METAPHOR AND SYMBOL, 17(1), 57–80

Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Are Irony and Metaphor

Understood Differently?
Herbert L. Colston
Department of Psychology
University of Wisconsin–Parkside

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz

In 4 experiments we examined differences in how people understand ironic and

metaphoric statements. Our hypothesis was that irony requires more complex
inferencing to understand than does metaphor because irony reflects speakers’ sec-
ond-order, metarepresentational thoughts. We investigated the implications of this
idea for how people process identical statements (e.g., “This one’s really sharp”) that
had either ironic or metaphoric meaning in different contexts. Experiment 1 showed
that people take longer to understand these statements when used ironically than when
seen as metaphors. Experiment 2 revealed that people draw second-order
metarepresentational inferences about speakers’ intentions and beliefs when under-
standing ironies but not metaphors. Experiments 3 and 4 studied the processes and
meaning products associated with understanding statements that were either simple
ironies or metaphoric ironies. Overall, the data from these experiments lend support to
the idea that irony is understood differently than metaphor partly because of the
metarepresentational reasoning needed to infer ironic messages.

Consider the following two stories, each of which end with the expression “This
one’s really sharp”:

You are a teacher at an elementary school.

You are discussing a new student with your assistant teacher.
The student did extremely well on her entrance examinations.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Department of Psychology, Univer-
sity of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. E-mail: gibbs@cats.ucsc.edu
58 COLSTON AND GIBBS

You say to your assistant, “This one’s really sharp.”

You are a teacher at an elementary school.

You are gathering teaching supplies with your assistant teacher.
Some of the scissors you have are in really bad shape.
You find one pair that won’t cut anything.
You say to your assistant, “This one’s really sharp.”

The expression “This one’s really sharp” has a metaphorical meaning in the
first context because the teacher refers to the student’s intellectual abilities using a
familiar metaphorical comparison whereby the mind is conceived as a cutting in-
strument (the sharper the cutting instrument, the more a person is seen as possess-
ing greater intellectual abilities).The same expression in the second context has an
ironic meaning. Even though the teacher is literally referring to a cutting instru-
ment (i.e., the scissors), she refers to it ironically as possessing a desired property
(e.g., sharpness) that, in reality, it does not possess.
How do listeners comprehend expressions such as “This one’s really sharp”
when used either metaphorically or ironically? Traditional theories of figurative
language do not see irony as differing from metaphor in that each violates various
communicative norms or the felicitous rules of speech acts (Foeglin, 1991; Grice,
1989; Searle, 1979). Under this “standard pragmatic view,” understanding any
nonliteral utterance requires that listeners analyze a sentence’s literal meaning be-
fore other figurative meanings can be derived by computing an interpretation that
makes the speaker’s utterance consistent with communicative norms, such as
Grice’s “cooperative principle.” Although listeners presumably derive speakers’
intended meanings differently for metaphor (i.e., finding the similarities between
the source and target domains) than for irony (e.g., by assuming the opposite of
what the sentence literally means), there is no suggestion that metaphor and irony
differ in the complexity of inferences needed to interpret these figurative expres-
sions. Of course, the standard pragmatic view, as originally proposed by Grice and
Searle, provides only a rational, philosophical model of the processes used in de-
riving indirect and figurative meaning. This makes it difficult to conclude much
about the actual degree of complexity associated with people’s ordinary under-
standing of metaphors and ironies.
More recently, several scholars have argued that metaphor and irony differ, at
least in the kind of meanings that listeners recognize. These scholars have been
more concerned with the psychological dynamics associated with what listeners
actually infer when understanding different kinds of figurative language. For in-
stance, Winner and Gardner (1993) suggested that metaphor and irony differ in
their structure, communicative functions, and comprehension demands. First, the
relation between what is said and implied by metaphor and irony differ. Meta-
phor expresses something about the similarity between what is said and implied
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 59

when two domains are juxtaposed. Irony expresses an opposition between what
is said and implied. Second, metaphor and irony communicate different types of
meaning. Metaphor primarily describes or shows something in a novel way
about the topic, whereas irony says something about the speaker (i.e., his or her
attitudes or opinions about the topic). Third, metaphor and irony require differ-
ent comprehension abilities. Understanding metaphor demands that listeners
possess some knowledge of the source and target domains to recognize what is
similar about these two domains. Interpreting irony requires that listeners draw
particular inferences about the speaker’s state of mind. More specifically, under-
standing irony demands that listeners draw a second-order inference about the
speaker’s beliefs and intentions.
These distinctions between metaphor and irony understanding are not rigid
given that both forms of figurative language require that listeners recognize
something about speakers’ beliefs and intentions. Several empirical studies illus-
trate that different contextual heuristics, such as the presence of a human refer-
ent, knowledge of the speaker’s occupation, and the conventionality of the state-
ment, influence whether a speaker’s utterance is interpreted as irony or metaphor
(Katz & Lee, 1993; Katz & Pexman, 1997; Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989). Our fo-
cus in this study was on the idea that interpreting irony specifically requires a
second-order inference about the speaker’s thoughts: something that is not
needed to understand metaphor. Second-order inferences about speakers’ inten-
tions do not simply refer to the traditional idea that irony conveys messages that
are opposite of what is literally said (see Gibbs, 1994, for a critique of this tradi-
tional view). Instead, inferring second-order inferences involves recognition of a
thought about an attributed thought. For instance, as the second story mentioned
earlier shows, the teacher’s comment “This one’s really sharp” reflects her criti-
cal attitude toward the idea that the scissors in question might have once been
sharp and considered so. Understanding that the teacher is alluding to some at-
tributed thought or utterance of another individual (a second-order belief) de-
mands that listeners draw a complex metarepresentational inference. Several
scholars now contend that irony and metaphor differ precisely because irony
comprehension requires such metarepresentational reasoning in the way that
metaphor does not (Sperber, 1994, 1996).
How might listeners ordinarily infer complex metarepresentations when pro-
cessing ironic remarks? According to Sperber and Wilson (1995), speaking ironi-
cally is just one way of striving for relevance in one’s communication. Speaking
ironically, like that seen in the exchange between the teachers in the preceding con-
versation, is interpreted by ordinary listeners as expressions of and clues to the
speaker’s thoughts. Every utterance is more or less a truthful interpretation of a
thought that a speaker wants to communicate. An utterance is “descriptively” used
when the thought interpreted is itself entertained as a true description of a state of
affairs; it is “interpretively” used when the thought interpreted is entertained as an
60 COLSTON AND GIBBS

