How Do Stereotypes

JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / September 2002Pexman, Olineck / SPEAKER STEREOTYPES AND IRONY

UNDERSTANDING IRONYHow Do StereotypesCue Speaker Intent?

PENNY M. PEXMANKARA M. OLINECK

University of Calgary

Katz and Pexman reported that certain occupations (e.g., comedian) were associated withironic speech and that participants rated metaphors as more sarcastic when speakerswere members of such occupations. In the present research, the authors investigatedwhether speaker occupation was a cue to ironic intent when the statements were not meta-phors (e.g., literal statements such as “you are a wonderful friend,” potentially an ironicinsult, and “you are a terrible friend,” potentially an ironic compliment). Results of Exper-iments 1 and 2 demonstrated that speaker occupation stereotypes were routinely inte-grated in the comprehension process but only cued ironic intent when other contextualcues were minimal.Results of Experiment 3 demonstrated that speaker occupation stereo-types involve particular types of information in the context of potentially ironic speech: aspeaker’s perceived tendencies to be humorous, to criticize, to be sincere, and also aspeaker’s perceived education level.

When a speaker says “you are a wonderful friend,” the statementcould be interpreted as a literal compliment (e.g., you really are a greatfriend) or as an ironic1 insult (e.g., you are a rotten friend). The inter-pretation that the listener takes will depend on a number of factors,including, perhaps, their beliefs about the speaker. If the speaker issomeone whom the listener believes to be highly sarcastic, then thestatement may be more likely to be taken as ironic. Conversely, if thelistener believes that the speaker hardly ever speaks sarcastically, thestatement may be less likely to be interpreted ironically. It seemshighly plausible that a listener’s beliefs about a speaker’s conversa-tional tendencies (e.g., a tendency to use sarcasm, to be funny, or tospeak negatively) would influence a listener’s interpretation of poten-tially ironic remarks. There is, however, only a small amount of

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AUTHORS’ NOTE:This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Science andEngineering Research Council of Canada to PMP. We thank Susan Graham for helpfuldiscussions about the analysis of Experiment 3 and Stacey Ivanko and Jodi Edwards forassistance with testing participants. In addition, two anonymous reviewers provided veryhelpful comments about an earlier version of this article.

JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY,Vol. 21 No. 3, September 2008 245-274 2008 Sage Publications

experimental evidence to support this possibility, and not all theoriesof irony would make such a prediction. The goal of the present articlewas to investigate the extent to which ironic interpretation may becued by such beliefs about a speaker. Our focus is the interpretation ofpotentially ironic remarks (i.e., verbal, and not situational, irony).

Our approach is motivated by interest in the interaction of the cog-nitive and social processes involved in communication. As argued byFussell and Kreuz (1998; see also Gernsbacher, 1994), “any act of mes-sage interpretation is based on both psycholinguistic processes (e.g.,lexical retrieval, syntactic processing) and social-interactional factorssuch as beliefs about what a speaker is trying to achieve by his or hermessage” (p. 3). In the present research, we investigated when and howthese cognitive and social processes may interact in the context ofunderstanding irony. Inferring speaker intent for a potentially ironicremark involves basic language comprehension processes; it alsoinvolves social factors such as relationship variables (Slugoski &Turnbull, 1988) and, perhaps, beliefs about the speaker. The potentialinfluence of these and other social factors has not been addressed inmost studies of verbal irony.

SPEAKER CHARACTERISTICSAS CUES TO IRONY

The possibility that speaker characteristics might cue ironic intenthas been addressed indirectly in some of the previous literature. Forinstance, Leggitt and Gibbs (2000) found that speakers who made sar-castic statements were perceived as feeling more angry, disgusted, andscornful than speakers who made nonsarcastic statements.Toplak andKatz (2000) reported that speakers who used a sarcastic criticism wereperceived as being more verbally aggressive and offensive than speak-ers who used a literal criticism (see also Colston, 1997; see Dews &Winner, 1995, for a contrasting view, and Pexman & Olineck, 2002, forsome resolution to this debate). Kreuz, Long, and Church (1991)reported that ironic statements fulfilled different communicationgoals than literal statements; in particular, ironic statements wereused to be funny and to mock someone. Similarly, Roberts and Kreuz(1994) found that irony was used to express negative emotion. It is notclear from these findings, however, whether by manipulating thesecharacteristics for the speaker (e.g., giving listeners knowledge thatthe speaker is angry or not angry), one could directly affect the likeli-hood that sarcasm would be perceived. This type of manipulationwould provide a strong test of whether certain speaker characteristicsare salient cues to ironic intent.

246 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / September 2008

Slugoski and Turnbull (1988) manipulated aspects of the relation-ship between the speaker and listener and examined the effects oninterpretation of potentially ironic remarks. They manipulated thecloseness of the relationship between the speaker and listener and alsothe extent to which the speaker and listener liked each other. Likingwas found to be a strong cue. If the speaker and listener liked eachother, then literal insults were more likely to be interpreted as ironiccompliments. If the speaker and listener disliked each other, then lit-eral compliments were more likely to be interpreted as ironic insults.

Speaker characteristics (conveyed by speaker occupation informa-tion) were directly manipulated by Katz and Pexman (1997). Theirstimuli were metaphors such as “children are precious gems” that canbe interpreted as metaphors (e.g., intended meaning is that childrenare valuable) but can also be interpreted ironically (e.g., intendedmeaning is that children are not valuable). They presented these state-ments following short written contexts with some of the speakers iden-tified by occupation. Half of the speakers identified by occupation weremembers of high-irony occupations (e.g., comedian, cab driver, etc.,according to ratings in a pilot study), and half were members of high-metaphor occupations (e.g., clergyman, scientist, etc.). Results showedthat statements made by speakers from high-irony occupationsreceived higher sarcasm ratings than statements made by speakersfrom high-metaphor occupations, particularly if other cues to ironicintent (e.g., incongruity between the positive or negative tone of thecontext and the negative or positive tone of the statement) wereabsent. Statements made by speakers from high-irony occupationswere also more likely to be remembered in a subsequent recall task.This recall advantage for statements made by high-irony speakers wasattributed to participants’ coding occupation in the comprehensionprocess and carrying out particularly effortful processing for state-ments made by high-irony speakers to consider the possibility that asarcastic message was intended. In support of this explanation, thereis evidence that more effortful processing leads to a stronger memorytrace (e.g., Gibbs, 1987; O’Brien & Myers, 1985).

Thus, speaker occupation stereotypes influenced interpretation of,and memory for, potentially ironic remarks. In an online reading taskwith the same stimuli, Pexman, Ferretti, and Katz (2000) found thatwhen speaker occupation was mentioned, reading times were longer atthe last word in the target metaphor. These longer reading times atstatement’s end (and the absence of longer reading times for wordsafter the statement) were taken to mean that speaker occupation infor-mation was integrated with other types of information (e.g., lexical,syntactic) as soon as the last word in the statement had been read.Based on the reading-time data, the authors concluded that this inte-gration occurred relatively early in end-of-statement processing.

Pexman, Olineck / SPEAKER STEREOTYPES AND IRONY 247

EFFECTS OF SPEAKER STEREOTYPESAND THEORIES OF IRONY

No theory of irony makes explicit predictions about how speaker ste-reotypes should influence interpretation of irony. Nonetheless, formost theories, it is possible to derive predictions based on the tenets ofthe theories. In the present research, we investigated the extent andnature of speaker occupation stereotype effects to establish whether(and in what ways) theories of irony would need to be modified toaccount for such effects.

According to the echoic mention theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1981,1986), irony is made possible by an utterance that implicitly or explic-itly “echoes” a previous event, norm, or expectation. Similarly, echoicreminder theory (e.g., Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989) holds that the echoicnature of an ironic utterance reminds the listener of a violated norm orfailed expectation, and as such expresses the ironic speaker’s negativeattitude about a given situation. The Echoic Reminder view explainsthe asymmetry that is typically observed in irony, whereby positivestatements are more readily interpreted as irony (as ironic insults)than are negative statements (as ironic compliments). This asymme-try arises because, even if there is no explicit antecedent, positivestatements always echo the implicit norm whereby speakers areexpected to make positive comments (e.g., “if you can’t say somethingnice don’t say anything at all”). Negative statements, in contrast, donot echo this implicit norm and thus seem to require an explicit ante-cedent (e.g., Gibbs, 1986; Hancock, Dunham, & Purdy, 2000; Kreuz &Glucksberg, 1989). Thus, according to these echoic theories, detectionof irony depends on the presence of an implicit or explicit antecedent.There is no obvious reason why speaker occupation stereotypes wouldinteract with the echoic mention or reminder, and there seems no rea-son why a model of this type would predict that speaker occupationshould influence interpretation of potentially ironic utterances.

