Argumentum, Vol. 22 (2026), pp. 17–31.

Children’s understanding of nonliteral criticism: A pilot study of speaker belief and attitude

Marianna Szabóné Habók  

    University of Debrecen, Doctoral School of Linguistics, Literary and Cultural Studies

    mannahabok@gmail.com

DOI: 10.34103/ARGUMENTUM/2026/2

Abstract

This study describes a pilot experiment investigating children’s recognition of speaker belief and their evaluation of speaker attitude in literal and nonliteral utterances. Following the logic of Glenwright and Pexman’s (2010) paradigm, a set of puppet shows was presented to preschool children aged 5–6 years (N = 18) and first-grade children aged 6–7 years (N = 20) and an adult control group (N = 9). The nonliteral stories included person-directed sarcastic criticism and situation-directed ironic criticism.

    Preschool children showed lower and more variable accuracy in nonliteral items, while first-grade children performed more accurately and consistently. Literal praise received the most positive attitude ratings, literal criticism the most negative, and the two nonliteral criticism types intermediate ratings. The difference between person-directed sarcastic criticism and situation-directed ironic criticism was not sta­tistically significant. These findings suggest that earlier developmental patterns in nonliteral criticism comprehension can also be observed among Hungarian-speaking children.

Keywords: children, nonliteral criticism, irony comprehension, sarcasm, speaker belief, speaker attitude

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