Humor Generation Research Articles

Directives and references in selected coronavirus-motivated internet memes

Abstract The use of directives in communicating the nature of the pandemic and reference to social experiences were promoted using images on social media platforms. The images or memes are used to create awareness and reinforce the criteria for safety during the pandemic. Previous studies on internet memes have concentrated on humor generation, speaker-hearer shared knowledge, neologism, and multimodality among others, with insufficient attention paid to the use of directives and references in such coronavirus-motivated memes. This paper, therefore, examines how directives and references are employed in conveying expected social responsibilities through coronavirus-motivated internet memes in Nigeria and other socio-cultural contexts. For data, one hundred coronavirus-motivated memes were purposively selected from Facebook, and eight representative memes were subjected to pragmatic analysis using aspects of Jacob Mey’s (2001. Pragmatics: An introduction, 2nd edn. USA: Blackwell Publishing) pragmatic acts theory to unearth insights from them. The paper observes that the various spheres of life that are relatable to an online audience help to express what the pandemic is about and enhance the meaning of the pandemic with the context of the use of the memes, giving clearer perspectives on the pandemic. Directives and references are useful tools for conveying social responsibilities to online audience.

Study on the Translation of Verbal Humor in Bridget Jones’s Diary from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Humor is a common phenomenon in daily life. Essentially, it is a special form of verbal communication. Since humor bears special language and cultural characteristics, the difficulty of translation is self-evident for translators. For many years, the translatability and untranslatability of humor have been the focus of the argument among scholars. Relevance theory attempts to explain the mechanism of humor generation and its translation from the perspective of cognition. Under the framework of relevance theory, this paper takes Bridget Jones's Diary and its Chinese version as the research object to explore the translation strategies of verbal humor, and evaluate whether the Chinese translation can represent the same humorous effect as the original. The results show that the translator adopts direct and indirect translation strategies when translating verbal humor, and the translation strategies have effectively achieved the same humorous effect as the original to some extent if the target language readers share the similar cognitive environment with the source language readers in some situations. Nevertheless, the humorous effects may not be fully conveyed in the target texts, especially when translating culturally loaded words and idiomatic expressions. In such cases, the author puts forward some tentative suggestions for improving the translated texts. The study makes an attempt to provide a feasibility analysis for the studies on translation of verbal humor in diary novels.

Cognitive processes in selecting humorous punchlines: A comparative study of humor and creativity

Humor generation represents the application of creative cognition in spontaneous, real-life contexts. This study sought to explore the cognitive processes involved in humor generation, with a special focus on the selection of humorous punchlines, by comparing humor and creativity. Employing a daily dialogue Question-Answer paradigm, participants were presented with four types of alternative answers for each dialogue: humorous, novel (non-humorous), routine, and irrelevant. Utilizing eye-tracking technology, the study tracked participants' eye movement trajectories during the selection of humorous punchlines, with a focus on fixation durations on the four answer types at different time intervals. Fifty participants were randomly assigned to either the group tasked with selecting humorous answers or the group tasked with selecting novel answers. The findings indicated that the humor group initially spent more time fixating on novel answers than humorous ones when selecting humorous punchlines; however, in the later stages, fixation duration on humorous answers surpassed that on novel answers. This dynamic underscores a competitive relationship between these two types of associations, shedding light on the cognitive distinctions between humor and creativity. Conversely, the novel group consistently exhibited a preference for humorous answers throughout the punchline selection process. The preference for humorous semantics in the novel group underscored cognitive similarities between humor and creativity. This study sheds light on the cognitive processes involved in selecting humorous punchlines and provides valuable insights into the cognitive parallels and distinctions between humor and creativity.

Electroencephalography (EEG) Evidence for the Psychological Processes of Humor Generation: A Comparison Perspective on Humor and Creativity.

