Parental Patterns of Irony Use and Preschoolers' Irony Comprehension in Hungarian Families

Szabóné Habók, Marianna (2026) Parental Patterns of Irony Use and Preschoolers' Irony Comprehension in Hungarian Families. ALKALMAZOTT NYELVTUDOMÁNY, XXVI (1). pp. 186-215. ISSN 1587-1061

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Abstract

This paper presents the findings from two studies exploring associations between parental irony use and preschool children’s irony comprehension. The first study investigates the relationship between Hungarian parental irony use and children’s irony comprehension skills, using adapted tools from Banasik-Jemielniak et al. (2020). A moderate positive correlation was found between mothers’ irony use and children’s irony comprehension scores in this pilot sample. The second study expands this investigation by surveying a broader parental sample. The results describe gender-related patterns in irony use and varied irony use across norm-based scenario types. While group averages were not significantly different, mothers more often reported explaining ironic utterances. With the aim of contributing novel data from Hungarian families, the studies complement existing research and add cross-linguistic descriptive evidence on parental practices and children’s irony comprehension. The findings can motivate observational and longitudinal work on how everyday exposure relates to early pragmatic development.

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