Verbal irony is a form of nonliteral language in which speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves. The current research explored how prosodic features of the voice (i.e., pitch, loudness, and duration) function to disambiguate speakers' intentions when using verbal irony. Based on echoic interpretation theory, it was predicted that speakers use a variety of vocal cues to communicate verbal irony and that there is no particular ironic tone of voice.; Speech segments were isolated from their original contexts and ironic targets were paired with complementary nonironic counterparts. Acoustic analyses comparing isolated utterances of ironic versus nonironic speech found very little evidence of prosodic consistency across verbal irony examples. These utterances were content-filtered and presented to listeners in isolation as well, and listeners were asked to rate them on various scales (i.e., sarcasm, anger, inquisitiveness, new/given structure, authority). Listeners did not rely on any set of prosodic features to identify verbal irony that was separate from other emotional and linguistic judgments.; Acoustic analysis data from a different set of spontaneous ironic speech segments demonstrated that speakers regularly contrasted multiple acoustic dimensions during ironical utterances with the speech immediately preceding them. A prosodic contrast was defined as a salient prosodic shift in speech involving at least one acoustic dimension in close alignment with an utterance or group of utterances. By contrasting prosodic features, speakers can signal various intentional and affective information to listeners. Detailed examples of conversational interactions are provided showing how non-speech factors affect the way these contrasts manifest.; Overall, this research demonstrates that prosodic information is important for communicating verbal irony, but the processes involved are intertwined with all speech communication, and thus not special to verbal irony. Moreover, the findings show that listeners are prepared to use a variety of prosodic cues in recognizing verbal irony and that many affective and linguistic dimensions are involved in the comprehension of this form of implied language.
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