Pretense models (e.g., Clark & Gerrig, 1984) posit that an ironicspeaker pretends to address an imaginary listener who would likelytake their utterance literally. The ironic speaker pretends to be a veryoptimistic person, perceiving events as if through rose-colored glasses.The result is that the ironic speaker expresses a negative attitudetoward the situation or idea described, the imaginary listener, and thepretended optimist. By this account, occupation stereotypes couldaffect comprehension of irony if an occupation were strongly consis-tent, or strongly inconsistent,with this type of behavior.For instance, ifthe speaker’s occupation stereotype was consistent with jocularity, orperhaps with insincerity, then that might make a listener more likelyto detect the speaker’s pretense.Conversely, if the speaker’s occupationstereotype was consistent with sincerity, and seriousness, then the lis-tener might be less likely to detect the speaker’s pretense.


The allusional pretense theory (Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg, &Brown, 1995) involves two main arguments: (a) Ironic utterancesallude to a failed expectation (i.e., by implicit or explicit echo) and (b)ironic utterances involve pragmatic insincerity (i.e., by violating felic-ity conditions for speech acts, e.g., degree of politeness should be appro-priate to the situation). As with pretense theory, it seems reasonable toassume that speaker stereotype information could enhance (or attenu-ate) the perception of pragmatic insincerity, and so allusional pretensetheory could predict that speaker occupation influences the perceptionof irony.

Colston (2000) provided a revision to the allusional pretense theory.That is, Colston argued that the necessary conditions for verbal ironyare (a) portraying a contrast between expectations and reality and (b)flouting of Gricean Conversational Maxims (e.g., Maxims of Quality,Quantity, Relevance, or Manner). It seems possible that speaker ste-reotype information could provide insight about speaker expectationsand thus accentuate the contrast necessary for verbal irony. Forinstance, if speaker occupation stereotypes were consistent with nega-tive expectations, then detection of ironic intent might be enhanced. Inaddition, stereotypes that suggest insincerity and humor might facili-tate detection of the flouting condition.

Recently, Utsumi (2000) argued that many of the previous theorieshave failings: “None of the previous irony theories can distinguishironic utterances from nonironic ones completely” (p. 1778). Utsumiargued that echoic mention (or reminding) and pretense are certainlyimportant factors in perceiving irony but that previous theories havefailed to find common properties present in all instances of irony andabsent in all instances of nonirony. For instance, echoic theories fail toexplain instances of irony that can be understood as such but are not atall echoic and fail to account for the effects of various contextual cues toironic intent (both verbal and nonverbal). Furthermore, Utsumi ques-tioned the adequacy of pretense theories, citing examples of nonironythat involve pretense. Pretense does not seem to be a sufficient condi-tion for irony. Instead, Utsumi proposed the implicit display theory ofverbal irony. The theory involves three main claims: First, an ironicutterance assumes an “ironic environment,” defined as “a situationalsetting which motivates verbal irony” (p. 1778).Second,an ironic utter-ance “implicitly displays” the ironic environment. Third, irony is aprototype-based category, so that utterances with more characteristicsof implicit displays will be perceived as more ironic.

Utsumi (2000) specified that the ironic environment involves thespeaker’s having an expectation, the expectation not being met, and,most important for present purposes, the speaker having a negativeemotional attitude toward the incongruity between expectation andoutcome. Each of these components of the ironic environment must beexpressed indirectly—direct expression would produce nonirony. Utsumi


noted that negative speaker attitude could be implicitly displayed by anumber of cues, including verbal cues such as intonation, exaggera-tion, and the use of adjectives (e.g., really) and nonverbal cues such asgesture and facial expression. Utsumi did not address the possibilitythat these contextual cues might include beliefs about speakers. None-theless, it is seems likely that, by this model, speaker occupation wouldbe predicted to have an effect on perceived irony.

In particular, the implicit display theory emphasizes that ironicutterances indirectly express the speaker’s negative attitude towardthe situation. The utterance conveys the extent to which the situationfailed to meet the speaker’s expectations. If a speaker’s occupationhelps convey their potentially negative attitude, then it should facili-tate irony detection. This implicit display account holds that irony isunderstood more readily when the utterance is similar to theprototypical verbal irony (typicality effects). A speaker occupation ste-reotype that is consistent with ironic speech may facilitate irony detec-tion by making an utterance seem more similar to that prototype. Thetheory seems to predict that speaker occupation stereotypes have aninfluence on perceived irony because they convey a negative attitude.As such, the key dimensions of those stereotypes should be traits suchas cynicism and a critical outlook.

Based on the implicit display theory,we also derived the specific pre-diction that occupation stereotypes are most likely to be relevant topotentially ironic utterances when the stereotype signals a person whotends to be critical but who tends to express that criticism indirectly.The speaker may choose to express the criticism indirectly becausethey tend to be humorous. The speaker may also be motivated toexpress their criticisms indirectly because of a concern about offendingthe addressee. That is, they may be in a position in which they haveconcerns about face saving. Irony certainly serves a face-saving func-tion (Jorgensen, 1996). As Glucksberg (1995) suggested, “When peopleeither insult or compliment others, face-saving strategies are oftenused to offset the direct impact of such acts. Irony can be one such strat-egy” (p. 51).

Thus, current theories of irony can be extended to predictions aboutthe likelihood of speaker occupation acting as a cue to speaker intent.In the present research we tested those predictions.

THE PRESENT RESEARCH

Although it appeared that speaker occupation was a salient cue toironic intent in the Katz and Pexman (1997) and Pexman et al. (2000)studies, there were several unresolved issues. In the present research,we addressed three of those issues to investigate the extent, and the


nature, of speaker occupation effects. The first issue was whethereffects of occupation would be observed for stimuli that were not meta-phors. In the Katz and Pexman (1997) and Pexman et al. (2000) studies,all of the target statements were metaphors. Metaphors used in anironic sense are not the most typical form of verbal irony. For the meta-phoric statements, as somewhat unconventional examples of irony,context cues may have been especially salient. In the present research,we examined the influence of occupation when statements were of themore conventional literal form, as in “you are a wonderful friend.”

The second unresolved issue was the impact of speaker occupationon interpretation of ironic compliments (e.g., “you are a terrible friend”said when your friend has just done something gracious). In the Katzand Pexman (1997) and Pexman et al. (2000) studies, the target stimulicould be interpreted as ironic insults or literal compliments. Ironiccompliments are less common than ironic insults in everyday speech(Gibbs, 2000). Furthermore, Kreuz and Glucksberg (1989) reportedthat ironic compliments were more difficult to interpret than ironicinsults. Similarly, Pexman and Olineck (2002) found that participantswere less certain of their interpretations for ironic compliments thanthey were for ironic insults. Because ironic compliments can be moredifficult to interpret, speaker occupation might be a particularlysalient cue to ironic intent in such cases. In the present research, weinvestigated this possibility.

The third unresolved issue was why speaker occupation cued ironicintent. Which aspect or aspects of occupation stereotypes influencejudgments of speaker intent? There has been substantial research ongender typing and occupations but very little research on other aspectsof occupation stereotypes. One exception was a study by Slusher andAnderson (1987), in which the authors examined stereotypical traits oflawyers, artists, and clergymen. They found that these occupationswere associated with particular traits: wealthy and aggressive law-yers, temperamental and creative artists, and kind and friendly clergy-men. They also found that, when occupation was mentioned for a tar-get person in a sentence context, participants imagined characteristicsfor the target person as a function of the interaction of those traits andthe context. For instance, for the sentence “George, a lawyer, is shop-ping for a car,” their participants were more likely to imagine that thecar was a fancy car (as compared to a situation in which the occupationwas artist) because, they argued, the trait “wealthy” was activated andinteracted with the activity (car shopping) described. Thus, Slusherand Anderson found that occupation stereotypes influenced the imagi-nations people generated for target individuals, as a function of thecontext in which the target individual was described.

