Language, Action and Thought

Young children are notoriously bad at understanding ironical statements. Unlike what has been shown for other pragmatic phenomena (e.g., various types of implicatures and meaning shifts), the onset of irony comprehension (between 4 and 6 years old) seems insensitive to task manipulation. In this talk we present an account of irony which sheds light on this late development.
Verbal irony characteristically involves the expression of a derogatory, dissociative attitude. The ironical speaker is not only stating a blatant falsehood or irrelevant proposition; she is also communicating her stance towards its epistemic status. The centrality of attitude recognition in irony understanding opens up the question of which cognitive abilities make it possible. Drawing on Wilson (2009), we provide a full-fledged account of the role of epistemic vigilance in irony understanding and suggest that it relies on the exercise of first- and second-order vigilance towards the content, the ironic speaker as well as the source of the irony.
The crucial role of epistemic vigilance, particularly second-order epistemic vigilance, can explain why irony comprehension is difficult for pre-schoolers and possibly even some adult populations.