(1) Background: Humor stands out as the most dynamic and innovative aspect of human intelligence. Drawing on the cognitive parallels between humor and creativity, this study explored the EEG alpha frequency band activity patterns during humor generation by comparing the process of generating humorous and creative ideas. (2) Methods: Thirty-six participants were randomly assigned to either the humor generation group or the creative generation group, and the dependent variable was the neural oscillation in both low-frequency and high-frequency alpha during the early, middle, and late stages of both humor and creative generation. (3) Results: In the early stages, both humor and creative generation exhibited significantly higher power in low-frequency alpha and high-frequency alpha in the temporal region compared to the middle and late stages. In the middle and late stages, the low-frequency alpha oscillation in the frontal region for humor generation was significantly higher than that for creative generation. (4) Conclusions: Humor and creative generation share similar neural activation patterns in the early stages, involving the activation and retrieval of long-term memory information based on contextual cues. The differences between the two primarily manifest in the middle and late stages, where the selection of humorous ideas requires inhibiting not only irrelevant or ordinary ideas, akin to creative generation but also novel yet non-humorous ideas. This study sheds light on the neurocognitive mechanisms of humor generation and provides insights into the cognitive parallels and distinctions between humor generation and creative generation.

Talk Funny! A Large-Scale Humor Response Dataset with Chain-of-Humor Interpretation

Humor is a crucial part of human communication. Understanding humor and generating humorous responses in dialogue can provide natural and empathic human-computer interactions. However, most existing pre-trained language models (PLMs) perform unsatisfactorily in humor generation. On one hand, the serious shortage of humor corpus and datasets pose challenges for constructing models that can understand and generate humorous expressions. On the other hand, humor generation relies on rich knowledge and commonsense, which is often tacit and unspoken. In this paper, we construct the largest Chinese Explainable Humor Response Dataset to date with chain-of-humor and humor mind map annotations, which can be used to comprehensively evaluate as well as improve the humorous response ability of PLMs. We further design humor-related auxiliary tasks to further enhance PLMs' humorous response performance. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that our proposed dataset and auxiliary tasks effectively help PLMs to generate humorous responses, laying the groundwork for future humor research.

Time is a Funny Thing: Response Times and Humor Quality in a Creative Joke Production Task

Abstract Generating creative ideas takes time: the first idea to come to mind is usually obvious, and people need time to shift strategies, enact executive processes, and evaluate and revise an idea. The present research explored the role of time in creative humor production tasks, which give people a prompt and ask them to create a funny response. A sample of 152 young adults completed four joke stems prompts. Their response times were recorded, and the responses were judged for humor quality (funniness) by six independent judges and by the participants themselves. Mixed-effect models found that, at the within-person level, response time’s link to humor quality diverged for judges and participants. The judges’ ratings of funniness predicted longer response times (relatively funnier responses took longer to create), but participants’ self-ratings of their own responses predicted shorter response times (relatively funnier responses were created faster). Controlling for elaboration (quantified via word count of the response) diminished the effect of judge-rated humor but not participant-rated humor. Taken together, the results suggest that the role of time in humor generation is complex: judges may be weighting elaboration more heavily when judging funniness, whereas participants may be weighting metacognitive cues like ease-of-generation when judging their own ideas.

Monitoring, treatment and care of glaucoma

Glaucoma is a serious ophthalmic disease with extremely high blindness rates, second only to cataracts. Glaucoma can be divided into 3 types according to clinical practise: primary glaucoma, secondary glaucoma, and congenital glaucoma. If glaucoma is not treated in a timely manner, it can lead to irreparable results. Therefore, the prevention and treatment of glaucoma is particularly important, and it is necessary to emphasize early detection, diagnosis, and treatment. The main symptom of glaucoma is an increase in intraocular pressure caused by aqueous humor and excessive generation of blocked discharge, but intraocular pressure is controllable. When intraocular pressure increases, it can cause many irreversible damage in the eye, such as optic disc atrophy, visual field loss, visual loss, and severe pain. This article will review the monitoring, treatment, and care of glaucoma. Monitoring mainly includes traditional equipment and new equipment. Treatment can also be divided into traditional methods and new methods, and their advantages and limitations are compared. In the end, the article will provide some suggestions for daily care of glaucoma patients.

Analysis of the Relationship Between Presupposition Theory and Humour Generation—Taking Automobile Advertising as an Example

Analysis of the Relationship Between Presupposition Theory and Humour Generation—Taking Automobile Advertising as an Example

