in the other half it was relatively unfamiliar. Finally, the context in which the statement was uttered was also manipulated, such that the statement was placed in either (a) a neutral context in which minimal information was provided about the target statement, (b) an irony-inducing context in which the relation of context to target was counterfactual and proposition-reject- ing, or (c) a metaphor-inducing context in which the relation of context to target was consistent and proposition-endorsing. Thus the basic design was a completely crossed 3 (discourse contexts) x 2 (speaker occupations) x 2 (target statement familiarity) factorial design. In addition, a fourth no-occupation control condition was added: This condition was completely analogous to the neutral (minimal) context condition except that occupation of the speaker was not mentioned. Comparison of the no-occupation control and occupation-mentioned neutral con-

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 23

text conditions should indicate the effects caused by simply mentioning speaker occupation.

To meet the conditions of the study, we did the following. First, we obtained norms on a set of occupations as to the likelihood that a person in each occupation would use irony and, separately, metaphor. Second, we obtained ratings of item familiarity. (None of the items were "dead" metaphors, which have specific meanings and may be relatively insensitive to context; see Glucksberg, Brown, & McGlone, 1993). Third, we manipulated the context in which the statement was uttered. The basic control context was intended to be neutral about the reason that the speaker made the comment. An example of a neutral context would be:

Jan and her cousin, a factory worker, were waiting in line at the supermarket checkout. About the cashier, the factory worker said:

(3) "Her mind is an active volcano. "

This context was also used in the no-occupation control condition in which the occupation of the speaker was omitted.

Two additional discourse context conditions were employed. The ironic context condition was created by placing an incongruent, mildly negative statement in the scenario. For instance, in the example given above, preceding the target utterance (3), one would read The cashier was having great dificulty counting change for the customer ahead of them in line. The other context condition was meant to invite a metaphoric interpretation of the statement. This metaphoric context condition was created by inserting a congruent, positive statement: The cashier was working very eficiently. One would expect that, relative to the neutral context condition, the statement would be perceived as ironic in the counterfactual (irony-inducing) context condition and nonironic in the consistent (metaphor-inducing) context condition.

Based on past research (Katz & Lee, 1993), we expected strong effects of the context manipulation. Our main theoretical interest is in the interaction of the discourse context conditions with speaker occupation and statement familiarity. We expected that the speaker's occupation might influence the reaction to a sentence when there was some incongruity or ambiguity to interpret. Specifically, we examined whether knowledge of who makes a statement and the familiarity of the statement itself modify the effects of discourse context. Participants' reactions to the statements were captured with two dependent measures: ratings of speaker's intention taken after reading the passage and posttask memory of the target statement.

Participants responded to five questions about speaker intent. The first was a rating of the extent to which the speaker was being sarcastic. This measure was included because it corresponded to measures most typically used in studies of irony

24 KATZ AND PEXMAN

interpretation (e.g., Gibbs, 1986; Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989). Sarcasm often involves a "victim" (e.g., Winner, 1988), so the second question tapped whether or not the speaker seemed to be mocking someone. Irony often involves signals of pretense (e.g., Cutler, 1976), so the third question asked whether tone of voice reflected what the speaker meant. When pretending, a person can appear insincere (e.g., Haverkate, 1990; Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg, & Brown, 1995), so the fourth question asked whether the speaker phrased the statement as he did in order to show that he was not being truthful. The fifth measure was intended to reflect the distinction between understanding the content of the statement and the evalu- ation of it by asking participants to rate the appropriateness of the statement to the situation.

Participants were also asked to recall the target sentences. Differences in recall of ironic and metaphoric sentences indicate the distinction is not lost on the participants (for similar manipulations, see Kemper & Thissen, 1981 ; Kreuz, Long, & Church, 1991; Marschark & Hunt, 1985).

Method

Participants

Fifty (23 female) participants were tested in the norming phase, rating both a set of occupations and a set of statements. An additional 15 participants (9 female) provided ratings on a subset of the occupations in order to provide cross-validation data. Fifty-two participants (27 female) were tested in the experimental sessions. All participants were students at the University of Western Ontario. The two groups of participants in the norming phases received partial course credit in an introduc- tory psychology course in exchange for their participation. The participants in the experimental phase received $6 in exchange for their participation. All participants described English as their first language and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Norming Phase Materials and Procedure

Occupation ratings. Participants were provided with a list of 34 occupations and were asked to rate each one with respect to the likelihood that members of the occupation would tend to use irony or metaphor in conversation. Ratings of perceived occupational irony and metaphor use were made on a 7-point scale (1 = would not use irony or, in the second case, would not use metaphor, 7 = would use irony or, in the second case, would use metaphor). For each occupation, a mean

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 25

irony score and a mean metaphor score were calculated. These scores are presented in Appendix A.

