Saying what you don’t mean : cognitive mechanism of verbal irony

Irony refers to a phenomenon in which people say something they do not really mean. Numerous empirical studies have been conducted focusing on the processing models of irony and the factors which influence its processing. Relevant literature indicates that the understanding of ironic expressions complies more with the constraint-satisfaction model, a parallel model of language processing, in which all different stages are affected and restricted by such factors as types of irony, intonation, contexts and individual cognitive differences. Future research may be directed to issues like the unique nature of irony differentiating from other forms of non-literal language, the interactions between various influencing factors in irony processing, the combined use of different experimental paradigms, and the characteristics of Chinese irony compared with irony in other languages.