ABSTRACT
Most models of language acquisition deal with naturally occurring direct speech acts and rarely contain constructs which explain how children come to understand ironic utterances. Research indicates that children do comprehend some forms of irony even at an early age. Irony is often cited as an example of an indirect speech act. Irony can be grouped with metaphor, insinuation and other indirect forms into a class of acts that use variant or non-standard semantic rules for interpretation. One of the most persuasive interpretations of irony can be found in the work of D. S. Kaufer. The chapter examines the effects of pictorial cues and verbal cues on children's comprehension of ironic utterances. The paragraphs in the explicit nonliteral set were the same as the nonliteral stories but included as well as modifier in the utterance sentence to highlight the speaker's ironic intent in using the utterance.