Cross-validation was obtained by having a separate group of 15 participants rate a list of occupations, 26 of which were the same as those occupations rated previously. Satisfactory correlations were found: r = .885 (p < .001) for metaphor ratings and r = .785 (p < .001) for irony ratings.

Our aim was to experimentally manipulate speaker occupation, and therefore 12 occupations were chosen for inclusion in the experimental phase. The selected items are marked by asterisks in Appendix A. The metaphor and irony ratings for the selected occupations were statistically unrelated (r = .13, shared variance less than 2%).

Statement familiarity ratings. Familiarity ratings of 22 figurative state- ments were also obtained. Participants were instructed to base all of their ratings on a 7-point rating scale (1 = unfamiliar, 7 =familiar). Mean ratings and standard deviations for the statements are presented in Appendix B. Because it was our intention to manipulate statement familiarity in the experimental phase, we selected the eight items rated most familiar and the eight items rated most unfamiliar for use in the experimental task. Items selected for use are marked by asterisks in Appendix B.

Main Experimental Phase Materials and Procedure

Participants were asked to complete three tasks in the following order: a 16-item questionnaire, a short distraction task, and an unexpected recall task. Testing took place in a group setting with 6 to 15 participants tested at a time. The questionnaire was presented to participants in a 16-page booklet. Each item included a short written paragraph that provided background information and, with the exception of items in the no-occupation control condition, identified the occupation of the speaker of the statement. Order of the items was varied among participants. The last sentence in each paragraph consisted of the target statement and was presented in capital letters.

The 16 paragraphs read by each participant included 12 paragraphs created by the factorial combination of 3 contexts (neutral, irony-inducing counterfactual, metaphor-inducing consistent) x 2 types of speaker occupation (high-irony, high- metaphor) x 2 types of statement (familiar, unfamiliar). The4 additional paragraphs made up the no-occupation control condition and, thus, consisted of discourse contexts that were exactly the same as the neutral context paragraphs, except that the occupation of the speaker was omitted. Across participants, each statement was placed in each context and uttered by a person from each occupation.

26 KATZ AND PEXMAN

For each passage, five questions were presented, each with a 7-point rating scale. These questions asked participants to make judgments about different aspects of the speaker's intended meaning. Examples of each question are:

1. Is the speaker mocking his sister? 2. Does the speaker's tone of voice reflect what he means? 3. Did the speaker phrase the statement as he did in order to show that he is

not being truthful? 4. To what extent is the speaker being sarcastic? 5 . How appropriate is the speaker's statement to the situation?

For all questions, the closer each rating was to 7, the more "ironic" the interpretation of the statement (i.e., 7 = mocking, tone of voice does not mean what is said, not truthful, sarcastic, not at all appropriate).

The distraction task consisted of six simple arithmetic problems. Immediately following completion of the problems, participants were asked to write down as many of the target statements as they could from the 16-item questionnaire. This free recall task was scored as follows: Participants were given 1 point for each of the 16 items that they recalled correctly. Correct recall occurred if the participant remembered a statement that had the same meaning as the target statement. One or two errors in wording were permitted. Thus, participants' recall scores could range from 0 to 16.

Results and Discussion

Recall Data

The recall task provided a check that participants noted the different types of occupations and also indicates how the different types affected participants' inter- pretations of what was said. Mean recall percentages for each condition are presented in Table 1 . Analyses were conducted over subjects (FJ and items (F,).

There was a significant effect for speaker occupation: Participants were more likely to remember an utterance made by a person from a high-irony occupation, M = 48.7%, than the same statement made by a speaker from a high-metaphor occupation, M = 41.6%; Fs(l, 51) = 3.91, p < .05, MSe = .20; Fi(1, 14) = 4.45, p < .05, MSe = 308.5 1 . Speaker occupation also interacted with context, F,(2, 102) = 6.16, p < .01, MSe = .23; Fi(2,28) = 6.99, p < .01, MSe = 320.65. As can be seen in Table 1 , recall was highest when the speaker's occupation and context condition were incongruent. That is, for statements made by speakers of high-irony occupa- tions, recall was best in the metaphor-inducing context condition, whereas for statements made by speakers of high-metaphor occupations, recall was best in the