To our knowledge, occupation stereotypes have not been examinedin the context of communication. It is clear, however, from the ratings


obtained by Katz and Pexman (1997) that people perceive members ofcertain occupations as likely to use irony and members of other occupa-tions as unlikely to use irony. What is unclear is which aspects of occu-pation stereotypes are related to these perceptions. As mentioned,research has shown that speakers who make sarcastic statements areperceived to be more scornful, and more verbally aggressive, thanspeakers who make nonsarcastic statements (Leggitt & Gibbs, 2000;Toplak & Katz, 2000). In the present study, we determined whetherthese or other aspects of occupation stereotypes are related to use ofsarcasm. Based on the predictions we derived from pretense theories,the relevant aspects of the occupation stereotypes should be sincerityand, perhaps, tendency to use humor. Based on Colston’s contrast con-struct, we also added tendency to have negative expectations (cyni-cism) to this list. Based on the predictions we derived from the implicitdisplay theory, the relevant aspects of the occupation stereotypesshould be tendency to be critical and tendency to express criticism indi-rectly, perhaps manifest as tendency to use humor, or low social status(which could prompt a need for face saving).

To summarize, in this study, we first investigated whether speakeroccupation cued ironic intent for statements that could be interpretedliterally (Experiments 1 and 2) and then examined what it is aboutoccupation stereotypes that contributes to a perception of irony(Experiment 3).

EXPERIMENT 1

METHOD

Participants

Participants in Experiment 1 were 48 undergraduate students (41female) who received bonus credit in a psychology course in exchangefor their participation. Twenty-four versions of the stimuli were used,and participants were assigned to version by their order of appearanceat the lab, such that Participant 1 was assigned to Version 1, Partici-pant 2 to Version 2, and so on.

Materials

In this experiment, there were three paper-and-pencil tasks: a rat-ings task, a distraction task, and an unexpected free recall memorytask. There were 24 items on the ratings task, and each item involved athree-sentence context followed by a target statement (for examples,see Table 1). These items were selected from a pilot study.


Pilot study. In the pilot study, 40 participants were asked to rate aset of 45 potential occupations, 38 were asked to rate a set of potentialstatements, and 48 were asked to rate a set of potential contexts. All ofthese participants were undergraduate students who did not partici-pate in the subsequent experiments.For the occupation ratings,partic-ipants were told to imagine, for each occupation in a list, that a memberof that occupation got a flat tire on the way to work.They then rated thelikelihood (on a 7-point scale) that the member of that occupationwould make a sarcastic remark about the situation. For the experi-ment proper, we selected the eight occupations with the highest likeli-hood ratings (comedian, talk show host, movie critic, journalist, cabdriver, truck driver, actress, salesman) as our “sarcastic” occupations(M = 5.41, SD = 0.64), and the eight occupations with the lowest likeli-hood ratings (army sergeant, accountant, doctor, clergyman, scientist,


Table 1Sample Item (Experiment 1)

Context Statement

Strongly positive Laura and her friend, a scientist, Positive “That soundswere having coffee at a local pretty exciting”café. They were talking about aromantic date that Laura hadbeen on the night before. Lauraand her date had gone for dinnerand dancing at a new club down-town. The scientist said:

Weakly positive Laura and her friend, a scientist,were having coffee at a localcafé. They were talking about apleasant date that Laura hadhad the night before. The scient-ist said:

Weakly negative Laura and her friend, a scientist, Negative “That soundswere having coffee at a local pretty dull”café. They were talking about aboring date that Laura had hadthe night before. The scientistsaid:

Strongly negative Laura and her friend, a scientist,were having coffee at a localcafé. They were talking about aboring date that Laura had hadthe night before. They hadwatched old reruns of cartoonsall evening. The scientist said:

Note. The contexts illustrate a nonsarcastic occupation version of the contexts. In a sar-castic occupation version, the scientist would be replaced with a sarcastic occupation(e.g., a comedian).

librarian, mortician, dentist) as our “nonsarcastic” occupations (M =2.92, SD = 0.27, t(14) = 10.16, p < .001, SE = 0.25). Mean sarcasm rat-ings for all 45 occupations are listed in the appendix.

The potential statements we devised each involved a positive and anegative version (e.g., “that sounds pretty exciting,” “that soundspretty dull”). These were presented on paper, in random order, and par-ticipants were asked to rate each statement on a 7-point scale for (a)how likely it was that the statement would be made in real conversa-tion, (b) how familiar the statement was, and (c) how positive the state-ment was. For the experiment proper, we selected 24 pairs of state-ments, for which the positive versions of the statements were rated tobe significantly more positive (M = 5.53, SD = 0.61) than the negativeversions of the statements (M = 2.04, SD = 0.53, t(23) = 17.98, p < .001,SE = 0.21).As much as possible,within the pairs,we also tried to matchlikelihood (M = 5.40, SD = 0.80, for positive versions; M = 5.04, SD =0.80, for negative versions) and familiarity ratings (M = 4.80, SD =0.85, for positive versions;M = 4.15,SD = 0.84, for negative versions).

The potential contexts we devised were in sets of four, including astrongly positive version, a weakly positive version, a weakly negativeversion, and a strongly negative version. These were presented onpaper, in random order, and participants were asked to rate each con-text scenario on a 7-point scale for (a) how likely it was that the sce-nario would really happen and (b) how positive the scenario was. Weselected 24 sets of contexts, for which mean positivity ratings for thestrongly positive contexts (M = 6.32, SD = 0.31) were significantlyhigher than for the weakly positive contexts (M = 5.27, SD = 0.66, t(23)= 8.86, p < .001, SE = 0.12), mean positivity ratings for the weakly posi-tive contexts were significantly higher than for the weakly negativecontexts (M = 3.43, SD = 0.86, t(23) = 9.25, p < .001, SE = 0.20), andmean positivity ratings were significantly higher for the weakly nega-tive contexts than for the strongly negative contexts (M = 2.28, SD =0.69, t(23) = 7.78, p < .001, SE = 0.15). As much as possible, we chosecontexts in such a way as to equate likelihood ratings across contextconditions (for strongly positive: M = 5.53, SD = 0.53; for weakly posi-tive: M = 5.55, SD = 0.31; for weakly negative: M = 5.32, SD = 0.51; forstrongly negative: M = 4.99, SD = 0.59).

The materials for the experiment were 24 pairs of statements and 24sets of contexts involving a 2 (context strength: strong or weak) by 2(context positivity: positive or negative) by 2 (statement positivity: pos-itive or negative) by 3 (occupation: sarcastic occupation, nonsarcasticoccupation, or no occupation) combination of conditions. Each state-ment appeared in each of the four contexts, with each of the three typesof occupation, across the 24 versions of the experiment. Thus, one thirdof the items were presented in the no occupation condition. This condi-tion was devised to create filler items. That is, we did not want to men-tion occupation in every one of the contexts because we thought that


might lead participants to adopt a response strategy in which theyanticipated occupation information in each context.

The stimuli were presented in booklets.At the top of each page in thebooklet, we printed a context and target statement (the target state-ment was presented in bold) and then four rating scales. The four rat-ing scales were as follows: (a) Is the speaker being sarcastic? (1 = not atall sarcastic, 7 = extremely sarcastic), (b) Is the speaker saying some-thing polite? (1 = not at all polite, 7 = extremely polite), (c) Is the speakermocking someone? (1 = not at all mocking, 7 = extremely mocking), and(d) How certain are you that you correctly interpreted the speaker’sintent? (1 = not at all certain, 7 = extremely certain).

The distraction task involved six arithmetic problems. On the freerecall task, participants were asked to try to remember the targetstatements, which had been presented in boldface.

Procedure

Testing for this experiment took place in a group setting with five toseven participants tested at a time. Participants first completed theratings task and then spent approximately 10 minutes on the distrac-tion task. Finally, the unexpected free recall task was completed.

RESULTS

There were five dependent measures in this experiment: four rat-ings dimensions and the free recall data. In Table 2, we presented thecorrelations among the dependent measures separately for the posi-tive statements (above the diagonal) and the negative statements(below the diagonal). The patterns of correlations for these two types ofstatements are somewhat different because the positive statementsare potentially ironic insults and the negative statements are poten-tially ironic compliments, and these two forms of verbal irony haveslightly different social functions (e.g., Dews & Winner, 1995; Pexman& Olineck, 2002). These results, however, are tangential to the centralissue of the present work. Means and standard deviations for all of thedependent variables are presented in Table 3.

