Abstract
Using attitude, meaning, and language phenomenon detections as survey indexes, the study inspected the effects of intonation on the cognition of different types of irony among children aged 6 to 10 in China. The results showed: (1) the children displayed developmental unbalance in different aspects of irony cognition. 6-year-old children have possessed tentative irony cognitive ability, they began to understand the attitude and the discourse meaning of the speaker, but they could not explain irony phenomenon correctly. Until 10-year-old, the ability of children’s interpretation of irony phenomenon were still developing; (2) intonation (neutral or stressed) affected the attitude and meaning detection of children, but had no effects on language phenomenon detection of children; (3) the children’s cognitive levels of different types of irony were different. There were not noticeable differences between 6-year-old children’s interpretations of two types of irony, but there were striking differences between 8-year-old and 10-year-old children’s interpretations of two types of irony. Compared with ironic compliments, 8-year-old and 10-year-old children could interpret ironic criticisms better.
| Keywords: | intonation; irony; types of irony; age |
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