TABLE 1 Mean Percentage Recall as a Function of Statement Familiarity,

Speaker Occupation, and Context Condition-Study 1

Ironic Occupation Metaphoric Occupation No Occupation Context Conditions Context Conditions Context Condition

Statement

TYP Ironic Neutral Metaphoric Ironic Neutral Metaphoric Neutral

Familiar 50.0 51.9 46.2 53.8 30.8 28.8 44.3 Unfamiliar 32.7 46.2 65.4 51.9 40.4 44.2 40.3

28 KATZ AND PEXMAN

irony-inducing context condition. This incongruity effect suggests that in those cases in which the speaker's occupation would lead to one interpretation and the discourse context to another, the effort made to disambiguate the statement and decide upon the speaker's intentions was reflected in facilitation of memory.

Correlations of the Speaker lntent Questions

The five questions about speaker intent reflected different facets of irony, and so reactions to them should be related. Indeed, the ratings correlated apprecia- bly-all correlations were significant at p < .001, ranging from r = .82 (mocking and sarcasm) to r = .38 (mocking and appropriateness). Although the ratings were all significantly correlated, they varied substantially, suggesting that they each indexed subtly different aspects of speaker's intent. Consequently, in later analyses, we examined each variable separately.

Comparing the Control and Neutral Conditions

There were two conditions in this study in which little rationale was given for the speaker's comments. These were the no-occupation control and neutral context conditions. The only difference between these two conditions was that in the neutral context condition the occupation of the speaker was provided, whereas in the control condition no occupation was mentioned. We expected that the speaker's occupation would influence interpretations of statements as ironic, and we conjec- tured this would be especially evident with familiar statements. That is, we expected the effect of occupation to become obvious only when the discourse contained familiar sentences that could easily be interpreted as in conflict with the scene. The relevant comparisons are presented in Table 2, in boldface.

We found a significant difference in ratings on all questions except tone of voice when we examined familiar statements for the control and neutral conditions: mocking: t(5 1) = 1.96, p < .05; truthfulness: t(51) = -1.93, p < .05; sarcasm: t(51) = 2.06, p < .05; appropriateness: t(51) = 1.94, p < .05. In all of these cases, the discourse context provided minimal information regarding the reason the speakers made the comments, and high-irony speakers were rated as more mocking, less truthful, more sarcastic, and making a less appropriate statement than speakers who were not identified by occupation. None of the contrasts involving unfamiliar statements or high-metaphor occupations were significant. Thus, the mere mention of a speaker's occupation led to heightened ratings of sarcastic-ironic intent, but only for speakers who came from occupations associated with ironic use and only when speakers uttered familiar statements.

TABLE 2 Mean Ratings for Five Questions About Speaker Intentions-Study 1

--

Ironic Occupation Metaphoric Occupation No Occupation Context Conditions Context Conditions Context Condition

Statement

Type Question Ironic Neutral Metaphoric Ironic Neutral Metaphoric Neutral

Familiar Mocking Tone Truthfulness Sarcasm Appropriateness

Unfamiliar Mocking Tone Truthfulness Sarcasm Appropriateness

Note. Values in boldface indicate relevant comparisons for effect of providing occupation information. Judgments were made on a 7-point scale (mocking: 1 = not mocking, 7 = mocking; tone: 1 = means what is said, 7 = does not mean what is said; truthfulness: 1 = truthful, 7 = not truthful; sarcasm: 1 = not at all sarcastic, 7 = very sarcastic; appropriateness: 1 = appropriate, 7 = not at all appropriate).

30 KATZ AND PEXMAN

Is the connection between occupation and the familiarity of the statements simply due to the statements actually being ironic? Or is it due to a familiar statement being one that can be burned to ironic ends more readily than an unfamiliar one when circumstances warrant? To investigate this issue, we analyzed the no-occupation neutral context condition separately, contrasting effects of statement familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar). There was a significant effect of statement familiarity for four of the five ratings; mocking: F(l, 206) = 4.21, MSe = 4.39, p < .05; truthfulness: F(l,206) = 5.32, MSe = 2 . 6 2 , ~ < .05; sarcasm: F(1,206) = 12.77, MSe = 4.07, p < .001; appropriateness: F(1, 206) = 10.44, MSe = 2.83, p < .001. The nature of these effects was very consistent: Familiar statements were rated as being less mocking, more truthful, less sarcastic, and more appropriate than were unfamiliar statements.