interpretation of some further thought—say, an attributed thought or utterance—or

it can be an interpretation of some thought that might be desirable to entertain in
some context (Wilson & Sperber, 1992). Although verbal metaphors are under-
stood descriptively, ironies must be understood interpretively, precisely because
ironic utterances involve more metarepresentations in the sense of being represen-
tations of pretend thoughts.
Several studies in developmental psychology support the idea that interpreting
irony and metaphor might be different. For instance, studies looking at children’s
ability to distinguish irony from white lies show that being able to draw a sec-
ond-order inference is crucial to understanding that a speaker’s message is ironic
and not just a lie (Winner & Leekam, 1991). Children appear able to draw sec-
ond-order inferences only when they have a “theory of mind.” Other studies dem-
onstrate that having a theory of mind is critical to drawing the second-order infer-
ences needed to understand irony. For instance, Happe (1993) confirmed with
children with autism and “normal” children that second-order metarepresenta-
tional abilities are necessary to comprehend irony as an expression of a speaker’s
attitude to an attributed thought. Normal children who failed second-order theory
of mind tasks, however, are as successful in understanding metaphors as are people
who exhibit second-order metarepresentational ability. The inability to report
thoughts about thoughts is, therefore, seen as a major reason why individuals with
autism exhibit communicative problems (Happe, 1994).
These conclusions from the developmental work (also see Lucariello & Min-
dolovich, 1995) generally support the idea that irony use requires metarepresenta-
tional thought. Yet differences in learning the meanings of individual metaphors
and ironies do not necessarily imply that the cognitive processes involved in com-
prehending ironic and metaphoric statements are different. For example, it makes
little sense to simply measure the time it takes people to read various ironies in
context and compare these latencies with the time it takes to read metaphors in dif-
ferent contexts. After all, ironies and metaphors can vary tremendously in their
syntactic, semantic, and stylistic complexity.
Our studies, however, compare processing for identical statements that in dif-
ferent contexts express either ironic or metaphoric meaning. Our main hypothesis
was that under these controlled conditions, people should take less time to process
metaphors than ironies because of the greater metarepresentational inferences
needed to infer speakers’ intentions when using irony.
We report four experiments examining the processes and products of irony and
metaphor understanding (Gibbs, 1994). In Experiment 1, we investigated speeded
processing of identical statements when used as ironies or metaphors. In Experi-
ment 2, we studied the inferences, or meaning products, that arise when people
interpret ironies and metaphors. We specifically explored whether people are con-
scious of drawing second-order, metarepresentational inferences when under-
standing irony but not when comprehending metaphor. In Experiment 3, we exam-
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 61

ined speeded processing of simple ironies and metaphoric ironies (i.e., expressions
that convey both ironic and metaphoric meaning). In Experiment 4, we looked at
the metarepresentational inferences associated with comprehending simple ironies
and metaphoric ironies.

EXPERIMENT 1

Participants in Experiment 1 read short stories on a computer screen, one line at a

time, ending with statements that conveyed either ironic or metaphoric meaning.
We timed how long it took people to read these last lines in the two kinds of context
(i.e., ironic or metaphoric). Our expectation, following the metarepresentational
hypothesis, was that ironies would take longer to process than metaphors.

Method
Participants. Thirty-six undergraduates from the University of California,
Santa Cruz participated in the study and received credit for a course requirement.
All participants were native English speakers.

Materials and design. Previous research shows that both irony and meta-
phor differ in their ease of comprehension depending on various stylistic and prag-
matic factors (Gibbs, 1994). For instance, ironies that echo some person’s beliefs
or previous utterance are faster to process than ironic statements without explicit
echos (Gibbs, 1986b). Metaphoric statements are more difficult to process when
the metaphorical concept is mentioned at the beginning of an utterance than at the
end (Gibbs, 1990). Furthermore, both ironies and metaphors are respectively un-
derstood more quickly when these statements are more conventional than novel
(Katz, 1996).
We wrote the stimuli for this study, and those that follow, with these factors in
mind. Thus, we explicitly did not construct sentences that expressed highly con-
ventional metaphors as opposed to novel ironies, and the ironic contexts reflected
reasonable echos, especially in regard to the speakers’ and listeners’ implicit be-
liefs. Of course, it is impossible to experimentally account for all the possible dif-
ferences between irony and metaphor in a single study. However, our general aim
was to construct reasonably short stories that appropriately induced either a meta-
phoric or ironic reading of a single linguistic expression.
Twenty short scenarios were written that described situations in which the ex-
perimental participants were asked to adopt the perspective of one of the charac-
ters. In each story, which varied from four to eight sentences long, a final utterance
was addressed to the experimental participants. Each story has two versions: one in
which the final utterance has metaphoric meaning and the other in which the final
62 COLSTON AND GIBBS

