INFERRING MEANINGS THAT ARE NOT INTENDED - SPEAKERS INTENTIONS AND IRONY COMPREHENSION

Most cases of verbal irony involve a situation in which a speaker says one thing and deliberately intends for his or her listener to infer a n ironic meaning (e.g., ''What lovely weather!'' spoken in the midst o f a downpour). However, there are occasions when listeners infer ironi c meanings for utterances even though speakers do not intend their utt erances to convey irony. For example, listeners may infer that the exp ression ''I would never be involved in any cheating'' may have an iron ic meaning if the speaker, unbeknownst to him or her, actually contrib uted to someone's cheating in a class exam. Numerous instances of dram atic irony in literature are based on situations like this in which li steners or readers recognize the unintended irony in what speakers say . We report the results of four experiments to show that people can re cognize ironic meanings that are not intended by speakers and that pro cessing unintended irony can be done quite easily precisely because sp eakers' utterances, unbeknownst to them, spontaneously create ironic s ituations. These findings have significant implications for psycholing uistic theories of irony comprehension and, more generally, for intent ional theories of ordinary language use.