Assuming that participants possess canonical scenarios or situations for familiar (but not for unfamiliar) statements, these data suggest that the familiar statements employed here are not typically seen as being ironic. Given that these statements tend to be of the form An A is a B, the familiar statements are probably understood as metaphor. Only when uttered by aperson identified with a high-irony occupation were these items perceived as sarcastic. On our account, the increase in irony ratings is due to the incongruity evident when an "ironic" person makes a statement usually understood as being nonironic.

Ratings of Sarcasm, Mocking, Tone of Voice, Truthfulness, and Appropriateness

We also analyzed the rating data for all the conditions in which speaker occupation was mentioned: 3 contexts (irony-inducing, neutral, metaphor-induc- ing) x 2 speaker occupations (high-irony, high-metaphor) x 2 statement types (familiar, unfamiliar). These data were analyzed separately for each of the five rating dimensions in item-wise and subject-wise analyses. The average ratings on each of these five scales are also presented in Table 2. Very clear patterns were observed in the ratings.

Initially, consider the differences in responses resulting from differences in context. Did the participants deem the irony-inducing contexts to be what we intended? Indeed, the most consistent effect across ratings was that of context; mocking: Fs(2, 102) = 44.47, p < .001, MSe = 3.36; Fi(2,28) = 17 .78 ,~ < .001, MSe = 1.33; tone: E(2, 102) = 5 1 . 5 9 , ~ < .001, MSe = 3.88; Fi(2,28) = 2 9 . 7 1 , ~ < .001, MSe = .97; truthfulness: Fs(2, 102) = 66 .92 ,~ < .001, MSe = 3.53; Fi(2,28) = 41.41, p < .001, MSe = 37; sarcasm: Fs(2, 102) = 56.85, p < .001, MSe = 3.48; Fi(2,28) = 21.63, p < .001, MSe = 1.34; appropriateness: Fs(2, 102) = 27.84, p < .001, MSe = 27.84; Fi(2, 28) = 17.21, p < .001, MSe = 1.02. That is, participants perceived speakers in the counterfactual irony-inducing context condition as more sarcastic,

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 31

more mocking, less truthful, less appropriate, and using a tone that indicated they did not mean what they said, whereas those in the consistent metaphor-inducing context condition were perceived as less sarcastic, less mocking, and so on. Post hoc tests indicated that in all cases mean ratings in the irony-inducing context condition differed significantly from the neutral and metaphor-inducing context conditions, but that the latter two did not differ significantly from one another. This last finding supports our previous claim that the default interpretation of statements in the neutral condition was as metaphor. These results confirm that the counter- factuality of a statement with the preceding discourse context is important in producing a sense of irony.

Next we turn to the effects of familiarity. There is no reason to expect familiarity per se to affect ratings of irony, and there was no main effect of statement familiarity. Similarly, we did not expect (or find) a main effect for speaker occupation because if the context and the statement correspond, there is no ambiguity or incongruity to be resolved using information about the speaker.

However, there were opportunities for issues to be resolved in certain combina- tions of context and other variables, and two significant interactions were produced. First, the context effect was modified by statement familiarity. This interaction was significant in the subject-wise analyses for all five measures and in the item-wise analyses for three of the measures; mocking: Fs(2, 102) = 4 . 2 7 , ~ < .05, MSe = 4.7 1 ; F42, 28) = 2.75, p < .OX, MSe = 1.33; tone: Fs(2, 102) = 23.47, p < .001, MSe = 1.95; F,(2,28) = 5.63, p < .01, MSe = .97; truthfulness: Fs(2, 102) = 15.23, p < .001, MSe = 1.57; F,(2,28) = 3 . 8 3 , ~ < .05, MSe = 3 7 ; sarcasm: Fs(2, 102) = 10.35, p < .001, MSe = 3.84; F,(2,28) = 4 . 9 4 , ~ < .01, MSe = 1.34; appropriateness: F42, 102) = 4.08, p < .05, MSe = 2.43; Fi(2,28) = 1.37, p = .27, MSe = 1.02. The effect was the same in all cases: The context manipulation was stronger for familiar than for unfamiliar statements. Thus the incongruity caused by the use of a familiar statement in counterfactual context is more marked than the incongruity caused by an unfamiliar statement used counterfactually. On our account, a familiar statement readily conflicts with a counterfactual context. An unfamiliar statement-particu- larly a metaphor--does so less readily. It has a greater range of possible interpre- tations.