To address our central question of the influence of speaker occupa-tion as a cue to sarcastic-ironic intent, we conducted analyses of all ofthe conditions in which occupation was mentioned with 2 (contextstrength: strong or weak) by 2 (context positivity: positive or negative)by 2 (statement positivity: positive or negative) by 2 (occupation: sar-castic occupation or nonsarcastic occupation) ANOVAs. In all analyses,the data were analyzed by subjects and, separately, by items (F1 andF2, respectively).


Sarcasm ratings. For ratings of the extent to which a speaker wasbeing sarcastic, there was a significant interaction of Context Strength× Context Positivity × Statement Positivity, F1(1, 47) = 33.70, p < .001,MSE = 3.23, and F2(1, 23) = 15.36, p < .001, MSE = 3.42, and a signifi-cant interaction of context positivity and statement positivity, F1(1,47) = 412.73, p < .001, MSE = 4.18, and F2(1, 23) = 271.59, p < .001,MSE = 3.20,because sarcasm ratings were highest when contexts werestrongly negative or positive and were incongruent with statementpositivity. This effect demonstrates that incongruity between contextand statement can produce a perception of sarcastic intent and repli-cates this finding in the past literature (e.g., Katz & Lee, 1993; Katz &Pexman, 1997; Pexman & Olineck, 2002). There was also a main effectof context positivity, F1(1, 47) = 31.48, p < .001, MSE = 3.31, and F2(1,23) = 18.60, p < .001, MSE = 1.26, because sarcasm ratings were higherfor statements presented in negative contexts (potentially ironicinsults). This difference is likely due to the fact that ironic insults arethe more common form of sarcasm (Gibbs, 2000). The difference in con-ventionality for ironic insults and ironic compliments likely alsoexplains the main effect of statement positivity, F1(1, 47) = 37.16, p <.001, MSE = 3.98, and F2(1, 23) = 16.44, p < .001, MSE = 4.37: Sarcasmratings were higher for positive statements (potentially ironic insults).Notably, there were no significant effects involving speaker occupa-tion, so this variable did not affect ratings of sarcasm for the state-ments presented in this experiment.

Mocking ratings. For ratings of the extent to which the speaker wasmocking someone, there was an interaction of Context Strength × Con-text Positivity × Statement Positivity, F1(1, 47) = 8.01, p < .001, MSE =3.14,and F2(1,23) = 7.89,p < .01,MSE = 1.64,and a significant interac-tion of context positivity and statement positivity, F1(1, 47) = 92.14, p <.001, MSE = 2.93, and F2(1, 23) = 46.50, p < .001, MSE = 2.55, becausemocking ratings were highest when contexts were strongly negative orpositive and incongruent with statement positivity. There was also a


Table 2Intercorrelations for Ratings Dimensions and Free Recall Data in Experiment 1

Measure 1 2 3 4 5

1. Sarcasm ratings — .75** –.66** .08 .092. Mocking ratings .10* — –.63** .04 .073. Politeness ratings .20** –.31** — .05 –.14**4. Certainty ratings –.06 –.01 –.01 — .035. Free recall data .05 .01 .04 –.04 —

Note. Intercorrelations for negative statements are presented below the diagonal, andintercorrelations for positive statements are presented above the diagonal. df= 384.*p < .05. **p < .01

Table 3Ratings and Recall Percentages for Conditions in Experiment 1

Strongly Positive Context Weakly Positive Context Strongly Negative Context Weakly Negative Context

Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive NegativeStatement, Statement, Statement, Statement, Statement, Statement, Statement, Statement,

Literal Ironic Literal Ironic Ironic Literal Ironic LiteralCompliment Compliment Compliment Compliment Insult Insult Insult Insult

OccupationMeasure Condition M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Sarcasm Sarcasticratings occupation 2.17 1.55 5.31 1.84 3.06 1.91 4.25 2.18 6.31 1.45 2.02 1.73 5.87 1.67 2.42 1.82

Nonsarcasticoccupation 2.19 1.81 5.04 2.19 2.94 1.99 4.23 2.21 6.44 1.13 1.73 1.25 5.65 1.73 2.60 1.81

Mocking Sarcasticratings occupation 2.29 1.70 3.56 1.89 3.02 1.93 3.75 2.15 4.94 2.12 3.06 2.13 4.79 1.90 3.94 2.08


Politeness Sarcasticratings occupation 5.38 1.45 3.69 1.85 4.85 1.66 3.08 1.65 3.35 1.88 3.06 1.62 3.29 1.77 2.71 1.38


Certainty Sarcasticratings occupation 5.60 1.33 5.23 1.32 5.40 1.25 5.04 1.44 5.69 1.29 5.81 1.10 5.83 1.08 5.40 1.25


Recall Sarcasticoccupation 43.8 50.1 35.4 48.3 45.8 50.4 25.0 43.8 43.8 50.1 25.0 43.8 35.4 48.3 35.4 48.3


257

main effect of context positivity, F1(1, 47) = 51.15, p < .001, MSE = 4.69,and F2(1, 23) = 35.31, p < .001, MSE = 3.27, because mocking ratingswere higher for statements presented in negative contexts.

Notably, there was an interaction of context strength and speakeroccupation, F1(1, 47) = 3.97, p < .05, MSE = 2.89, and F2(1, 23) = 4.05, p< .05,MSE = 1.89.The nature of this interaction was that speaker occu-pation had a greater impact on mocking ratings for statements pre-sented in the weak context conditions than for statements presented inthe strong context conditions. There was also a main effect of speakeroccupation, F1(1, 47) = 6.43, p < .05, MSE = 2.50, and F2(1, 23) = 4.16, p< .05, MSE = 1.93, such that mocking ratings were higher for state-ments made by sarcastic speakers than for statements made bynonsarcastic speakers. The fact that there was not a significant inter-action between speaker occupation and context positivity suggestedthat occupation was an equally salient cue to speaker intent for state-ments that were potentially ironic insults and for statements thatwere potentially ironic compliments. Thus, the hypothesis that occupa-tion might be a particularly salient cue for statements that were poten-tially ironic compliments was not supported.

Politeness ratings.For ratings of the extent to which the speaker wassaying something polite, there was a significant interaction of contextpositivity and statement positivity, F1(1, 47) = 32.12, p < .001, MSE =2.98, and F2(1, 23) = 19.77, p < .001, MSE = 2.42, such that politenessratings were highest for positive statements presented in positive con-texts and lowest for negative statements presented in negative con-texts. There were also main effects of context strength, F1(1, 47) = 6.06,p < .05, MSE = 2.74, and F2(1, 23) = 7.06, p < .05, MSE = 1.18; contextpositivity, F1(1, 47) = 111.65, p < .001, MSE = 2.70, and F2(1, 23) =46.73, p < .001, MSE = 3.22; and statement positivity, F1(1, 47) = 41.20,p < .001,MSE = 4.78,and F2(1,23) = 27.80,p < .001,MSE = 3.54:Polite-ness ratings were highest for statements presented in strong contexts,statements presented in positive contexts, and positive statements.Notably, there were no significant effects involving speaker occupa-tion, so this variable did not affect politeness ratings for the state-ments presented in this experiment.

Certainty ratings. Participants’ ratings of how certain they were oftheir interpretations were generally quite high, and analysis of thoseratings produced only three significant main effects. There was a maineffect of context strength, F1(1, 47) = 8.82, p < .005, MSE = 1.42, andF2(1, 23) = 4.67, p < .05, MSE = 1.37, such that participants were morecertain of their interpretations when statements were presented in thestrongly biasing contexts. There was also a main effect of contextpositivity,F1(1,47) = 13.27, p < .001,MSE = 1.87,and F2(1,23) = 9.75, p< .005, MSE = 1.25, such that participants were more certain of their


interpretations for statements presented in negative contexts. Finally,there was a main effect of statement type, F1(1, 47) = 13.10, p < .001,MSE = 1.53, and F2(1, 23) = 12.16, p < .005, MSE = 0.84: Participantswere more certain of their interpretations for positive statements.

