1984; Kumon-Nakamura et al., 1995; Sperber and Wilson, 1986,
1995; Winner, 1988). In the traditional model of irony
comprehension, ironic utterances flout the first maxim of
quality, and the listener tries to determine the connotation of
an utterance only after failing to find a literal meaning (Grice,
1975). This model implies that irony comprehension requires
more steps than literal comprehension. In contrast, Gibbs and
colleagues criticized the Gricean account and proposed that
both figurative and literal language comprehension follow
similar processing mechanisms and assume an initial influence of context on lexical access, which allows for direct
comprehension of the context-relevant (i.e., ironic) meaning
without an incompatibility phase. Sperber and Wilson (1986,
1995) also criticized Gricean analysis of communication and
proposed the Relevance Theory, which defined verbal irony as
an “echoic mention” of the prior utterance. According to this
theory, irony is not the “language use” to express the speaker's
thought, but rather the mention of apparent blame or criticism
where specific desires or expectation must be involved.
Through “echoic mention”, the speaker achieves relevance
by informing the hearer of the fact that he has in mind the
content of prior utterance, and has a certain attitude to it. That
is, an ironical utterance involves the implicit expression of an
attitude that is mostly of the rejecting or disapproving kind. To
understand the ironical utterance, the hearer must infer the
implied meaning of the utterance echoed. This suggests that
an understanding of irony depends on the ability to read
another's mind, such as a speaker's situational awareness and
beliefs (mentalizing). Hence, the relationship between an
irony comprehension and mentalizing (theory of mind)
functions is remarkably close.