utterance has ironic meaning. Both versions had the same number of lines and dif-
fered only in the middle two lines. A sentence following the final utterances para-
phrased the speaker’s message. Half of these paraphrases were “good” in that they
captured what the speaker meant and half were “bad” in being inappropriate inter-
pretations of the final utterances. This design results in four types of scenarios: two
metaphoric (one followed by a good paraphrase and one by a bad paraphrase) and
two ironic (one followed by a good paraphrase and one by a bad paraphrase). In ad-
dition to the 20 experimental stories, 20 stories with literal final utterances were
also written. We ignored the data from these stories but included them to insure
that participants did not come to expect each final utterance as having only figura-
tive meaning.
The four versions of the scenarios were divided into four sets. Set A, for exam-
ple, contained the metaphor, good-paraphrase version of the first scenario; the met-
aphor, bad-paraphrase version of the second scenario; the irony, good-paraphrase
version of the third scenario; and the irony, bad-paraphrase version of the fourth
scenario. Set B contained the metaphor, bad-paraphrase version of the first sce-
nario; Set C contained the irony, good-paraphrase version of the first scenario; and
Set D contained the irony, bad-paraphrase of that scenario, and so on. Appendix A
presents examples of the stories, final utterances, and different paraphrases.
We tried to ensure that each metaphoric or ironic use of a particular utterance in
its context was felicitous. Before running the main experiment, we examined
whether people viewed one use of the final utterances (e.g., a metaphoric use) as
being more familiar or conventional than the utterance used in a different context
(e.g., ironic). The two versions of the scenarios were divided into two sets. Set 1,
for example, contained the metaphorical version of the first scenario, the ironic
version of the second scenario, the metaphoric version of the third scenario, and so
on. Set 2 would then contain the opposite versions of the scenarios as Set 1. The or-
der of scenarios in each set was random, and each set was presented to an equal
number of participants. Twenty-four undergraduates from the University of Wis-
consin–Parkside were asked to carefully read each scenario and to first think of and
write down the correct paraphrase of the utterance in the scenario. Participants
were instructed to then rate “how frequent your experience is with that type of
comment in context” on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not frequent) to 7 (very fre-
quent). The results show that the ratings for the statements when used metaphori-
cally (4.51) and ironically (4.25) did not differ significantly, F1(1, 23) = 1.72, p >
.10; F2(1, 19) = 1.69, p > .10.

Procedure. Participants were told that they were to complete a task asking
for their perceptions about what people say in conversations. The participants were
seated at a computer and read aloud instructions on how to complete the task. The
instructions told participants that they would read stories on the computer, one line
at a time. Participants were instructed to press a particular key “as soon as they had
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 63

read and understood” each line of the story but to otherwise read normally. After
reading the last line of each story, participants heard a beep tone and were pre-
sented with a paraphrase sentence. The participants’ task here was to make their
good or bad paraphrase judgments by pushing one of two designated buttons as
quickly and accurately as possible. Response latencies were measured from the
onset of the sentence to when the participants pressed either the comprehension
button or one of the paraphrase judgment keys. Participants were told that there
was a short pause between each scenario. After going through a short practice ses-
sion with the experimenter present, the participants then completed the main task
alone, which usually took about 15 min to complete.

Results and Discussion

Only trials in which participants made correct paraphrase judgments (91% of all
trials) after reading the final utterances were included in the data analysis. There
was no difference in participants’ error rates in understanding the ironies and meta-
phors. The high proportion of correct paraphrase judgments suggests that the par-
ticipants appropriately understood the final utterances as having either ironic or
metaphoric meaning. Analysis of the reading times were performed with utterance
type as the only within-subject factor. Each analysis was conducted twice: once
treating participants as the random factor (F1), and once treating items as the ran-
dom factor (F2). This analysis revealed that people took significantly less time to
read metaphorical utterances (1,792 msec) than to comprehend ironic ones (2,013
msec), F1(1, 35) = 7.55, p < .01; F2(1, 19) = 3.17, p < .10. These findings are con-
sistent with the claim that understanding irony requires more complex inferencing,
especially in terms of drawing a second-order belief about the speaker’s intentions,
than is required to interpret metaphorical uses of the same statements.
One interesting set of previous findings reveals that people in certain occupations
(e.g., cab drivers, truck drivers, students, political critics, and mechanics) are more
likely to use irony than metaphor, whereas people with other occupations (e.g., sales-
men, scientists, lawyers, and cooks) are viewed as using metaphor more often than
irony (Katz & Pexman, 1997). We examined the occupations of the protagonists in
our stories to see if there may be differences between them in terms of their ironic or
metaphoric occupations. Unfortunately, few of our protagonists were previously
studied by Katz and Pexman. However, the vast majority of our stories included pro-
tagonists that were friends or relatives (e.g., aunt, brother) of the addressees. One re-
cent analysis (Gibbs, 2000) of the talk among college students—most of whom were
friends—in real-life situations showed that irony was frequently employed, often
with humorous intent. If we assume, then, that friends may be at least somewhat
more likely to speak ironically to one another than metaphorically, we would expect
that people should comprehend friends’ironic remarks quite quickly. Although this
may still be true, at the very least the fact that irony takes longer to understand than
64 COLSTON AND GIBBS

metaphor in Experiment 1 suggests that the occupation of the speaker alone is not
what is slowing down comprehension of the ironic remarks.

EXPERIMENT 2

Finding that, at least in some cases, irony takes longer to process than metaphor
provides one kind of support for the metarepresentational reasoning hypothesis.
However, did people actually engage in more complex metarepresentational rea-
soning when reading ironic remarks than they did when reading metaphoric state-
ments? The reading-time data in Experiment 1 do not directly reveal what kinds of
inferences people make when reading ironic and metaphoric comments.
In Experiment 2, a different group of undergraduate students read the same sto-
ries and final (ironic or metaphoric) remarks used in the Experiment 1. After read-
ing the last line of each story, the participants rated their agreement with a set of
statements that probed for the different metarepresentational inferences people
may draw when reading the ironic and metaphoric comments. The first statement
probed people’s assessment of the speaker’s beliefs when understanding irony and
metaphor. The second statement examined the role of pretense in understanding a
speaker’s meaning. Previous research (Clark & Gerrig, 1984; Gibbs, 1994, 2000;
Jorgensen, Miller, & Sperber, 1984) has shown that recognizing a speaker’s pre-
tend acts is an important part of understanding irony, and various scholars have
demonstrated that the ability to engage in pretense demands second-order meta-
representational reasoning (Leslie, 1987). The third statement probed people’s
recognition of how a speaker’s utterance alluded to some prior belief(s). Irony re-
flects via pretense, or echoic mention (Gibbs, 1986b; Sperber & Wilson, 1995), a
speaker’s prior belief or verbally expressed opinion that no longer holds given a
new context. Listeners will not be able to understand most instances of irony un-
less they correctly infer how the speaker’s utterance alludes to some previous be-
lief or opinion. The fourth statement looked at people’s recognition of the multiple
beliefs in understanding ironies and metaphors. If irony depends on listeners’ rec-
ognition of the speaker’s complex metarepresentational beliefs, we expected par-
ticipants would give higher ratings of agreement having read the ironic remarks
than the metaphoric ones. Finally, the fifth statement probed people’s understand-
ing that ironic remarks mock someone’s prior beliefs, or previous utterance, more
so than with metaphor.
Participants read the stories, ending with either a metaphoric or ironic state-
ment, along with different inference statements and gave their ratings of agreement
on a 7-point scale in which higher ratings reflect higher levels of agreement (1 =
completely agree; 7 = completely disagree). Our expectation was that people
would give significantly different ratings to the inference statements depending on
whether they just read a metaphoric or ironic statement. We specifically predicted
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 65