Recall. In scoring the free recall data, participants were given onepoint for each of the 24 items that they recalled correctly. To be scoredas correctly recalled, the statements had to be remembered almost ver-batim. That is, remembered statements had to preserve the literalmeaning of the original statement, and a maximum of two errors inwording were permitted. For recall data, the four-way interaction ofContext Strength × Context Positivity × Statement Positivity ×Speaker Occupation was significant, F1(1, 47) = 6.90, p < .05, MSE =1275.49,and F2(1,23) = 4.38,p < .05,MSE = 1004.30.The nature of thisinteraction was revealed with simple main effects tests. For state-ments presented in positive contexts (which were potentially ironiccompliments), there was a significant three-way interaction of ContextStrength × Statement Positivity × Speaker Occupation in the subjectsanalysis, F1(1, 47) = 4.06, p < .05, MSE = 1444.48, and F2(1, 23) = 3.14,p = .09, MSE = 597.83, and a significant two-way interaction of State-ment Positivity × by Speaker Occupation, F1(1, 47) = 6.62, p < .05, MSE= 2867.35, and F2(1, 23) = 15.27, p < .001, MSE = 767.66, because recallpercentages were highest for positive statements made by sarcasticspeakers, particularly in the weakly positive context. For nonsarcasticspeakers, memory was best for negative statements in the stronglypositive context and for positive statements in the weakly positive con-text. Neither of these interactions was significant for statements pre-sented in negative contexts (which were potentially ironic insults). Thefact that speaker occupation interacted with these other factors onlywhen the statements were potentially ironic compliments (and notironic insults) lends some support to our hypothesis that speaker occu-pation might be a particularly salient cue for ironic compliments.

Analysis of the recall data also showed a significant three-way inter-action of Context Positivity × Statement Positivity × Speaker Occupa-tion, F1(1, 47) = 5.42, p < .05, MSE = 1883.87, and F2(1, 23) = 6.30, p <.05, MSE = 810.69. The nature of this interaction was that for state-ments in positive context (potentially ironic compliments), speakeroccupation seemed to influence recall percentages only for negativestatements, with lower recall for statements made by sarcastic speak-ers. For statements in negative context, however, speaker occupationseemed to have the same small effect on recall percentages for bothpositive and negative statements, with slightly lower recall percent-ages for statements made by sarcastic speakers. There was also aninteraction of statement positivity and speaker occupation thatapproached significance by subjects and was significant by items, F1(1,47) = 3.26, p = .08, MSE = 2871.23, and F2(1, 23) = 13.38, p < .001, MSE


= 498.19. For statements made by sarcastic speakers, recall percent-ages were higher for positive statements than for negative statements,but for statements made by nonsarcastic speakers, there was a muchsmaller difference in recall for the two types of statements.

Occupation effects in the recall data suggested that participantsprocessed incongruencies between speaker occupation stereotypes andthe tone of statements and contexts.Also, speaker occupation did influ-ence overt ratings of speaker intent, at least in terms of ratings of theextent to which the speaker was mocking someone.Speaker occupationdid not, however, have a significant effect on ratings of perceived sar-casm. Thus, it appears that, for the types of statements presented here,occupation stereotypes influence perceptions of speaker intent but donot add significantly to perceived level of sarcasm. Participantsseemed to assess stereotype information in deciding how mocking aspeaker intended to be but did not modify their sarcasm ratings as afunction of the occupation stereotype.Perhaps mocking ratings involvea more direct assessment of speaker characteristics, whereas sarcasmratings are also influenced by contextual factors like incongruity.Because Katz and Pexman (1997) observed a significant effect ofspeaker occupation on sarcasm ratings for their metaphor stimuli, itseems that occupation effects for sarcasm ratings may be limited to sit-uations involving less conventional target statements than were pre-sented here. Indeed, Katz and Pexman found effects of speaker occupa-tion on sarcasm ratings for only their less familiar (and not for morefamiliar) metaphors. It is also possible, however, that it is not juststatement ambiguity that leads to occupation effects; ambiguous con-text (even with a quite conventional statement) might cause occupa-tion information to become a more influential cue to ironic intent. Thatis, if context information was minimal, speaker occupation might be amore salient cue to speaker intent and might influence sarcasm rat-ings. This notion seems to be supported by the fact that in the presentExperiment 1, occupation effects for mocking ratings were stronger inthe weak (as compared to strong) context conditions. This possibilitywas tested in Experiment 2.

EXPERIMENT 2

METHOD

Participants

Participants in Experiment 2 were 48 undergraduate students (35female) who received bonus credit in a psychology course in exchangefor their participation. None of these students had participated in


Experiment 1. Six versions of the stimuli were used, and participantswere assigned to version by their order of appearance at the lab, suchthat Participant 1 was assigned to Version 1, Participant 2 to Version 2,and so on.

Materials

Materials in Experiment 2 were a subset of the materials used inExperiment 1, with slight modification. The contexts were modified toremove information about the tone, or positive/negative outcome, ofthe events described. As such, there was only one type of context pre-sented, which could be labeled “neutral.” The materials for the experi-ment were 12 pairs of statements involving a 2 (statement positivity:positive or negative) by 3 (occupation: sarcastic occupation,nonsarcastic occupation, or no occupation) combination of conditions.Each statement appeared with each of the three types of occupationacross the six versions of the experiment.

Procedure

The procedure for this experiment was the same as that used inExperiment 1, except that only 12 items (rather than 24) werepresented.

RESULTS

As in Experiment 1, there were five dependent measures in thisexperiment: four ratings dimensions and the free recall data. The cor-relations between these dependent measures are presented in Table 4.Means and standard deviations for these variables are presented inTable 5. The goal of the experiment was to examine the influence ofspeaker occupation as a cue to sarcastic-ironic intent. To address thisissue, we conducted analyses of all of the conditions in which occupa-tion was mentioned with 2 (statement positivity: positive or negative)by 2 (occupation: sarcastic occupation or nonsarcastic occupation)ANOVAs.

Sarcasm ratings. For ratings of the extent to which a speaker wasbeing sarcastic, there was, importantly, a significant main effect ofspeaker occupation, F1(1, 47) = 5.02, p < .05, MSE = 1.06, and F2(1, 11)= 3.88, p = .07, MSE = 0.34, such that sarcasm ratings were higher forstatements made by speakers from sarcastic occupations. The onlyother significant effect was a main effect of statement positivity, F1(1,47) = 21.62, p < .001, MSE = 1.78, and F2(1, 11) = 13.15, p < .005, MSE =0.73, because sarcasm ratings were higher for positive statements.


Mocking ratings. For ratings of the extent to which a speaker wasmocking someone, the only significant effect was an interaction ofspeaker occupation and statement positivity, F1(1, 47) = 8.45, p < .01,MSE = 1.33, and F2(1, 11) = 8.60, p < .05, MSE = 0.33. As illustrated bythe pattern of means in Table 5, the nature of this interaction was thatfor positive statements, mocking ratings were somewhat higher whenthe speaker was from a sarcastic occupation, whereas for negativestatements, mocking ratings were somewhat lower when the speakerwas from a sarcastic occupation. Speakers from sarcastic occupationsare more likely to be using both types of statements ironically thanspeakers from nonsarcastic occupations, resulting in positive state-ments that are interpreted as ironic insults and negative statementsthat are interpreted as ironic compliments.


Table 4Intercorrelations for Ratings Dimensions and Free Recall Data in Experiment 2

Measure 1 2 3 4 5

1. Sarcasm ratings — .77** –.80** –.13* .042. Mocking ratings .37** — –.72** –.12 .083. Politeness ratings .15* –.24** — .22** –.114. Certainty ratings –.20** –.05 .02 — –.095. Free recall data .06 .06 .01 –.08 —

Note. Intercorrelations for negative statements are presented below the diagonal, andintercorrelations for positive statements are presented above the diagonal. df= 288.*p < .05. **p < .01.

