How to put an elephant in the title: modeling humorous incongruity with topoi

Abstract:

In humour theories incongruity is a crucial feature in characterising a humorous event, and giving it a formal definition is important for accounting for why something is considered amusing. In this work we address the problem of formalising incongruity within a computational framework, thereby exploring the ability of a machine to detect the source of humorous incongruity and being able to adapt its behaviour accordingly. In our formalisation we draw attention to dialogical and incremental perspectives on humour. To capture mismatches between the information states of dialogue participants, we adopt the notions of enthymemes and topoi as instances and types of defeasible argumentation items.

Research areas:

• IncReD
• Laughter

Year:

2019

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Book title:

roceedings of the 23rd Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue - Full Papers