PhD Candidate Csilla Tatár, and Professors Jon Brennan, Jelena Krivokapić and Ezra Keshet have recently published an article in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, titled “Does prosody mark sarcasm early in an utterance? A production and perception study, including listeners who self-identified as being on the autism spectrum”. The full bibliographic information, as well as an abstract of the paper, are given below.
Tatár, C., Brennan, J. R., Krivokapić, J., & Keshet, E. (2026). Does prosody mark sarcasm early in an utterance? A production and perception study, including listeners who self-identified as being on the autism spectrum. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 1–40. doi:10.1017/S002510032500009X
Abstract: This study examines the utterance-initial prosodic marking of sarcasm in English and its perception in listeners who did and listeners who did not self-identify as being on the autism spectrum. We ask (i) whether speakers use prosody to mark sarcasm in the early, ‘pre-target’ portion of an utterance (that is, in the portion before a ‘target’ word most closely associated with the sarcastic intent occurs), (ii) whether individuals vary in how they mark sarcasm, (iii) whether listeners reliably recognize sarcasm from pre-target prosody alone, and (iv) whether recognition accuracy varies by speaker or self-identified autistic traits. Eight American English speakers were recorded producing utterances presented in contexts conducive to either sarcasm or sincerity. Pre-target parts were presented in a two-alternative forced-choice experiment to individuals who either did (n=51) or did not (n=44) self-identify as being on the autism spectrum, and were examined for syllable duration and f0-related properties (maximum, minimum, range, and wiggliness). Results show that speakers distinguish sarcasm and sincerity in the pre-target region with duration being the most salient marker. Most listeners recognize sarcasm from pre-target fragments, but there is variation in how well each speaker is perceived. Whether the listener self-identified as being on the autism spectrum or not does not predict sarcasm and sincerity recognition accuracy. The results provide evidence that utterance-initial prosody contributes to sarcasm recognition, with the proviso that speaker and listener variation be taken into account.