Table 5Ratings and Recall Percentages for Conditions in Experiment 2

Neutral Context

NegativePositive Statement,

Statement, PotentiallyPotentially Ironic

Ironic Insult Compliment

Measure Occupation Condition M SD M SD

Sarcasm ratings Sarcastic occupation 3.81 2.21 2.89 1.87Nonsarcastic occupation 3.45 1.98 2.58 1.64

Mocking ratings Sarcastic occupation 3.61 2.09 3.30 1.88Nonsarcastic occupation 3.24 2.02 3.90 1.80

Politeness ratings Sarcastic occupation 4.47 1.88 3.07 1.51Nonsarcastic occupation 4.77 1.72 2.79 1.44

Certainty ratings Sarcastic occupation 5.02 1.56 5.04 1.44Nonsarcastic occupation 4.82 1.74 4.91 1.41

Recall Sarcastic occupation 40.6 49.4 42.7 49.7Nonsarcastic occupation 40.6 49.4 39.6 49.2

Politeness ratings. For ratings of the extent to which a speaker wassaying something polite, there was a significant interaction of speakeroccupation and statement positivity by subjects only, F1(1, 47) = 4.41, p< .05, MSE = 0.93, and F2(1, 11) = 2.48, p = .14, MSE = 0.41, and a sig-nificant main effect of statement positivity, F1(1, 47) = 78.65, p < .001,MSE = 1.74, and F2(1, 11) = 24.52, p < .001, MSE = 1.39. The nature ofthe main effect was that positive statements were considered to bemore polite than negative statements.

Certainty ratings. Despite the minimal context provided in thisexperiment, participants’ ratings of how certain they were of theirinterpretations were reasonably high. In the analysis of these ratings,there was only one significant effect: a main effect of speaker occupa-tion by items only, F1(1, 47) = 1.66, p = .20, MSE = 0.80, and F2(1, 11) =5.44, p < .05, MSE = 0.06, such that certainty ratings were somewhathigher for statements made by members of sarcastic occupations.Because this effect was not significant by subjects, it was probably thecase that whereas some participants showed this pattern in their rat-ings, others did not.

Recall. The recall data were scored as in Experiment 1, and analysisof those data showed no significant effects.

The results of Experiment 2 showed, most important, significanteffects of speaker occupation for sarcasm ratings. Thus, participantsused information about speaker occupation as a cue to sarcastic intent,rating target statements as more sarcastic when the speaker was amember of an occupation associated with sarcastic speech and less sar-castic when the speaker was a member of an occupation that was notassociated with sarcastic speech. Speaker occupation also influencedperceived intent to mock someone and perceived politeness. Theseresults suggest that speaker occupation stereotypes do cue ironicintent when there is little other contextual information provided. InExperiment 3, we investigated what it is about occupation stereotypesthat cues such intent.

EXPERIMENT 3

The purpose of Experiment 3 was to investigate which aspects ofoccupation stereotypes may be related to perceived use of sarcasm. Assuch, we collected ratings for 45 occupations on dimensions that mightbe involved in the occupation stereotypes (and that would be relevantto perceived use of sarcasm). Based on previous research, we selectedthe following dimensions: (a) tendency to be humorous (e.g., Kreuzet al., 1991), (b) tendency to criticize (e.g., Colston, 1997; Kreuz et al.,1991), (c) tendency to be sincere (e.g., Clark & Gerrig, 1984; Haverkate,


1990; Kumon-Nakamura et al., 1995), (d) tendency to have close rela-tionships (e.g., Slugoski & Turnbull, 1988), (e) tendency to be aggres-sive (e.g., Toplak & Katz, 2000), (f) education level, and (g) social status(Katz & Pexman, 1997).

METHOD

Participants

Participants in Experiment 3 were 50 undergraduate students (41female) who received bonus credit in a psychology course in exchangefor their participation. None of these students had participated inExperiments 1 or 2.

Materials

In this experiment, the materials consisted of a booklet on which 45occupations were listed. Under each occupation, seven rating scaleswere presented, one for each of the dimensions of interest: (a) likeli-hood that a person with this occupation would use humor during dailyinteractions (1 = not at all likely, 7 = very likely), (b) likelihood that aperson with this occupation would express criticisms during dailyinteractions (1 = not at all likely, 7 = very likely), (c) level of sinceritythat you would attribute to a person with this occupation (1 = low, 7 =high), (d) how typical it would be for a person with this occupation tohave close relationships (1 = not at all typical, 7 = very typical), (e) howaggressive you would expect a person with this occupation to be (1 = notat all aggressive, 7 = very aggressive), (f) level of education that youwould attribute to a person with this occupation (1 = low, 7 = high), and(g) level of perceived social status of a person with this occupation (1 =low, 7 = high). Sarcasm ratings for the same 45 occupations had beencollected in the pilot study preceding Experiment 1.

Procedure

Testing for this experiment took place in a group setting with 5 to 7participants tested at a time.

RESULTS

Mean ratings for the 45 occupations are listed in the appendix. Cor-relations among the variables in this experiment are displayed inTable 6. As illustrated in Table 6, several of the predictor variableswere significantly correlated with sarcasm ratings. The only variablesnot significantly correlated with tendency to use sarcasm were tendency


to have close relationships and perceived social status. In addition, theintercorrelations between several of the predictor variables were quitehigh. For the regression analysis, to avoid multicollinearity, weremoved three predictors that were significantly correlated with otherpredictors and had the lowest correlations with sarcasm ratings: socialstatus (which had a strong positive correlation with education level),tendency to have close relationships (which had a strong positive corre-lation with sincerity and a strong negative correlation with tendencyto be aggressive), and tendency to be aggressive (which had a strongpositive correlation with tendency to criticize). Hence, the predictorvariables were tendency to be humorous, tendency to criticize, tendencyto be sincere, and education, all from ratings obtained in Experiment 3.The dependent variable was tendency to use sarcasm, from ratingsobtained in the pilot study for Experiment 1.

To determine which of these four predictor variables have signifi-cant, unique relationships with sarcasm ratings, all four predictorswere entered in a standard multiple regression analysis.A summary ofthat regression analysis is displayed in Table 7. With all four predic-tors, the regression equation was significant, R2 = .74, F(4, 40) = 28.71,p < .001. Importantly, all four predictor variables had significant,unique relationships with tendency to use sarcasm.

It is certainly possible that occupation stereotypes involve aspectsother than those examined here. Nonetheless, the fact that 74% of thevariance in sarcasm ratings is explained by the combination of humor,criticism, sincerity, and education level indicates that we have cap-tured many of the critical components of these stereotypes. Thus, whenthinking about different occupations, there is evidence that people canactivate information about each of these characteristics. Whether theydo activate such information will depend on the context. When the con-text is a situation in which a listener (or reader) is trying to understand


Table 6Correlations for Sarcasm Ratings and Predictor Variables Across 45 Occupations inExperiment 3

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Sarcasm ratings .61** .34* –.55** –.19 .32* –.40** –.23Predictor variable

1. Humor — –.04 –.06 .41** –.11 –.23 –.092. Criticism — –.28 –.33* .64** .35* .49**3. Sincerity — .60** –.53** .38* .254. Close

relationships — –.54** .06 .005. Aggressive — .16 .37*6. Education — .86**7. Social status —

*p < .05. **p < .01.

the message conveyed by a potentially sarcastic remark (and whenspeaker occupation is provided), these characteristics will be activated.In other contexts, different characteristics would likely be relevant.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether speakeroccupation cued sarcastic-ironic intent for literal (rather than meta-phoric) statements and, if so, what it was about occupation stereotypesthat contributed to a perception of irony. Our results showed, in Exper-iment 1, that speaker occupation information did not significantlyaffect ratings of sarcasm. That is, sarcasm ratings were not signifi-cantly higher when a statement was made by a speaker from an occu-pation associated with sarcastic speech (e.g., comedian) than they werefor the same statement made by a speaker from an occupation associ-ated with nonsarcastic speech (e.g., clergyman). In that experiment,level of perceived sarcasm was not affected by occupation of thespeaker. Speaker occupation did, however, influence mocking ratings,such that statements were considered to be more mocking when madeby speakers from occupations associated with sarcastic speech.Speaker occupation also influenced memory for the target statements.This suggested that speaker occupation was coded in the comprehen-sion process, although it did not influence sarcasm ratings.

In Experiment 2, we investigated the possibility that speaker occu-pation might only cue sarcastic intent for literal statements whenother contextual cues (e.g., positive/negative outcome of precedingevents) were not available. This possibility was supported by theresults of Experiment 2 because both positive and negative statementspresented in neutral contexts were perceived to be more sarcasticwhen the speaker was a member of an occupation associated with sar-castic speech.

