Humor is a literary device that I’m sure everyone is familiar with. We use humor everyday when interacting with family, friends, and even people that we may have just met. There are lots of ways to be humorous and oftentimes this attempt to be funny comes from 3 major components; irony, sarcasm, and satire. The 3 are all very closely tied, varying slightly. These differences are what I will explore through this paper. So far there is a fair amount of data and research that analyzes works from unrelated fields that use the 3 components in varying ways. There are others that provide examples outlined with clear definitions of irony, sarcasm, and satire, making the differences clear enough for me to report on. Using this information I will first outline the details of each variable comparing and contrasting. Next I will break down experiments that have already been done that aim to answer the question of when humans acquire this skill of using irony or even when they start to understand it. Children often gain a sense of humor at a young age and I’m curious to see whether their jokes are intentional and whether they understand the mechanics of irony without even realizing it. Another point in this paper will be what happens when people with a neurodivergence cannot recognize humor and make the distinction in conversation of seriousness vs. joking. People that have autism and other syndromes that make it hard to pick up on social cues, especially in language, have the hardest time grasping these specific skills. I hope to find articles and papers that show how SLPs and other professionals can be helpful in these areas and perhaps by learning how SLPs try to explain humor, it can be beneficial to the overall goal of this paper. What’s great about this topic is that it combines my genuine confusion between irony, sarcasm, and satire, curiosity about innate human nature, and desire to better understand my role as a future SLP, all while investigating semantics and pragmatics. 

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