Dr Eleni Kapogianni, from the Department of English Language & Linguistics, has just been interviewed by the New York magazine website for its Science of Us site following on from her research on irony published earlier in the year.
New York is a bi-weekly lifestyle magazine, focusing on life in the city, with a circulation of around 400,000. Its Science of Us website concentrates on stories concerned with human behaviour.
Eleni comments on the presence of irony in social media, noting that its frequency of use is surprisingly high, given the lack of vocal and paralinguistic cues. ‘What’s interesting,’ she explains in the article, ‘is that in computer-mediated communication, you would expect that because there aren’t many opportunities to signal irony and provide cues – like gestures or facial expressions – you would expect that people avoid it.’
To read the full article, please see the New York magazine website here:
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/has-social-media-changed-how-we-use-sarcasm.html