Lecture: What's in a pun?

Assessing the relationship between phonological and semantic distance and perceived funniness of punning jokes

Punning jokes are a form of humorous wordplay based on semantic ambiguity between two phonologically similar words, in a sentence context where both meanings are more or less acceptable. In this study, we aimed to quantify and compare phonological and semantic distance between the words in a punning joke and assess their influence on its perceived funniness. This was done in an explorative manner using different methods from computational linguistics on a set of punning jokes rated for funniness.

In this talk, the results from this investigation will be presented, together with a slightly more critical view on the question whether it is worthwhile to focus on such a detailed aspect of such a complex phenomenom. In this context, different theories on linguistic humour will be revisited and the phenomenon of punning will be put in context.

Info

Day: 2021-11-20
Start time: 14:30
Duration: 00:30
Room: 🧉
Track: Computational Linguistics
Language: en

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