Second, the effect of context was modified by speaker occupation. The interac- tion was significant for the ratings of sarcasm, F42, 102) = 3.47, p < .05, MSe = 4.05; F,(2,28) = 3.89, p < .05, MSe = .44, and, marginally, for ratings of mocking, F42, 102) = 2.33, p = . lo , MSe = 3.95; Fi(2,28) = 2.19, p = .09, MSe = .57. The nature of the interaction was that for both the metaphor and irony-inducing contexts the statements were rated as more sarcastic and more mocking when uttered by a member of a high-metaphor occupation, and the reverse was found for the neutral context condition.

In summary, the results of Study 1 suggest the speaker's occupation can influence reactions to metaphors that may be ironic. In this study, familiar coun-

32 KATZ AND PEXMAN

terfactuals were taken as ironic. When no rationale for a statement was offered, statements were taken as ironic when made by speakers from relevant occupations. The effects were pronounced when the statements were familiar and, hence, largely unambiguous. In addition, when the statement was unambiguous by virtue of being familiar and ironic by virtue of being counterfactual, when spoken by a member of a metaphor-using occupation it was doubly sarcastic-presumably because it was more incongruous coming from this speaker. This incongruity effect was present in both the ratings and recall results.

STUDY 2

In Study 1, the effect of speaker occupation was restricted to conditions in which discourse context was minimal. We conjectured occupation could be made more salient by mentioning it in the questions as well as in the short texts and that its effect would then be more dramatic and less restricted.

To this end, in Study 2, we repeatedly reminded the listener about the occupation of the speaker by making a minor change to the speaker intent questions. Recall that in Study 1, the questions referred to the speaker only in general terms (e.g., Is the speaker mocking his sister? Does the speaker's tone of voice reflect what he means?). In Study 2, the questions were changed so that we made it more clear about which character in the paragraph we were asking questions (e.g., Is the scientist mocking his sister? Does the scientist's tone of voice reflect what he means?). This repeated mention of the occupation was intended to make the concept (such as scientist) more accessible.

There were two other changes from the methodology employed in Study 1. First, because we were interested in the conditions involving occupational mention, we did not employ the no-occupation control condition. Thus our basic design was the 3 contexts (irony-inducing counterfactual, neutral, metaphor-inducing consistent) x 2 speaker occupations (high-irony, high-metaphor) x 2 statement types (familiar, unfamiliar) that was the core of Study 1.

Second, we added a question about speaker intent that asked participants to rate whether the speaker was saying something new about the topic. Because irony involves a reference to what is familiar, it may imply the speaker is not adding something new to the communication (see Grice, 1975) to the same extent as metaphor. All that irony adds is, in effect, "Remember that expectation? Well, it ain't so," and consequently it is less informative than a positive assertion that A is a B, where B is not known to have been anticipated. Alternatively, "newness" may not relate to the "amount" of sarcasm or other variables measured in our scales. Rather, a statement may be evidently new when no rationale for the statement is provided and the participant has no other clue to the speaker's state of mind than

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 33

the statement itself. Further, a familiar statement made by a speaker from a high-irony occupation may not be "new" both because it is familiar and because its ironic use stresses its familiarity. An incongruity effect is possible too: A person associated with metaphor would seem out of character if he or she made a sarcastic remark, and his or her comment would likely be judged new.

Method

Participants

A sample of 72 students (43 female) participated in Study 2. All of the participants were undergraduate students at the University of Western Ontario who received partial course credit in an introductory psychology course in exchange for their participation. All participants described English as their first language and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Materials and Procedure

The same basic procedure employed in Study 1 was used again. Participants read a set of 12 brief paragraphs, concluding with a statement made by one of the characters described in the paragraph. After reading each paragraph, par- ticipants were asked a series of questions about the speaker's intent in making the statement. The questions about speaker intent were slightly changed from those used in Study 1 such that the term speaker was replaced by the occupation of the person who made the target utterance. In addition to the five questions used to measure speaker intent in Study 1, a sixth question was added: namely, whether the participants thought the speaker was trying to say something new about the topic of the story.

The stimuli for Study 2 were the same as those used in Study 1, except that four statements were omitted. These four eliminated statements are identified with double asterisks in Appendix B.

Results and Discussion

Recall Data

As in Study 1, there was a significant item-wise (and nearly significant subject- wise) main effect of speaker occupation, Fs(1,71) = 3.51, p = .06, MSe = .24; Fi(1, 10) = 7.04, p c .05, MSe = 96.45: Statements made by speakers from high-irony

34 KATZ AND PEXMAN

occupations were recalled better (M = 50.7%) than the same statements made by speakers from high-metaphor occupations (M = 44.5%).