that people would give higher ratings to statements that reflected something about
the complex metarepresentational inferences that should be drawn when under-
standing ironic statements. Thus, people should give higher ratings to the state-
ments about prior beliefs, pretense, multiple beliefs, and intention to mock, after
having read the ironic statements versus the metaphoric ones.

Method
Participants. Twenty-four University of California, Santa Cruz undergradu-
ate students participated to fulfill a course requirement. None of these participants
took part in any of the other experiments.

Materials and design. The scenarios and final statements used in Experi-
ment 1 constituted the main stimuli for this study. After each scenario and final
utterance, a series of five statements were presented to which participants had to
provide their ratings of agreement. These five statements reflected different pos-
sible inferences that people may draw from reading the last speaker’s utterance.
The five statements examined readers’ intuitions about the speaker’s (a) beliefs,
(b) degree of pretense, (c) prior beliefs, (d) multiple beliefs, and (e) intention to
mock some prior belief. Specific examples of these statements for both the meta-
phoric and ironic uses of the speakers’ utterances are shown in the Results and
Discussion section.

Procedure. Participants were presented with a booklet containing the in-

structions and all experimental material. The instructions stated

This booklet contains a series of short stories with a character in the story
making some comment. Underneath each story is a series of statements
about the speaker. Please read each story including the speaker’s comment,
and the statements below each comment. Then rate how much you agree or
disagree with the statements by marking each of the rating scales with an X.
Take your time and consider each question carefully. When you are finished,
return the booklet to the experimenter.

Results and Discussion

We present the findings from this study by referring to a specific example. The first
statement examined people’s assessments of the speaker’s beliefs in understanding
the ironies and metaphors. For instance, when participants read the stories de-
scribed previously ending with either ironic or metaphoric uses of “This one’s re-
ally sharp,“ they rated the following statements:
66 COLSTON AND GIBBS

Irony: The teacher’s remark reflects her current belief that the scissors are
not sharp.

Metaphor: The teacher’s remark reflects her current belief that the student is
smart.

The data revealed no difference in people’s ratings for the metaphor (6.6) and
irony (6.6) questions. Thus, in both cases, listeners recognize that the speaker’s
statement reflects something about her beliefs.
The second statement looked at the importance of pretense in understanding the
speaker’s meaning in the final utterance. Pretense is an important part of ironic
communication, and we expected readers to infer that a speaker was adopting pre-
tense when using irony but not metaphor. Participants rated their agreement with
the following statements:

Irony: The teacher’s remark reflects the fact that she is only pretending that
the scissors are sharp.

Metaphor: The teacher’s remark reflects the fact that she is only pretending
that the student is a cutting instrument.

The data showed that people gave higher ratings to the ironic comments (5.6)
than to the metaphoric ones (2.7), F1(1, 23) = 116.42, p < .001; F2(1, 19) = 56.90, p
< .001. This indicates that people viewed the ironic statements as involving pre-
tense more so than the metaphoric comments. The data here also suggest that the
ironic statements in Experiment 1 were understood as being appropriately echoic
in context and thus were reasonably felicitous in that condition of the experiment.
The third statement looked at people’s recognition of the allusion to prior be-
liefs in the speaker’s final utterance in each story. Participants rated their agree-
ment with the following statements:

Irony: The teacher’s remark refers to her prior belief (meaning her belief
about the scissors before the conversation) that the scissors should be sharp.

Metaphor: The teacher’s remark refers to her prior belief (meaning her belief
about the student before the conversation) that the student should be smart.

Not surprisingly, people gave higher ratings of agreement to these statements

having read the ironic (4.8) comments than they did to the metaphoric ones (3.2), a
highly significant difference, F1(1, 23) = 84.70, p < .001; F2(1, 19) = 7.98, p < .001.
Thus, people clearly see ironies as alluding to prior beliefs more so than meta-
phoric remarks.
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 67

The next statement examined people’s possible recognition of the speaker’s

multiple beliefs that are part of his or her metarepresentational thought. We ex-
pected participants would give higher ratings of agreement after having read ironic
remarks than the metaphoric ones.

Irony: The teacher’s remark reflects her multiple beliefs in that she is both
referring to her present belief that the scissors are not sharp and her prior be-
lief that the scissors should be sharp.

Metaphor: The teacher’s remark reflects her multiple beliefs in that she is
both referring to her present belief that the student is smart and her prior be-
lief that the student should be smart.

People gave much higher agreement ratings to the ironic statements (5.4) than
to the metaphoric ones (3.6), F1(1, 23) = 59.50, p < .001; F2(1, 19) = 10.85, p < .01.
This finding shows that irony understanding reflects more complex recognition of
the speaker’s multiple beliefs than does metaphor understanding. Listeners clearly
view ironic statements as reflecting a speaker’s second-order attributions in a way
listeners did not do, as much, for metaphors.
The final statement examined people’s recognition that ironic statements mock
prior beliefs more so than metaphoric statements. Again, understanding that a
speaker mocks someone else, or some social norm, is essential to understanding
irony but not metaphor. Participants rated their agreement with the following state-
ments:

Irony: The reason that the teacher possibly refers to her prior belief that the
scissors should be sharp is to mock this expectation given that the scissors
are not sharp.

