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12 - Vocal Strategies in Verbal Irony

from Part IV - Irony in Linguistic Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2023

By
Gregory A. Bryant
Edited by
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr  and
Herbert L. Colston
Herbert L. Colston
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Summary

The sound of people’s voices when speaking to others is sometimes a clue to their possible ironic intent. This chapter presents an overview of some of the specific vocal strategies employed when people express ironic meaning. Speakers signal their ironic intentions through local and global features of prosody, along with vocal impressions (e.g., spectral information that depicts a different person or imagined agent), laughter, and other nonverbal vocalizations. Experimental studies demonstrated that these vocal strategies are key indices for listeners when they infer that speakers convey irony, including sarcasm, through their talk. Bryant describes the evolutionary roots of these different vocalizations (e.g., the desire for play) and argues how vocal strategies are an important element in how people coordinate and cooperate during verbal interaction. He emphasizes that different vocal strategies are not fixed, but vary in different situations to create a wide range of contextually appropriate pragmatic messages that others may readily interpret.

Keywords

evolutionary roots of ironyironic intentionsprosodysignalsverbal ironyvocal strategies
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought , pp. 197 - 215
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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