Task Effects in Irony Comprehension in English as a Foreign Language

Irony comprehension involves understanding implicit attitudes communicated on top of the explicit, literal meaning. Because of the double-binding stemming from the explicit-implicit incongruity, irony is assumed to be cognitively taxing when communicated in the native language (NL), and even more so in the foreign language (FL). Prior studies investigating irony comprehension in the FL indicated that irony may be processed with similar speed and accuracy in the foreign and the native language, and that irony comprehension efficiency in the former might be lower. Building on these findings, this study investigates if the tasks participants perform when reading irony in their FL affect the efficiency of irony comprehension. We invited 150 advanced Polish users of English to take part in one of two tasks. Participants were asked to read 3- to 5-sentence-long-scenarios, ending in literal (Literal Praise, Literal Criticism) or ironic comments (Ironic Praise, Ironic Criticism) and to either (1) make true/false judgments (T/F task; N = 83), or to (2) judge the emotional value in emotive decision task (EDT; N = 67). A full spectrum of verbal irony employed to communicate ironic praise and criticism, and their literal equivalents: literal praise and literal criticism, was tested. A three-way mixed ANOVA with 2× Valence (Praise, Criticism), 2× Mode (Literal, Ironic) as within-subject repeated-measures, and 2× Task (True/False, Emotive Decision) as a between-subject independent measure, revealed that efficiency of irony comprehension was differently modified by the two tasks. Therefore, we argue that irony comprehension in English as a foreign language is task-constrained.