Perceptual evaluation of tonal and contextual cues to sarcasm in French

Résumé En

Verbal irony is a mode of expression in which what is stated differs from (or is even opposed to) what is meant. Irony exists in the majority of the languages and cultures of the world (Pexman, 2008). Some researchers have proposed that acoustic irony cues are only employed if the common ground is not sufficient to indicate the intended message (Cutler, 1974). More recent research has shown that ironic content can be identified even in absence of contextual cues thanks to global acoustic/prosodic cues (Bryant & Fox Tree 2002). However, we still do not know what is the actual role of prosody, in particular of intonational phonology features (Ladd, 1996/2008), in irony comprehension. Concerning actual acoustic cues, sarcasm appears to be encoded in speech through various global manipulations in acoustic parameters such as fundamental frequency (f0), amplitude, speech rate, voice quality and vowel hyperarticulation (Attardo et al., 2003; Bryant & Fox Tree, 2005; Cheang & Pell, 2008; Rockwell, 2000; Sharrer & Christman, 2011; inter alia). In this study, we explore the expression of sarcasm in French, for which phonological data are still lacking. Specifically, here we test the acceptability of prototypical sarcastic tonal contours in presence of matching or conflicting contextual cues.