НЕОҐРАЙСІВСЬКІ ЛІНГВОПРАГМАТИЧНІ ПІДХОДИ ДО ВИВЧЕННЯ ВЕРБАЛЬНОГО ГУМОРУ: ТЕОРЕТИЧНИЙ ТА ЕМПІРИЧНИЙ СИНТЕЗ

Among modern cognitive approaches to uncovering the mechanism of humor generation, the most famous are the Semantic Script Theory of Humor and its improved version – the General Theory of Verbal Humor, which are united under the umbrella of frame/script incongruity inherent in humor. This study is devoted to one of the most discussed pragmatic approaches, which is a part of the General Theory of Verbal Humor, the so-called neo-Gricean theory of Raskin and Attardo. It consists in the fact that jokes, as well as other comic forms, constitute a non-bona-fide mode of communication, which is opposed to the Gricean model and accordingly, it is guided by the humour cooperative principle. On the basis of the analysis of these authors conception (Attardo & Raskin 1994; Attardo 1993, 2003, 2017, etc.) on non-observance of cooperative maxims in a humorous message a zone of productive criticism was highlighted, namely: insufficient distinction between the concepts of 'violation' vs 'flout' of maxims (Dynel 2008, 2013); lack of proper interest in the social context and emotional background of communication, presupposed by Relevance Theory and Politeness Theory, and, accordingly, the communicative norms are limited only by the cooperative principle of Grice; the lack of criteria for intentional violation of communicative maxims, necessary for the identification of humorous implicatures. The comic effect is more likely to be recognised, if, in the course of interpretation, the addressee discovers a repeated maxim flouting, as well as possible ignoring of other norms. Therefore, it is proposed to include to the generally accepted list of Grice's maxims Leach's principle of politeness, which is mostly focused not on the substantive aspect of communication, but on the social one: the speaker's attitude towards third parties in a status-role hierarchy. The obtained results of the theoretical exploration are integrated into an improved model of humor interpretation and illustrated by a intent-analysis of a verbal joke.

Dynamic cognitive processes of humor generation: activation and inhibition of information.

Humor is a lubricant of interpersonal relationships and is regarded as an important quality of individual creativity. Previous studies have mainly focused on passive humor appreciation and comprehension but ignored active humor generation, especially the cognitive process of humor generation. Based on the hypothesis that humor generation is similar to creative cognition, this study used humorous two-part allegorical sayings to explore whether humor generation involves the cognitive processes of the activation and inhibition of information. The experiment manipulated the duration (5/10s) of the presentation of the first part of humorous two-part allegorical sayings, which are called "yinyu," and the type of subthreshold probe words (humorous probe words/usual probe words). The results showed that the interaction between the duration of the presentation of yinyu and the type of subthreshold probe words was significant; the correct number of humorous probe words reported was significantly lower than that of usual probe words when the yinyu was presented for 5s, which reflected the widespread activation of information. The correct number of humorous probe words reported was significantly higher than that of usual probe words when the yinyu was presented for 10s, which suggested the inhibition of non-humorous information. This study revealed the dynamic cognitive processes of humor generation and verified possible cognitive similarities between humor generation and creative cognition.

PRAGMATIC TRIGGERS OF THE UPDATE OF THE COMIC EFFECT IN THE UKRAINIAN JOKE

The article deals with the pragmatic devices of the humor generation and interpretationin the Ukrainian anecdotes. The research particularly focuses on the cooperative maxims' violationasthe trigger of unexpectedness and scripts' opposition. The function of conversational implicaturesin decoding of incongruity and inference of the intended additional meaning has been establishedin the cognitive-pragmatic framework.

An Analysis of Humorous Utterances in Young Sheldon Based on Relevance Theory

Humor reflects the wisdom of the speaker and their positive attitudes towards life. The study of cognitive mechanisms of language humor is an important research topic in the field of cognitive linguistics. Relevance Theory holds that understanding humor is a cognitive process of seeking relevance and it is conducive to making a reasonable illustration of the general rules of how humor can be understood. Based on Relevance Theory, this study analyzes the humorous utterances in the American sitcom Young Sheldon (season 4) by employing a qualitative research method, aiming to explore the cognitive mechanism of humor generation. The findings indicate that: (1) Humor tends to be generated when there is an implicature caused by rhetoric in ostensive information; (2) The inconsistency between maximal relevance and optimal relevance generates a humorous effect; (3) Humor is likely to be created when a contextual effect is insufficient, especially between an adult and a child. To further explore detailed cognitive steps in humor generation, more research combined with other cognitive theories can be conducted in the future.