Metaphor: The reason that the teacher possibly refers to her prior belief that
the student should be smart is to mock this expectation given that the student
is smart.

The agreement ratings were, again, significantly higher for the ironic state-
ments (6.3) than for the metaphoric ones (4.1), F1(1, 23) = 63.59, p < .001; F2(1,
19) = 45.62, p < .001. This result is consistent with the claim that irony mocks
speakers’ or listeners’ prior beliefs more so than metaphor.
The overall results from Experiment 2 demonstrate that people are clearly con-
scious of how irony differs in critical ways from metaphors, especially in regard to
how irony involves pretense and uses complex metarepresentational reasoning to
mock individual’s prior beliefs. Together with Experiment 1, the first two studies
68 COLSTON AND GIBBS

provide evidence that the processing and resulting products of understanding irony
differ from those involved in interpreting metaphor.

EXPERIMENT 3

Metaphor and irony are typically studied as completely different kinds of figura-
tive meaning. Yet people can utter statements that reflect both metaphoric and
ironic meaning. Consider the following story and the speaker’s final utterance:

You are an assistant to a teacher at an elementary school,

and the two of you are discussing a new student.
The student did extremely poorly on her entrance examination.
The teacher said to you “This one is really sharp.”

Note how the teacher’s utterance has both metaphoric and ironic meaning in
that she provides a metaphor to describe the student’s abilities yet makes this re-
mark with ironic intention. We call these utterances metaphoric irony and contrast
them to situations in which the teacher says “This one is really sharp” to comment
ironically, but not metaphorically, about the dull pair of scissors.
Does comprehending statements that express two forms of figurative meaning
require more cognitive effort than processing utterances that convey a single
nonliteral idea? The only previous work relevant to this question suggests that situ-
ations exist in which people can process utterances with two figurative meanings
as easily as they do one. Gibbs (1986a) showed that people can understand sarcas-
tic indirect requests, such as “Why don’t you take your time washing the dishes?”
(meaning Please wash the dishes), faster than they do simple indirect requests,
such as Would you please start to wash the dishes?. This finding demonstrates that
making an indirect request sarcastically does not necessarily complicate under-
standing what a speaker means over interpreting a simple indirect request.
There are several reasons, though, why Gibbs’s (1986a) findings may not gen-
eralize to the process of understanding metaphoric ironies. First, we do not believe
that all kinds of figurative language are equal and so it is inappropriate to argue that
a single theory accounts for all aspects of figurative language understanding. As
the results from the first two studies clearly show, there are significant differences
in the process and products involved in understanding ironies and metaphors. Sim-
ilar differences may exist for interpreting metaphoric ironies and simple ironic
statements. Second, the story contexts employed in the Gibbs (1986a) studies were
longer and thus stronger in creating ironic situations than we created for the ironic
statements in Experiments 1 and 2. The strength of the prior story context obvi-
ously influences the speed of processing different kinds of figurative language.
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 69

Finally, understanding that a speaker’s utterance is both indirect and sarcastic

may be easier to determine than recognizing that what a speaker says is intended
both metaphorically and ironically. Under this view, some kinds of nonliteral
meaning (i.e., sarcasm and indirect requests) mesh together more easily, and
more naturally, than others (i.e., metaphor and irony). Thus, in making a sarcas-
tic indirect request, the sarcastic meaning does not interfere with the speaker’s
intention to make an indirect request. Both of these figurative meanings are
clearly distinct while still being communicated. On the other hand, when saying
a metaphoric irony, such as “This one is really sharp,” there is great ambiguity
about what the speaker really meant because the metaphorical meaning some-
what competes with the ironic one (i.e., especially in terms of what “sharp”
means). This possibility suggests that listeners must engage in a slightly more
complex inference process to resolve the ambiguity and recognize that both the
metaphoric and ironic meanings are intended. Our idea that metaphoric irony
may be difficult to process because of a more complex mesh between these two
types of figurative meaning is consistent with the claim that metaphor and irony
require different processing modes whereby metaphor is understood descrip-
tively and irony is processed interpretively (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Com-
bining different processing modes, as is needed to understand metaphoric iro-
nies, increases the effort needed to understand what speakers mean more than
when only one processing mode is required (i.e., processing simple ironies).
Participants in Experiment 3 read scenarios depicting speakers making utter-
ances that conveyed either metaphoric irony or simple irony. We predicted that the
complexity of metaphoric irony, as suggested previously, would make these state-
ments more difficult to process than when they only conveyed ironic meaning.

Method
Participants. Thirty-six undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin–Park-
side participated in this study. All participants were native English speakers and
none took part in any other study reported here.

Materials and design. The ironic versions of the scenarios used in Experi-
ment 1 were also employed in this study. The metaphoric irony versions of the
scenarios were created by taking the metaphoric stories in the first study and al-
tering just a single word or two to turn the final utterance from a simple meta-
phoric description to metaphoric irony. The paraphrases for the ironic stories
were the same as those used in Experiment 1. The paraphrases for the meta-
phoric irony versions were created in the same way as described in the first
study. The set assignments and counterbalancing were identical to that used in
Experiment 1. Appendix B presents several examples of the metaphoric irony
70 COLSTON AND GIBBS

stories. Note how the final utterances here are identical to those shown in Ap-
pendix A for the irony and metaphor stories.

Procedure. The procedure was identical to that used in Experiment 1.