Correlations of the Speaker Intent Questions

The five measures of speaker intent that had been used in Study 1 all correlated significantly with one another in Study 2. The correlations ranged from r = .57 (mocking and tone of voice) to r = .88 (sarcasm and mocking), all ps < .001. In contrast, the added measure of "newness" did not correlate significantly with any of the other five scales.

Analyses of Newness Ratings

The mean newness ratings are presented in Table 3. Analyses of the data for newness ratings produced a main effect of context, Fs(2,142) = 7.50, p < .001, MSe = 4.29; F,(2, 20) = 6.87, p < .01, MSe = .40, and an interaction of statement familiarity and speaker occupation, FJJ, 71) = 7.26, p < .01, MSe = 2.95; F,(1, 10) = 8.40, p < .05, MSe = .21: Statements made in neutral context were perceived as conveying more new information than those in either the metaphor or irony-induc- ing discourse context conditions. Thus, as expected, the different contexts set up the appropriately different expectations that the target would be ironic or meta- phoric, and as a result the statements were perceived to convey more new informa- tion in neutral context. The interaction of statement familiarity and speaker occu- pation indicated that perceptions of the newness of an utterance were quite complex. As predicted, for familiar statements, speakers who were members of high-meta- phor occupations were perceived as saying something new to a greater extent than were speakers who were members of high-irony occupations. The opposite was found when the utterance was unfamiliar: Speakers from high-irony occupations were seen as more informative. We conjecture that the unfamiliar statements made by high-irony speakers were taken by participants as doubly informative-the statement was new to the participant (by virtue of being unfamiliar), and when uttered as irony, the speaker implied that the statement should be known to all parties including the participant.

Ratings of Sarcasm, Mocking, Tone of Voice, Truthfulness, and Appropriateness

The average ratings on each of these five scales are also presented in Table 3. Although the table looks complex, very clear patterns were observed. Four signifi- cant effects emerged in the analyses; two involve discourse context and the other two involve speaker occupation.

TABLE 3 Mean Ratings for Five Questions About Speaker Intentions-Study 2

Statement

Ironic Occupation Metaphoric Occupation Context Conditions Context Conditions

Type Question Ironic Neutral Metaphoric Ironic Neutral Metaphoric

Familiar Newness 4.32 3.36 4.68 4.11 3.34 4.07 Mocking 5.11 3.75 3.04 5.51 3.20 2.69 Tone 4.01 2.64 2.59 4.48 2.65 2.54 Truthfulness 4.01 1.40 1.08 3.80 1.66 1.03 Sarcasm 5.61 3.16 2.84 5.73 3.03 2.61 Appropriateness 3.81 2.64 2.21 3.91 2.57 2.55

Unfamiliar Newness 4.08 3.72 3.96 4.24 4.17 4.40 Mocking 5.03 4.22 3.89 4.68 3.69 3.15 Tone 3.97 3.41 3.26 3.57 2.83 3.12 Truthfulness 2.97 1.94 1.64 2.84 1.77 1.79 Sarcasm 5.13 3.86 4.04 4.83 3.69 3.34 Appropriateness 3.90 3.36 3.18 4.00 3.31 2.93

Note. Judgments were made on a 7-point scale (newness: 1 = very much, 7 = not at all; mocking: 1 = not mocking, 7 = mocking; tone: 1 = means what is said, 7 = does not mean what is said; truthfulness: 1 = truthful, 7 = not truthful; sarcasm: 1 = not at all sarcastic, 7 = very sarcastic; appropriateness: 1 = appropriate, 7 = not at all appropriate).

First, the contexts were rated aptly-the irony-inducing ones as more mocking and so forth; mocking: Fs(2, 142) = 5 9 . 4 0 , ~ < .0001, MSe = 4.75; F,(2,20) = 14.80, p < .001, MSe = 1.51; tone of voice: Fs(2, 142) = 26.42, p < .0001, MSe = 4.36; F,(2,20) = 2 8 . 9 3 , ~ < .001, MSe = .36; truthfulness: F42, 142) = 104.43,~ < .0001, MSe = 3.31; F,(2, 20) = 31.18, p < .001, MSe = .91; sarcasm: Fs(2, 142) = 100.97, p < .0001, MSe = 3.89; Fl(2, 20) = 32.01, p < .001, MSe = 1.00; appropriateness: Fs(2, 142) = 3 4 . 9 6 , ~ < .0001, MSe = 3.10; F,(2,20) = 1 9 . 8 1 , ~ < .001, MSe = .47.

