ABSTRACT
One line of explanation which has been particularly influential links the pragmatic deficits in autism with the reduced ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, an ability that is variously known as “mind reading,” “theory of mind,” “mentalizing,” and “folk psychology. Of course, pragmatic difficulties in autism also surface on the production side, most notably in the management of conversation dynamics and social interaction. Irony may be one of the most complex pragmatic phenomena, as it is defined by a conflict between literal and conveyed meaning, in some respect or other. In some cases at least, reversing the literal interpretation and getting to the ironic meaning requires that the speaker’s intentions be taken into account. Pragmatic theories make various distinctions between types of communicative skills and sub-skills, and there is a certain amount of consensus on what the key distinctions are.