Results and Discussion

The data were analyzed in the same manner as for Experiment 1. Participants gave
correct paraphrase judgments 90% of the time. Once again, there was no difference
in the error rates for metaphoric or ironic utterances. The high proportion of
correct paraphrase judgments again showed that participants correctly understood
the figurative meanings of the metaphoric and ironic expressions in context. A
one-way repeated measures analysis of variance showed that metaphorical irony
(1,933 msec) took significantly longer to comprehend than the simple ironies
(1,772 msec), F1(1, 35) = 7.08, p < .01; F2(1, 19) = 5.40, p < .05. This result sup-
ports our hypothesis that processing metaphoric irony involves more complex cog-
nitive reasoning than processing irony alone. We are not able to tell on the basis of
the reading-time data alone whether interpreting metaphoric irony occurs in a se-
rial manner in which the metaphoric meaning is first understood with the ironic
meaning being constructed afterward. However, we suspect that, given the results
of Experiment 1 in which metaphors took less time to understand than ironic uses
of the same expressions, metaphoric meanings may be determined first when peo-
ple read metaphoric ironies. There is certainly related empirical findings suggest-
ing that metaphoric meanings are interpreted automatically (Gildea & Glucksberg,
1983; Glucksberg, Gildea, & Bookin, 1982), even though these earlier data fo-
cused on a different sentential form of metaphor (e.g., “Surgeons are like butch-
ers”) than examined here (e.g., “This one’s really sharp”).

EXPERIMENT 4

Experiment 2 showed that people draw quite different inferences when reading
metaphors and ironies. Does understanding metaphoric irony give rise to more
complex contextual effects than processing simple ironies? The inferences exam-
ined in Experiment 2, as well as in this experiment, focused on properties of peo-
ple’s second-order beliefs when speaking ironically. There are three possible hy-
potheses to be considered here. The first suggests that people draw the same kind
of metarepresentational inferences when understanding metaphoric irony as when
comprehending simple irony. Under this view, adding metaphoric meaning to a
speaker’s ironic utterance does not complicate the range of second-order infer-
ences people draw when reading metaphoric irony as compared to irony alone. A
second hypothesis proposes that metaphoric irony actually enhances in some way
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 71

the degree of metarepresentational inferences people draw over that understood

when reading irony alone. Our initial expectation was that this possibility was not
very likely given participants’ low ratings for the inference statements having read
metaphors in Experiment 2. Finally, reading metaphoric ironies may reduce the de-
gree of second-order inferences people draw compared to understanding irony
alone. Thus, the combination of metaphor with irony in a single statement some-
how mutes the ironic meaning speakers intend, whereas enhancing the metaphoric
effects. We explored these possibilities about metaphoric irony in this final study.

Method
Participants. Twenty-four University of Wisconsin–Parkside undergradu-
ates participated for a course requirement. All were native English speakers, and
none had served as participants in the other experiments.

Materials and design. The scenarios and inference statements were identi-
cal to those employed in Experiment 3.

Procedure. The same procedure employed in Experiment 2 was used in

this study.

Results and Discussion

Similar to Experiment 2, we present the findings from this study by referring to
a specific example. The first statement examined people’s assessments of the
speaker’s beliefs in understanding the ironies and metaphoric ironies. For in-
stance, when participants read the stories described previously ending with ei-
ther ironic or metaphor uses of “This one’s really sharp,” they rated the follow-
ing statements:

Irony: The teacher’s remark reflects her current belief that the scissors are
not sharp.

Metaphoric irony: The teacher’s remark reflects her current belief that the
student is not smart.

The data revealed that people agreed more with the statements having read sim-
ple ironies (6.1) rather than metaphoric ironies (5.1), F1(1, 23) = 32.36, p < .001;
F2(1, 19) = 22.07, p < .001. Unlike the case where metaphor alone is compared to
irony, people infer a stronger sense of a speaker’s current beliefs when reading
irony alone than when they interpret metaphoric irony.
72 COLSTON AND GIBBS

The second statement looked at the importance of pretense in understanding the

speaker’s meaning in the final utterances. Participants rated their agreement with
the following statements:

Irony: The teacher’s remark reflects the fact that she is only pretending that
the scissors are sharp.

Metaphoric irony: The teacher’s remark reflects the fact that she is only pre-
tending that the student is smart.

The data showed that people gave marginally higher ratings to the ironic com-
ments (5.2) than to the metaphoric ironies (4.8), F1(1, 23) = 3.32, p < .10; F2(1, 19)
= 4.21, p < .06. This indicates that people viewed the ironic statements as involving
pretense somewhat more than the metaphoric ironies. This finding is consistent
with the idea that people viewed simple ironies as conveying greater ironic mean-
ing than the metaphoric ironies.
The third statement looked at people’s recognition of the allusion to prior be-
liefs in the speaker’s final utterance in each story. Participants rated their agree-
ment with the following statements:

Irony: The teacher’s remark refers to her prior belief (meaning her belief
about the scissors before the conversation) that the scissors should be sharp.

Metaphoric irony: The teacher’s remark refers to her prior belief (meaning
her belief about the student before the conversation) that the student should
be smart.

People gave marginally higher ratings of agreement to these statements having

read the ironic (5.2) comments rather than the metaphoric ironies (4.8), F1(1, 23) =
6.15, p < .05; F2(1, 19) = 1.47, p > .10. Thus, people somewhat see ironies as allud-
ing to prior beliefs more than metaphoric ironies.
The next statement looked at people’s possible recognition of the speaker’s
multiple beliefs in understanding ironies and metaphors. People gave their ratings
of agreement to the following utterances.

Irony: The teacher’s remark reflects her multiple beliefs in that she is both
referring to her present belief that the scissors are not sharp and her prior be-
lief that the scissors should be sharp.

Metaphoric irony: The teacher’s remark reflects her multiple beliefs in that
she is both referring to her present belief that the student is not smart and her
prior belief that the student should be smart.
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 73

People gave higher agreement ratings to the ironic statements (5.4) than to the
metaphoric ironies (4.9), F1(1, 23) = 9.36, p < .01; F2(1, 19) = 3.42, p < .10. This
finding shows that irony understanding reflects more complex recognition of the
speaker’s multiple beliefs than interpreting metaphoric irony. Listeners clearly
view simple ironic statements as reflecting a speaker’s second-order attributions
more than metaphoric ironies.
The final statement examined people’s recognition that ironic statements mock
prior beliefs more than metaphor. Again, understanding that a speaker mocks
someone else, or some social norm, is essential to understanding irony but not met-
aphor. Participants rated their agreement with the following statements:

Irony: The reason that the teacher possibly refers to her prior belief that the
scissors should be sharp is to mock this expectation given that the scissors
are not sharp.

