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Part of
Irony in Language Use and Communication
Edited by Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston
[Figurative Thought and Language 1] 2017
► pp. 219–236

Chapter 10
Defaultness shines while affirmation pales

On idioms, sarcasm, and pleasure

The Defaultness Hypothesis (Giora et al., 2015c) maintains that it is Defaultness that reigns supreme, superseding all factors known to affect processing initially, such as degree of Non/literalness, Nonsalience, Context strength, or Affirmation. Here we focus on weighing degree of Defaultness against degree of Affirmation. We show that, as predicted, processing default, salient responses to familiar Negatives is faster than processing nondefault, low-salience responses to less-familiar Affirmative counterparts. We further show that, despite benefitting from equally strong contextual support, default nonsalient Negative Sarcasm is processed faster than nondefault nonsalient Affirmative Sarcasm. Using linguistic and pictorial contexts, we also demonstrate that it is Defaultness that accounts for Nondefaultness’ appeal, rendering it optimally innovative and hence pleasing. It is Defaultness, then, that singlehandedly affects both processing speed as well as likability.
Keywords: The Defaultness Hypothesis, Defaultness, Salience, affirmatives, negatives, Affirmative Sarcasm, Negative Sarcasm, processing speed, Pleasure Ratings
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Defaultness Hypothesis
    • 2.1On the superiority of default meanings
      • 2.1.1Predictions
      • 2.1.2Processing default meanings
        • Results and discussion
    • 2.2On the superiority of default interpretations
      • 2.2.1Predictions
      • 2.2.2Processing default interpretations
    • 2.3Non/defaultness and pleasurability
      • 2.3.1Predictions
      • 2.3.2Hedonic effects
  • 3.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.1.11gio
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Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Attardo, Salvatore
2023. Tracking the Ironical Eye: Eye Tracking Studies on Irony and Sarcasm. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 140 ff. DOI logo
Givoni, Shir, Dafna Bergerbest & Rachel Giora
2021. On figurative ambiguity, marking, and low-salience meanings. In Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage [Figurative Thought and Language, 11], ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo
Giora, Rachel, Inbal Jaffe, Israela Becker & Ofer Fein
2018. Strongly attenuating highly positive concepts. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 16:1 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Givoni, Shir & Rachel Giora
2018. Salience and Defaultness. In Handbuch Pragmatik, ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Irony in Linguistic Communication. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo

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