Taken together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 suggested thatparticipants seemed to take multiple sources of information, including


Table 7Summary of Regression Analysis Predicting Sarcasm Ratings With OccupationCharacteristics (n = 50) in Experiment 3

Variable B SEB β t sr2

Tendency to be humorous 0.57 0.09 .54 6.53*** .28Tendency to criticize 0.45 0.12 .39 3.94*** .10Tendency to be sincere –0.32 0.11 –.29 –2.92** .05Education level –0.17 0.06 –.30 –2.91** .05

**p < .01. ***p < .001.

speaker stereotypes, into consideration as they tried to determinewhat meaning speakers intended. There was evidence that speakeroccupation was routinely integrated during comprehension of poten-tially ironic statements but only cued sarcastic intent when other cueswere absent. If there was clear congruity or incongruity of context andstatement (in Experiment 1), speaker occupation did not add signifi-cantly to perceived sarcasm. If context-statement congruity wasambiguous (in Experiment 2), then speaker occupation did add signifi-cantly to perceived sarcasm.

An additional issue of interest for the present study was whetherspeaker occupation was a cue for both ironic insults and ironic compli-ments. One hypothesis was that because ironic compliments are lesscommon and can be more difficult to understand, speaker occupationwould be a particularly salient cue for ironic compliments. There wasonly weak support for this hypothesis: In Experiment 1, the recall datashowed that speaker occupation had a stronger effect on memory forpotentially ironic compliments than it did on memory for potentiallyironic insults.

The results of Experiment 3 provided an indication of the types ofinformation that are activated by speaker occupation stereotypes indiscourse context: perceived tendencies to be humorous, to criticize, tobe sincere, and perceived education level. Members of occupations thatare associated with sarcastic speech are perceived to be funnier, morecritical, less sincere, and to have lower education levels. This informa-tion, when integrated with the statement and other aspects of context,shapes perceptions of speaker intent.

We take our findings as evidence that, in the process of understand-ing speech acts, social variables are integrated with linguistic informa-tion. One might argue that this integration happens only when one isrequired to make an explicit decision about speaker intent, as in thepresent experiments. Recall, however, that in the Pexman et al. (2000)study, in which participants were not required to make any explicitdecision about speaker intent (instead, they just read contexts andstatements in a self-paced reading task), there was evidence that par-ticipants integrated speaker occupation information as soon as theyhad finished reading the last word in the target statement. The samewas very likely the case in the present study.

Our results included effects of speaker occupation stereotypes oninterpretation of ironic intent. We should note, however, that there arecertainly aspects of occupation stereotypes (e.g., stereotype strength,consistency, etc.) that we have not addressed and that likely influencethese effects. It is also the case that occupation stereotypes are only oneexample of social knowledge that probably influences interpretation ofironic utterances.

In the introduction, we derived predictions regarding speaker occu-pation effects from the various theories of verbal irony. We noted that


echoic theories (e.g., echoic mention and echoic reminder) seemed topredict null speaker occupation effects, whereas theories involvingpretense (e.g., pretense theory and allusional pretense theory) wouldlikely predict significant speaker occupation effects if the occupationcued level of sincerity and/or jocularity on the part of the speaker. Fromthe recent implicit display theory, in contrast, we derived the predic-tion that speaker occupation can cue irony if the speaker occupationsignals a tendency to be indirectly critical. Our results showed thatspeaker occupation stereotypes cue ironic intent and that those stereo-types involve information about a speaker’s tendencies to be humor-ous, critical, insincere, and to have lower levels of education. Thesefindings are consistent with pretense theories because according tothose theories, sarcastic speakers should be perceived to be joking andinsincere, and speaker occupation stereotypes that are consistent withthat perception should facilitate detection of ironic intent.

Our findings are also consistent with Colston’s (2000) revision ofallusional pretense theory. Colston argued that detection of verbalirony requires a contrast between expectation and reality. Speakeroccupation stereotypes may facilitate detection by providing informa-tion about speaker expectations. Colston provided evidence that forironic compliments in particular, speaker expectations are perceived tobe negative (and thus contrast with the positive context). That is, theperception of irony for an ironic compliment is created because the lit-eral interpretation of the statement alludes to the speaker’s negativeexpectations, which were inferred by the listener. A stereotypic ten-dency to be critical may facilitate that inference. For an ironic insult, itseems likely that perception of ironic intent is heightened by the con-trast between the speaker’s generally negative attitude (which, again,could be inferred from stereotypic traits) and the positive literal inter-pretation of their statement. This is consistent with our finding that atendency to be critical was an important aspect of the sarcasticstereotype.

Our findings are also consistent with predictions we derived fromthe implicit display theory (Utsumi, 2000). The occupation stereotypeinfluences interpretation because it contributes to the ironic environ-ment. It contributes to that environment by indicating that thespeaker is likely to have a negative attitude (tendency to be critical)and that such an attitude is likely to be indirectly expressed (throughhumor and insincerity). This theory even explains the somewhat sur-prising relationship between education and tendency to use sarcasm.We found that the most sarcastic occupations tended to be those withlower perceived education levels and that education level was stronglyassociated with social status. The direction of this relationship is per-haps surprising but, we would argue, could potentially be explained bythe implicit display theory. Speakers with a lower perceived education


level or social status (e.g., in this study, cab driver, truck driver, come-dian) may use ironic insults to hedge the offense they might cause tohigher status listeners. That is, because ironic insults serve a face-saving function, and lower status individuals may have a concernabout directly insulting individuals with higher status, they may havea greater tendency to use ironic utterances. Higher status individualsare no less likely to be critical; indeed, there was actually a significantpositive correlation (r = .35) between tendency to be critical and educa-tion in Experiment 3. That is, speakers with higher education levelswere perceived to be relatively more critical. We argue, however, thathigher status individuals are perceived to have fewer face-saving con-cerns and therefore are thought to be more likely than lower statusindividuals to express criticism directly.As a result,high status or higheducation level cues an expectation for direct criticism, whereas lowerstatus or education level cues an expectation for indirect (ironic) criti-cism. This dissection of the relationship between tendency to use sar-casm and education level seems justified, given the significant andunique relationship observed in our regression analysis. Nonetheless,we do not suspect that education level by itself is a particularly usefulcue to ironic intent. The source of the occupation effect is the combina-tion of tendencies that are captured by occupation stereotypes: lowerstatus, a tendency to express oneself with humor and insincerity, and acynical outlook.

Utsumi (2000) did not make explicit mention of how the implicit dis-play theory could handle cases of ironic compliments.On one hand, thisseems to be a problem for the implicit display theory because the the-ory holds that the ironic speaker has a failed expectation and also a“negative emotional attitude (e.g., disappointment, anger, reproach,envy) toward the incongruity between what is expected and what isactually the case” (p. 1783). Although, as mentioned, Colston (2000)found that speakers who made ironic compliments were perceived tohave relatively negative expectations, the notion that those speakershave a negative emotional response toward the difference betweentheir negative expectation and the positive outcome of events seemsimplausible. That is, it seems unlikely that speakers who choose todeliver praise with an ironic compliment are angry or disappointedthat events had a more positive outcome than expected. On the otherhand, Utsumi (2000) did mention in a footnote that “there are negativeattitudes of different degrees and types. Some are strong, and othersare weak; some are serious but others are joking” (p. 1783). This raisesthe possibility that when speakers deliver ironic compliments, theyjokingly present a negative attitude (e.g., mock disappointment) aboutthe incongruity between negative expectation and positive outcome.This seems a more plausible emotional response. In this way, it may bepossible for the implicit display theory to account for this complimentary


form of verbal irony. This issue could be resolved in future research byinvestigating perceived emotions (e.g., mock disappointment vs. genu-ine disappointment) of speakers making ironic compliments.

CONCLUSION

In the present study, we investigated one instance of the interactionbetween social knowledge and language comprehension processes.Theresults suggest that people have shared beliefs about the linguistictendencies of different social groups and that those beliefs influenceperceived communicative intent. To understand this interaction moregenerally, future research should address the impact of other social fac-tors (e.g., age and gender stereotypes, authority, and expertise) on theinterpretation of different forms of figurative language.