Metaphoric irony: The reason that the teacher possibly refers to her prior be-
lief that the student should be smart is to mock this expectation given that the
student is not smart.

The agreement ratings were, again, significantly higher for the ironic state-
ments (5.9) than for the metaphoric ironies (5.2), F1(1, 23) = 22.37, p < .001; F2(1,
19) = 10.08, p < .005. This result is consistent with the claim that simple irony
mocks speakers’ or listeners’ prior beliefs more than metaphoric irony.
The results from this experiment suggest that people are generally conscious of
how irony differs in critical ways from metaphoric ironies in the metarepre-
sentational inference people draw when reading these two kinds of ironic state-
ments. Most notably, the findings here contrast directly with those obtained in Ex-
periment 2 in which the meaning inferences associated with understanding simple
irony were compared to those arising for interpreting metaphor. The presence of
metaphoric meaning in metaphoric ironies in Experiment 4 appears to dampen or
mute some of the metarepresentational meanings people infer compared to under-
standing simple ironic remarks. Together with the results of Experiment 3, these
data reveal that people experience some difficulty understanding statements con-
veying both metaphoric and ironic meanings, and the momentary delay in under-
standing that a speaker intends his or her utterance to have both metaphoric and
ironic meaning mutes, to some degree, the ironic impact of these statements.
A slightly more elaborate explanation for the muted metarepresentational in-
ferences in understanding metaphoric irony includes the following. The contrast
presented by most forms of verbal irony influences its comprehension and the
various pragmatic functions that the trope performs. For instance, a literally pos-
itive comment (e.g., This is perfect) said about a negative situation (e.g., the
speaker losing his keys) can make that situation look worse than had a speaker
74 COLSTON AND GIBBS

made a literally consistent comment (e.g., This is awful). Thus, in comparison to

the positive ironic referent in what the speaker says, the situation appears rela-
tively worse. This shift in the perception of the situation, caused by the contrast
created by the ironic remark, may enhance a speaker’s criticism, increase listen-
ers’ judgments of humor, express greater surprise and greater sarcasm, and so
forth (Colston & O’Brien, 2000a, 2000b). However, if the degree of contrast pre-
sented by the ironic remark is somehow diminished or diffused, then the readi-
ness of comprehension and the performance of these pragmatic functions may
lessen. Metaphor may be one way in which ironic contrast can be diffused. By
creating an ironic comment that is also metaphorical (e.g., “This is sweet”),
there may be a less vivid contrast between the positive referent in the remark and
the negative situation, such that the fluency of comprehension and the pragmatic
functions described previously are weakened.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The aim of these studies was to illustrate some of the pragmatic complexities in
how listeners understand what speakers implicate with irony and metaphor. We ex-
amined the cognitive processing and the resulting meaning products associated
with understanding statements that conveyed ironic, metaphoric, or metaphoric
irony in slightly different discourse situations. In cases in which speakers uttered
the same statement with either ironic or metaphoric meaning, Experiment 1
showed that listeners take longer to process irony than metaphor. Experiment 2
probed people’s conscious understandings of the different inferences that consti-
tute part of listeners metarepresentational understandings of irony. The results
show that people recognized irony as involving more pretense, more allusion to
someone’s prior beliefs, more reference to a speaker’s multiple beliefs, and more
mockery of someone’s prior beliefs than was the case when people read metaphor.
Experiment 3 demonstrated that people take more time to comprehend metaphoric
ironies than simple ironic statements. The final study showed that the combination
of metaphor with irony actually reduced the metarepresentational effects associ-
ated with understanding simple ironic statements.
We do not believe that our results comparing irony to metaphor comprehension
necessarily generalize to all instances of ironic and metaphoric language. Our
studies were specifically designed to examine possible differences in the processes
and products of interpreting irony and metaphor under highly controlled experi-
mental situations in which the same statement could have different figurative
meanings in slightly different situations. Irony and metaphor can differ in many re-
spects, ranging from their stylistic appearance to their pragmatic functions in dis-
course. There may indeed be cases in which metaphors take longer to understand
than ironic uses of the same statements, especially if the metaphoric contexts dra-
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 75

matically set up metaphoric readings of what speakers said. At the same time,
ironic utterances that explicitly echo speakers’ immediately preceding utterances
may clearly facilitate people’s understanding of ironic meaning. There are clearly
complex interactions between metaphor and irony and their respective stylistic and
pragmatic functions in discourse.
Yet the finding of longer reading times and different meaning inferences for irony
than for metaphor is consistent with the idea that ironic and metaphoric language are
sometimes understood quite differently. These data are consistent with previous
suggestions that irony understanding requires more metarepresentational infer-
ences than does interpreting metaphor (Sperber, 1994, 1996; Sperber & Wilson,
1995; Wilson & Sperber, 1992; Winner & Gardner, 1993). Irony understanding spe-
cifically demands that listeners draw a second-order inference about a speaker’s be-
liefs in a way that it is not necessary when interpreting metaphor. Of course, our ex-
periments focused primarily on the metarepresentational inferences associated with
understanding irony and, to a lesser extent, metaphoric irony. We did not design these
particular studies to investigate the rich set of meaning inferences that often arise
when people process metaphoric language. Yet whatever set of meaning products
are involved in metaphor comprehension (e.g., mappings between complex source
and target domains), these would not necessarily require additional time to infer rela-
tive to the metarepresentational inferences needed to understand ironic remarks.
Our studies on metaphoric irony understanding are among the first looking at
people’s interpretations of figurative language in which two types of nonliteral
meaning are specifically intended. The reading-time results from Experiment 3
contrast with those from Gibbs (1986a), which demonstrated that understanding
sarcastic indirect requests need not take longer than understanding indirect request
alone or literal uses of the same expressions. We argued that the process of com-
bining different kinds of figurative meaning may, or may not, require additional
cognitive effort over that needed to process a single kind of figurative meaning de-
pending on the actual kinds of figurative meanings being combined. At the very
least, understanding a blend of figurative meanings does not result in additive ef-
fects for the meanings people consciously infer, as shown by the findings in Exper-
iment 4 compared to Experiment 2. Exactly what kinds of figurative meanings may
mesh together most easily is a significant challenge for future work. We suspect
that many of the complex meanings readers infer from reading poetry or under-
standing humor arise precisely because of the ways different figurative modes of
thought enhance, mute, or nullify one another within and across individual linguis-
tic statements. For instance, when irony and hyperbole are used together, they ex-
press more surprise than if either is used alone (Colston & Keller, 1998). More-
over, the contradiction between some types of figurative meaning need not be
completely resolved for a statement to be understood. This is especially the case
when speakers and writers wish to convey complex attitudes toward specific topics
(Berntsen & Kennedy, 1996).
76 COLSTON AND GIBBS