Second, the context effect was usually stronger when the statements were familiar as in Study 1; tone: Fs(2, 142) = 9.69, p < .0001, MSe = 2.31; F1(2, 20) = 6.02, p < -01, MSe = .36; truthfulness: F42, 142) = 20.43, p < .0001, MSe = 2.44; F,(2, 20) = 5.03, p < .05, MSe = .9 1; sarcasm: F42, 142) = 8.22, p < .000 1, MSe = 6.65; F1(2, 20) = 4.50, p < .05, MSe = 1 .OO.

The third and fourth significant effects are different than those observed in Study 1 and demonstrate an influence of speaker occupation in the perception of ironic intent. Main effects of speaker occupation were found with the critical measures of mocking, Fs(l, 71) = 9 . 4 7 , ~ < .005, MSe = 2.97; Fl(l , 10) = 17.76, p < .01, MSe = .12, and sarcasm, Fs(l, 71) = 3 . 3 4 , ~ < .05, MSe = 3.00; F,(l, 10) = 6.63, p < .05, MSe = .12. In both cases, the findings were as predicted: A given statement was perceived as more sarcastic and more likely to be mocking someone when uttered by a person from a high-irony occupation than when the same sentence was uttered by a person from a high-metaphor occupation. Thus, in Experiment 2, the effect of speaker occupation emerged as a main effect-the frequent reminders of occupational status had the desired consequence.

The final finding in this study was an interaction of speaker occupation and statement familiarity for both the ratings of mocking, Fs(l, 71) = 2.90, p = .09, MSe = 3.53; F,(l, 10) = 5.29, p < .05, MSe = .12, and tone of voice, Fs(l, 7 1) = 3.86, p < .05, MSe = 2.76; Fl(l, 10) = 7 . 2 8 , ~ < .05, MSe = .16. The interactions took a form that was different than the effects observed in Study 1. Here, speaker occupation effects were only apparent when the statement was unfamiliar. Assuming that a well-established or canonical meaning is not accessible for unfamiliar statements but is easy to access for more familiar statements, these data suggest that when knowledge about the speaker is made salient (by repeatedly mentioning occupa- tion), it may be used when interpretive ambiguity is high and despite other information about the situation provided in the discourse context.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The role played by selected cues in the disambiguation of figurative statements was examined in two studies. The cues were the nature of the speaker (operationalized

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 37

by speaker occupation), nature of the statement (rated familiarity), and the nature of the discourse context (counterfactuality with statement). Two findings are clear.

The first finding involves the effects of speaker occupation. We found that people have consensus, or share common ground, regarding their beliefs about the linguistic habits of members of occupational categories. Stereotypes based on occupational membership were found to exist such that members of certain occu- pations were seen as tending to employ metaphor and those of other professions as employing irony in their everyday speech. The occupational ratings were internally reliable and were cross-validated on two samples.

The question in which we were interested was whether speaker occupation could, in practice, act as a cue to ironic comprehension. Supportive evidence regarding the role played by speaker occupation was found in the rating data on speaker intent. When compared to a condition in which occupation was not mentioned, speakers from high-irony occupations were perceived as being more sarcastic, at least for highly familiar statements (Study 1). When reminders of speaker occupation were provided in questions of speaker intent (Study 2), speaker occupation effects emerged more generally: Statements made by speakers of high-irony occupations were perceived to be more sarcastic and mocking than the same statements made by speakers of high-metaphor occupations.

The memory data described in both studies also indicated that occupational status was processed: Statements uttered by members of high-irony occupations were better recalled than the same statements made by members of high-metaphor occupations. Since the statements and contexts were identical in every other way, these data suggest that occupation was coded somewhere in the process of compre- hension. Moreover, the effect was observed both in Study 1, where occupation was not emphasized in the intent questions, and in Study 2, where occupation was emphasized. Ow second major finding was that statement familiarity influenced perceived

ironicity and interacted with speaker occupation and discourse context. The default interpretation of these items is as metaphor. However, irony was produced when familiar statements were uttered by members of high-irony occupations. This effect was evident when the neutral context condition was compared with the control (no occupation) condition (Study 1) and when familiar statements were in counterfac- tual context (Studies 1 and 2).

