Irony Processing: A Generational Analysis

Abstract Irony and sarcasm have existed since the conception of organized language. While language may have evolved over time, the mechanisms of irony have not. By violating Grice’s various maxims of conversation, irony allows for more dynamic and robust communication (Grice, Cole, and Morgan, 1975). It allows individuals to convey varying levels of accuracy or ambiguity, which further one main goal of conversation: to convey emotion. The rise of the internet has allowed for people all over the world to communicate instantly. As such, people were lead to generate a new method of communication, unique to this new medium. The most efficient and recognizable subset of this new pseudo-language is the “internet meme,” which draws its communicative strength primarily through irony and sarcasm. By layering common cultural themes and the overarching socio-political environment, memes allow individuals to discern meaning from even the simplest, least apparently relevant symbols. Since millennials have spent their most formative years interacting and growing alongside the technology, it stands to reason that they would be the most attuned to the intricacies of memes and internet language. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that, since millennials spend most of their time communicating in intricately layered ironic phrases, they would be better than their predecessors at discerning and comprehending irony. The current research question concerns a possible discrepancy in the abilities of different age groups to comprehend sarcasm. I hypothesize that Generation Y (Millennials) will be significantly faster and more accurate than older generations at recognizing and comprehending sarcasm in mutually familiar media. In order to test this hypothesis, participants performed an ironic determination task. Reaction time and accuracy were recorded. Analysis of these data revealed significant support of the present hypothesis. Millennials correctly identified more ironic targets than the Gen X group, as well as taking less time to make correct distinctions.