Children,irony and philosophy

Abstract

In her very influential book, The Point of Words (1988), Ellen Winner presents strong evidence that children younger than six can understand and use metaphors, but not irony. Winner, however, fails to consider ‘philosophical story irony’ in her research. This sort of irony is a little like dramatic irony. We have a case of such irony whenever there is some proposition, p, such that (1) according to a story, or some character in a story, it is true that p, even though (2) we, the audience, understand that not p, and (3) we won’t be able to offer a helpful explanation of why anyone would think that p without clarifying some philosophically problematic concept basic to the supposition that p. Even very young children can understand and appreciate examples of philosophical story irony, as the popularity of a certain kind of children’s literature reveals.