Why are familiar statements perceived as especially ironic when uttered in an irony-inducing discourse context or when uttered by a member of a high-irony occupation? We speculate that both effects might be due to the conceptual structure underlying the meaning of the items employed here. Some have argued that the meaning of figurative language is based on a set of conceptual or root metaphors (see Gibbs, 1994). Indeed, the items we used here were chosen as more familiar or less familiar instantiations of such root metaphors. Presumably, judgments that we make on these items are constrained by these root metaphors: Familiar items access

38 KATZ AND PEXMAN

the root conceptual structure more readily than do unfamiliar items. Both effects of statement familiarity reported here can be tied to differences in the ease and likelihood that the root metaphors are accessed. The metaphoric content of the familiar items would be available for use, regardless of discourse context. Thus when the context is consistent with the metaphoric base, a nonironic interpretation is consistent with expectations. However when the discourse context is non-endors- ing, the incongruity between the metaphoric sense and the ironic use is made especially salient, leading to the heightened sense of irony observed here. An analogous explanation applies to the interaction of statement familiarity and speaker occupation. Recall that in the condition in which this interaction is observed participants have minimal knowledge about reasons that a person might have made a comment. Given that the default interpretation of the statement is a metaphor and that comprehension of the metaphor is easier for highly familiar items, participants provided with highly familiar items know (a) the statement is metaphoric and (b) it is made by a person who is associated with metaphoric or ironic speech. With less familiar items the metaphoric content is not as available for use. Thus it is only with familiar (metaphoric) items uttered by high-irony speakers that an incongruity is very salient.

Taken together, our data indicate that characteristics of the person making the statement (in our case, occupation) can be used to help resolve the ambiguity inherent in ironic statements, particularly when the occupational status is especially salient. As such, our data provide what we believe is the first experimental support of the prediction made almost 2,000 years ago by Quintilian. Based on the interactions observed with familiarity of the statement, it appears that shared knowledge about speaker occupation helps resolve speaker intent far equivocal statements, particularly when other more robust information is not available to the listener.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Authorship of this article is equally shared, and order was determined by a coin toss. This research was supported in part by an operating grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canda (NSERC OGP0007040) to Albert N. Katz and by an NSERC postgraduate fellowship to Penny M. Pexman. A major portion of this article was presented in November 1995 at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Los Angeles, California.

We thank Peter Denny, Chris Lee, and Carolynn Sheehan for their comments on earlier versions of this article and Carolina Cristi for testing participants in Study 1.

SPEAKER OCCUPATION AND IRONY 39

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APPENDIX A IRONY AND METAPHOR RATINGS FOR

34 OCCUPATIONS

Irony Rating Metaphor Rating

Occupation M SD Occupation M SD

Comedian Comic English professor Writer Poet Movie critic Literary critic Journalist Actor Student Talk show host Lawyer Newspaper editor Army sergeant Cab driver Teacher Police officer Politician Artist Truck driver Factory worker Professional athlete Salesman Accountant Mechanic Chef Scientist Waiter Cook Mortician Judge Doctor Clergyman Nurse

English professor Poet Writer Literary critic Journalist Actor Artist Teacher Comic Newspaper editor Movie critic Comedian Salesman Politician Lawyer Student Talk show host Clergyman Cook Chef Scientist Waiter Professional athlete Doctor Nurse Judge Mortician Police officer Mechanic Accountant Army sergeant Cab driver Truck driver Factory worker

Note. Judgments were made on a 7-point scale (irony: 1 = not likely to use irony, 7 = likely to use irony; metaphor: 1 = not likely to use metaphor, 7 = likely to use metaphor).

*Represents occupations selected as "high irony" occupations. **Represents occupations selected as "high metaphor" occupations.

APPENDIX B FAMILIARITY RATINGS FOR

22 NONLITERAL STATEMENTS

Familiarity Rating

Statement M SD

Handshakes are doorbells Their love is a coniferous tree Their friends are houseplants This textbook is a winning lottery ticket His smiles are can openers Her wedding ring is a "Sorry, we're closed" sign Bungee jumpers are gods of war His Christmas cards are progress charts A university with correspondence courses is a 7-11 Her heart is a no-fly zone Their love is a sunny meadow Her ego is an eggshell He is at the summit of his career Her home is an oasis His time is expensive merchandise Their argument is an atomic war Her mind is an active volcano His standards are at the ceiling That comment hit the bull's eye She is a magnet to men That experience was a crushing blow Children are precious gems

Note. Judgments were made on a 7-point scale (1 = unfamiliar, 7 =familiar). "Represents items chosen for the experimental studies. **Represents items used only in

Study 1.