Social knowledge about a speaker can include stereotypes on their occupation (e.g., more or less prone to sarcastic remarks). This knowledge constrains ironic interpretation early-on, as revealed by the modulations of synchronization we observed in the upper gamma band in the 150–250 ms time window. There was greater synchronization in the ironic context compared to the literal context condition when the speaker has a “sarcastic occupation”. This result supports the constraint satisfaction model according to which multiple sources of information are used as soon as they are available, in the early stage of language processing.
Maud Champagne-Lavau, Deirdre Bolger, and Madelyne Klein. 2023. “Impact of Social Knowledge about the Speaker on Irony Understanding: Evidence from Neural Oscillations.” Social Neuroscience 18 (1): 28–45 — @HAL