Conventionality in irony development

Abstract Unlike other figurative language abilities, irony emerges rather late, and its mastering takes place over a protracted window of development. Whilst its late emergence reflects the later development of prerequisite skills, its protracted development is likely to reflect the fact that some ironies are easier to grasp than others. In this paper, we discuss how conventionality is one factor which is likely to contribute to how easily ironies are mastered, yet despite this the nature of conventionality in irony and its effects on irony development are mostly unexplored. We argue for the existence of multiple sources of conventionality for irony likely to play a crucial role in its development. Since some of these sources facilitate adult irony processing, we investigate whether conventionality is likely to be a help to achieve proficient irony comprehension or rather a hinderance, as it has been found to be elsewhere in pragmatic development.