语境对中文否定句型反语理解的影响

1   Introduction

1.1  Research Background
Figurative  language  is  widely  used  in  people’s  daily  life  for  different  purposes.  For different  psychological  motivations,  people  use  irony  to  achieve  complex  social communication  purposes,  or  to  criticize  others[1]错误!未找到引用源。,  or  to  attract  attention  for humorous  effect[2][3],  or  to  take  care  of  others’  faces  and  protect  the  addressee[2][4].  The research focus of linguistics on rhetorical language has changed from literature and rhetoric to cognitive psychology and neuroscience in the last century. Since 1960s, there has been a rapid growth in the research field of irony abroad, and domestic research has followed the pace. As Liu  stated  that  studying  the  interpretation  of  irony  is  not  only  helpful  to  reveal  the comprehending process of nonliteral utterances, but also helpful to explain the understanding process  between  irony  and  other  figurative  language[6].  Comprehension  of  the  interpretation process of figurative language is the manifestation of cognitive complexities[1]. 
Statements such as “She is not the most fascinating speaker around” could be interpreted as either ironically (She is boring) or literally (Others are more fascinating)[7]. Giora and her colleagues  tried  to  use  Graded  Salience  Hypothesis  and  nonliteral  default  interpretation  to illustrate  the  interpreting  mechanism  behind.  However,  the  priority  of  ironic  interpretation could  not  be  interpreted  by  any  existing  model  at  that  time.  Giora  therefore  proposed Defaultness  Hypothesis,  as  an  umbrella  theory  that  encompasses  both  Graded  Salience Hypothesis  and  the  view  of  default  nonliteral  interpretations  in  2015.  To  be  considered  a default,  an  interpretation  must  be  construed  unconditionally—initially  and directly—regardless  of  explicit  cueing,  including  explicit  contextual  information  to  the contrary. 
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1.2  Research Significance
This  research  aims  to  testify  the  applicability  of  Defaultness  Hypothesis  in  Chinese language  (to  examine  whether  people  would  interpret  a  negative  construction  as  ironic  by default), and to analyze the influence of context on the interpretation of negative construction.
In  this  study,  all  the  materials  are  presented  in  Chinese,  which  may  cause  different results from previous research on Defaultness Hypothesis as previous studies mainly focused on Hebrew and English. The three languages belong to different language families: Chinese belongs  to  Sino-Tibetan  language;  Hebrew  belongs  to  the  Semitic  language  family  of  the Asian-African  language  family;  English  belongs  to  Indo-European  language  family. Significant  difference  was  observed  between  different  language,  so  the  applicability  of Defaultness Hypothesis to Chinese is important. 
This  study  focuses  on  the  interpretation  of  Chinese  negative  constructions  and  the influence of context. Since there are few related studies in domestic irony research field, this study will shed light on negative construction interpretation in Chinese language.
This  study  aims  to  explore  the  influence  of  context  on  the  interpretation  of  negative constructions  embedded  in  a  certain  type  of  context  (literally  biasing  context  or  ironically biasing context), and its default interpretation of such kind of constructions. Another purpose of this study is to testify the applicability of Defaultness Hypothesis. Since there are always two sides of participants in a conversation: addressor and addressee. Addressors intend to pass their  intended  meanings  to  addressees  and  addressees  manage  to  cooperate  with  the addressors and interpret the implications of addressors.
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2 Literature Review

2.1 Irony and Context
Irony  and  context  are  the  two  major  concepts  in  this  study,  and  the  two  concepts  have been discussed for a long time in linguistic studies. This section introduces the development of the two concepts and related theories.
2.1.1 Irony and Irony Processing Models
Cognitive study of irony is drawing more and more attention from cognitive linguistics in  that  it  will  illuminate  the  comprehensive  process  and  cognitive  mechanism  of  nonliteral language[8].  Irony  is  a  special  device  of  using  language  creatively,  and  it  is  a  complex cognitive and psychological phenomenon. 
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines irony as: a) the use of words to express something other  than  and  especially  the  opposite  the  opposite  of  the  literal  meaning,  and  b)  a  usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony. Etymologically speaking, irony  is  derived  from  Greek  eironeia  “dissimulation,  assumed  ignorance”,  and  eiron “dissembler”,  perhaps  related  to  eirein  “to  speak”.  Irony  was  used  in  ancient  Greece  as affected ignorance, especially by Socrates, as a method of exposing an antagonist’s ignorance by pretending to modestly seek information or instruction from him. This original meaning of irony has always been the basic principle of irony theories[9]. 
Through the experiment, Pexman and Zvaigzne found that people are more willing to use irony  with  people  who  are  in  solidary  relationships  because  solidary  relationships  are  close, liking,  and  mutual  supportive[10].  It  is  noteworthy  that  with  the  rapid  development  speed  of network  communication,  most  of  the  real  time  communication  are  conducted  via  internet. Some people who do not  like to use irony in real life are more inclined to use irony online, causing a strong contrast of personality on and off the internet.
Toplak  and  Katz  concluded  that  the  behavior  of  using  ironies  is  often  perceived  as insincere,  impolite,  humorous,  mocking,  offensive,  aggressive,  anger-provoking, non-instructional,  unclear,  and  the  speaker  was  regarded  as  in  his  or  her  own  pleasure[11]. Zhang considered that literal criticism can cause more anger than ironic criticism, and irony criticism  alleviate  the  anxiety  of  listeners  to  some  extent  and  is  accepted  more  easily  than literal criticism错误!未找到引用源。. Irony is also broadly used in daily life and it is deeply loved by people  on  account  of  broadening  connotative  and  considerable  artistic  effect[12].  Some researchers argued that irony dilutes the condemnation and it is a face-saving strategy[4,13-14]. While Cao believed that irony enhances condemnation and increasing harm to others[5]. 
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2.2 The Influence of Context on Irony
In  the  studies  of  figurative  language,  context  is  critical  in  interpreting  the  intended meaning.  However,  researchers’  opinions  remain  controversial  on  the  influence  of  context. This section reviews previous works of the influence of context on irony, including the ironic construction and the interpretation of negative constructions.
2.2.1 Interpretation of Ironic Construction
Except for conventional and familiar irony, default ironic interpretations are not salient in mental lexicon. Graded Salience Hypothesis has received some criticism for taking such a static view of the  concept  of salience while assigning a very limited role to context. On the other hand, the influence of context on the interpretation of irony remains to be controversial. “Context  effects”  stressed  that  contextual  information  affects  final  interpretations,  and  that when  it  is  strong  enough,  it  results  in  appropriate  readings  quite  early  on.  Giora  provided  a summary that there was a disagreement as to whether
(1)  initial  processing  stages  are  influenced  by  context  so  that  only  the  congruent meanings, or context-compatible meanings are accessed; or whether
(2) context has no influence on the initial lexical processes and therefore could not filter the context-incompatible at the early stages[33]. 
Quite a lot of researchers believed that context plays a critical role in irony interpretation. Studies  have  been  made  from  different  aspects  of  context:  processing  strategies  of  the context[44],  occupation  of  speakers  in  context[26],  and  incongruency  between  context  and target[47].

Tab. 3.1   Latin Square Design of Experiment stimuli 

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Fig 3.1   Schema of an experiment trial.