APPENDIXMean Ratings and Standard Deviations for Occupations

Pilot Study Experiment 3 (n = 50)(n = 40) EducationSarcasm Humor Critic Sincere Close Rels Aggress Level Social Status

Occupation M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Comediana 6.37 1.46 6.84 0.55 5.62 1.28 3.26 1.32 4.62 1.05 4.30 1.52 3.18 1.22 3.66 1.17Talk show hosta 6.10 1.06 5.84 0.91 5.60 1.12 4.34 1.47 4.84 1.18 4.96 1.64 3.86 1.14 5.52 1.11Movie critica 5.95 1.20 4.84 1.08 6.42 0.67 4.44 1.36 4.66 1.00 4.82 1.37 4.42 1.16 4.24 1.06Journalista 4.88 1.49 4.36 1.06 5.28 1.43 5.02 1.13 4.92 1.05 5.58 1.57 5.76 0.72 5.36 0.96Cab drivera 4.88 1.96 4.42 1.36 4.18 1.66 4.10 1.33 4.78 1.31 4.52 1.25 1.84 0.79 1.80 0.64Truck drivera 5.15 1.64 4.68 1.38 4.50 1.54 4.40 1.25 3.90 1.42 4.78 1.33 2.08 0.94 2.04 0.90Actressa 5.28 1.45 5.30 1.04 5.26 1.16 3.32 1.41 4.26 1.55 4.80 1.56 3.34 1.17 5.88 1.04Salesmana 4.70 1.81 5.30 0.95 3.72 1.47 2.70 1.28 4.62 1.23 5.76 1.56 3.24 1.10 2.88 1.10Army sergeantb 3.00 1.81 2.40 1.20 6.34 0.80 3.94 1.57 3.82 1.44 6.74 0.53 4.60 1.25 5.30 1.09Accountantb 2.75 1.56 3.06 1.24 4.54 1.05 4.50 1.15 4.90 1.11 3.64 1.52 5.72 0.90 4.98 1.17Doctorb 2.95 1.52 4.86 0.93 4.68 1.13 5.90 0.79 5.08 1.18 3.98 1.70 6.96 0.20 6.88 0.39Clergymanb 2.48 1.47 3.84 1.39 3.40 1.63 6.06 1.32 5.62 1.41 2.44 1.73 4.02 1.45 5.04 1.41Scientistb 3.03 1.48 3.10 1.27 5.12 1.19 5.10 1.25 4.32 1.32 3.62 1.59 6.62 0.67 5.82 1.10Librarianb 2.68 1.33 3.22 1.36 4.14 1.14 4.88 1.14 4.86 1.11 2.18 1.22 3.84 1.45 3.28 1.20Morticianb 3.20 1.70 3.26 2.05 3.24 1.52 4.76 1.48 3.62 1.60 2.88 1.32 4.18 1.30 2.88 1.47Dentistb 3.20 1.54 5.18 1.10 4.82 1.40 5.38 1.01 5.22 1.00 3.70 1.45 6.72 0.54 6.36 0.75Lawyer 4.60 1.81 3.34 1.15 6.04 0.83 4.02 1.38 4.34 1.38 6.14 1.29 6.86 0.35 6.44 0.70Teacher 3.47 1.30 5.14 0.93 5.00 1.01 5.76 0.77 6.04 0.78 3.54 1.27 5.68 0.74 4.96 0.86Police officer 3.65 1.70 3.74 1.43 5.52 1.05 4.76 1.59 4.82 1.26 6.10 0.79 4.70 0.86 5.46 1.01Politician 4.18 1.85 4.18 1.32 5.84 1.08 2.64 1.27 4.52 1.20 5.64 1.48 5.36 1.29 5.44 1.26Artist 3.60 1.72 4.50 1.25 4.30 1.59 5.46 1.09 5.26 1.41 2.88 1.29 4.00 1.32 3.48 1.30Factory worker 4.63 1.88 4.02 1.46 4.46 1.34 4.20 1.26 4.78 1.15 3.54 1.15 1.92 0.99 2.00 0.95Professional athlete 4.08 1.58 4.78 1.15 4.54 1.45 4.32 0.94 4.68 1.32 6.02 1.02 3.56 1.18 6.34 0.80

271

(continued)

APPENDIX Continued

Pilot Study Experiment 3 (n = 50)(n = 40) EducationSarcasm Humor Critic Sincere Close Rels Aggress Level Social Status

Occupation M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Mechanic 4.20 1.81 4.54 1.28 4.58 1.13 4.16 1.13 4.80 1.05 4.12 1.14 3.38 1.14 2.96 1.11Chef 3.77 1.31 4.66 0.92 5.18 1.12 5.02 1.04 5.16 1.08 3.52 1.36 4.04 1.11 4.18 1.02Waiter 4.38 1.46 5.50 1.15 4.06 1.57 4.14 1.26 5.22 1.13 3.66 1.29 2.24 0.74 2.36 0.88Nurse 3.21 1.36 4.90 0.93 4.46 1.22 5.88 0.87 5.66 0.92 3.34 1.39 5.58 0.81 4.86 0.90Janitor 3.78 1.37 4.24 1.59 4.28 1.64 4.32 1.46 4.68 1.25 2.80 1.25 1.66 0.94 1.40 0.70Counselor 3.28 1.54 4.56 1.23 4.14 1.37 5.90 0.93 5.94 0.82 3.30 1.59 5.22 1.04 4.84 1.13Prison guard 3.47 1.93 2.82 1.57 5.42 1.37 3.78 1.36 3.78 1.30 6.20 1.03 3.36 1.08 3.56 1.07Secretary 4.38 1.56 4.52 1.13 4.26 1.45 4.56 0.93 5.52 0.97 2.94 1.24 3.38 1.09 3.04 1.05Bank teller 3.93 1.42 4.34 1.14 3.98 1.32 4.34 1.04 5.12 1.14 3.18 1.29 3.86 1.23 3.64 0.98Fashion designer 4.00 1.54 4.50 1.07 5.80 0.97 4.42 1.18 4.92 1.21 4.54 1.79 3.68 1.19 5.00 0.93Gardener 3.55 1.38 4.00 1.43 3.62 1.29 5.02 1.22 5.22 1.22 2.36 1.14 2.56 1.23 2.54 1.13Plumber 4.32 1.46 4.74 1.07 4.54 1.16 4.12 1.06 4.70 1.15 3.52 1.28 2.84 1.06 2.30 1.04Aerobics instructor 4.13 1.38 5.08 1.19 4.28 1.49 4.48 1.07 5.36 0.92 4.12 1.72 2.80 1.21 2.96 1.05Musician 3.98 1.64 4.74 1.14 4.84 1.13 5.00 1.03 5.10 1.25 3.62 1.40 3.76 1.38 4.30 1.47Farmer 4.10 1.57 4.32 1.45 4.34 1.21 5.28 1.13 5.64 1.21 3.62 1.46 2.76 1.48 2.96 1.03Electrician 4.25 1.46 4.24 1.00 4.32 1.02 4.34 0.94 4.96 1.01 3.48 1.40 3.86 1.11 3.44 0.93Astronaut 3.47 1.77 4.52 1.09 4.36 1.22 5.08 1.08 4.84 1.18 4.54 1.40 6.72 0.61 6.52 0.86Engineer 3.53 1.95 3.68 1.48 5.24 0.92 4.76 1.00 4.42 1.28 4.24 1.46 6.46 0.71 6.08 0.83Hairdresser 4.52 1.43 5.46 0.95 4.24 1.38 4.58 1.37 5.58 0.97 2.86 1.18 2.32 1.02 2.54 0.97Insurance agent 3.58 1.62 3.66 1.10 4.62 1.24 3.72 1.20 4.70 0.95 4.66 1.67 4.94 1.08 4.56 1.16Butcher 3.70 1.32 4.32 1.35 3.80 1.23 4.50 1.11 4.94 1.10 4.38 1.34 2.16 0.96 2.14 0.86Veterinarian 3.28 1.45 4.60 1.09 4.48 1.18 5.76 0.94 5.60 0.73 3.28 1.37 6.38 0.83 5.72 0.93

Note. Critic = tendency to criticize; Close Rels = tendency to have close relationships; Aggress = tendency to be aggressive.a. Sarcastic occupations from Experiment 1.b. Nonsarcastic occupations from Experiment 1.

272

NOTE

1. In this article, we use the terms irony or ironic to refer to utterances in which thespeaker’s intended meaning is opposite to the literal meaning. This is the form of verbalirony that is perceived as sarcasm.

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