Finally, our emphasis on the metarepresentational aspects of irony understand-

ing, compared to interpreting metaphor, does not at all imply that other pragmatic
factors have no role in theories of irony comprehension. We observed earlier that
our reading-time difference between ironies and metaphors is not due to our use of
particular speakers (i.e., those with high irony occupations) in our stimuli stories.
However, it is quite probable that pragmatic factors such as the speaker’s occupa-
tion, the kind of linguistic statement examined, and the presence of human refer-
ents (see Katz, 1996) all interact with metarepresentational complexity in theories
of irony understanding. Thus, when a speaker is viewed as someone highly likely
to employ irony, this may diminish some of the difficulty associated with drawing
second-order inferences about ironic meaning.
In fact, the context itself, apart from the speaker’s occupation, may set up a sec-
ond-order ironic representation in such a way that understanding a speaker’s ironic
utterance causes little processing difficulty. This possibility may be one reason
why several reading-time studies indicate that irony can be understood in some
contexts as quickly as, and even faster than, literal uses of the same expressions
(Gibbs, 1986a, 1986b). Under this view, irony understanding may be primed by
contextual information that sets up metarepresentational layers about speaker’s be-
liefs and thoughts such that listeners can easily understand the ironic point of a
speaker’s message as soon as they hear it.
Consider, for example, the following story from Gibbs (1986b):

Gus just graduated from high school and he didn’t know what to do with his
life. One day he saw an ad about the Navy. It said that the Navy was not just a
job, but an adventure. So Gus joined. Soon he was aboard a ship doing all
sorts of boring things. One day as he was peeling potatoes, he said to his
buddy, “This sure is an exciting life.”

The reason people might find the ironic remark “This sure is an exciting life”
to be as easily processed as when this same sentence was seen in a literal context
(e.g., where the speaker said something truthful about the exciting life he was
leading) is that the context itself sets up an ironic situation through the contrast
between what Gus expected when he joined the Navy and the reality of it being
rather boring. Because people conceptualize many situations ironically (Gibbs,
1994; Lucariello, 1994) and thus already recognize that someone might have a
thought about a previous thought or statement (i.e., a second-order inference),
they can subsequently understand someone’s ironic or sarcastic comment with-
out having to engage in the additional computation sometimes required when
irony is encountered in conversation without explicit metarepresentational com-
plexity. In this way, understanding something about the metarepresentational
complexity of contexts may allow researchers to predict when irony will be as
easy to interpret as literal statements (Gibbs, 1986a, 1986b) and when irony may
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 77

be more difficult to process than literal, or direct, assertions (Dews & Winner,
1999; Giora & Fein, 1999).

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APPENDIX A
Examples of Stimuli for Experiments 1 and 2

Metaphor
A man you know was working on his novel
and was making a lot of progress.
When you ask him how it was going he says,
The juices are really flowing.
The ideas are really flowing. (paraphrase)

Irony
A man you know put some grapes in a winepress
but it was plugged and nothing was coming.
When you ask him how it was going he says,
The juices are really flowing.
The juices aren’t really flowing. (paraphrase)

Metaphor
A friend of yours who is a gourmet chef
was offered a job at a world-class restaurant.
It has really great pay and fantastic benefits.
 IRONY AND METAPHOR 79

When you ask her what she thinks of the offer she says,
I think it’s really sweet.
I think it’s really great. (paraphrase)

Irony
A friend of yours who is a gourmet chef
was tasting a lemon cake that you had baked.
It had no sugar in it and several fresh lemons.
When you ask her what she thinks of the cake she says,
I think it’s really sweet.
I think it’s really sour. (paraphrase)

Metaphor
You help a friend David shop for an air conditioner.
He asks the sales person a question about one of the cheap models,
and she replies that his question is stupid.
David says to you,
Well that sure is cold.
Well, that sure is rude. (paraphrase)

Irony
You help a friend David shop for an air conditioner.
He checks out one of the cheap models that is putting out warm air,
You each put a hand in front of the unit.
David says to you,
Well that sure is cold.
Well, that sure is warm. (paraphrase)

Metaphor
You and a friend go to a dark and cool nightclub
where a lot of sexy people are flirting heavily.
Your friend turns to you and says,
The heat is really on in here.
The sex is really on in here. (paraphrase)

Irony
You and a friend go to a dark and cool nightclub
that is so cold inside that you can see your breath.
Your friend turns to you and says,
The heat is really on in here.
The heat is really off in here. (paraphrase)
80 COLSTON AND GIBBS

APPENDIX B
Examples of Metaphoric Ironies in Experiments 3 and 4

A man you know was working on his novel

and was not making any progress.
When you ask him how it was going he says,
The juices are really flowing.
The ideas are not really coming. (paraphrase)

A friend of yours who is a gourmet chef

was offered a job at a world-class restaurant.
It has really low pay and no benefits.
When you ask her what she thinks of the offer she says,
I think it’s really sweet.
I think it’s really bad. (paraphrase)

You help a friend David shop for an air conditioner.

He asks the sales person a question about one of the cheap models,
and she smiles and says that his question is a really good one.
David says to you,
Well that sure is cold.
Well that sure is nice. (paraphrase)

You and a friend go to a dark and cool nightclub

where a lot of ugly people are trying unsuccessfully to flirt.
Your friend turns to you and says,
The heat is really on in here.
The people are really unattractive in here. (paraphrase)