Natural Language Generation and Creative Writing A Systematic Review

Among studies on natural language generation (NLG), computational creativity, and human-computer interaction; there is a vision of witnessing these tools collaborating with humans in generating and authoring creative content. This study aims to systematically review published studies discussing creative writing and story generation during the period of 2016-2021. This work seeks to identify the primary research methods used in NLG and creative writing studies, to locate how these studies are distributed geographically, and finally, to classify the subfields or common keywords primarily used in NLG involving creative writing. The findings suggest that experiment studies and problem-solving were the most common research methods in NLG and creative writing. Major identified themes in the reviewed articles include story generation, language models, and co-creativity, along with some gaps in foreign language translation and humour generation studies. The majority of the studies suggest that NLG tasks had a positive impact on creative writing. Common tasks related to NLG and creative writing are typically using keywords such as story generation, co-creativity, co-writing, user interface and writing tools. In future work, we aim to explore more GPT-3 capabilities in creative writing, in addition to creative writing applications in foreign language translation tasks.

Analysis of Speech Humor in Crosstalk From Principles of Cooperation and Relevance Theory

Cross talk is one of the unique performing arts in China, and most crosstalk gives the audience happy feelings through the delivery of humorous language. This paper interprets the generation of humor in crosstalk through the cooperation principles and the relevance theory, and the generation of the humorous results comes from the contrast between ostensive-inference model and the contrast between maximal relevance and optimal relevance.

A superiority–inferiority hypothesis on disparagement humor: The role of disposition toward ridicule

AbstractThe present paper adopts and substantiates a superiority–inferiority hypothesis on disparagement humor generation and appreciation. Two between‐subjects (identification with a character acting as victimizer or victim) experiments address disparaging humorous advertising effectiveness, providing a novel perspective on very old questions. Perceived superiority and inferiority autonomously mediate the relationship between a disparaging advertisement and perceived humorousness. Individuals with high superiority motivation (i.e., high‐katagelasticists) experience increased humorousness and an improved attitude toward the brand when they identify with a character acting as victimizer in the disparaging ad. People with a motivation to avoid inferiority (i.e., high‐gelotophobes) experience reduced humorousness and lower positive attitudes toward the brand when they identify with a character who is victimized in the disparaging ad. Gelotophiles are not driven by feelings of superiority or inferiority and experience increased humorousness as well as more positive brand attitudes irrespective of the ad's victimization focus.

Postoperative complicated peripheral cortical cataract after ultrasound cycloplasty: a case report

BackgroundUltrasound cycloplasty (UCP) is a non-invasive procedure for glaucoma treatment. Using high-intensity focused ultrasound to work on the ciliary body, the generation of aqueous humor can be reduced and the drainage of aqueous humor through the uveoscleral pathway can be enhanced. Recently, this therapy is gradually gaining clinical recognition. We report a case of a patient with glaucoma who accepted UCP in another hospital, but because of a worsening of a preexistent cataract and an insufficient IOP lowering effect, finally underwent cataract surgery in both eyes in our hospital, during the surgery we observed the unusual opacities probably due to UCP mistreatment.Case presentationPatient was diagnosed as chronic angle closure glaucoma and catacract, accepted UCP on both eyes in another hospital 4 months ago. After the UCP therapy, the pupil was vertical ellipse, the UCP didn’t have a sufficient effect on IOP and forced us to do cataract surgery to lower IOP. During the cataract surgery, some unusual white opacities in the peripheral cortex with clear boundary were found. Inaccurate WtW measurement was the most likely cause of the injury, which resulted in the use of the small-size UCP probe and the downward movement of the UCP probe.ConclusionUCP should not be a first line treatment in a patient with cataract and angle closure glaucoma, cataract extraction is a better choice. The appropriate case selection needs to be more strict and the preoperative indexes measurements need to be more accurate.

Human trabecular meshwork cell behavior is influenced by collagen scaffold pore architecture and glycosaminoglycan composition.

Glaucoma is a degenerative eye disease in which damage to the optic nerve leads to a characteristic loss of vision. The primary risk factor for glaucoma is an increased intraocular pressure that is caused by an imbalance of aqueous humor generation and subsequent drainage through the trabecular meshwork (TM) drainage system. The small size, donor tissue limitations, and high complexity of the TM make it difficult to research the relationship between the TM cells and their immediate environment. Thus, a biomaterial-based approach may be more appropriate for research manipulations and in vitro drug development platforms. In this work, human TM (hTM) cells were cultured on various collagen scaffolds containing different glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and different pore architectures to better understand how hTM cells respond to changes in their extracellular environment. Cellular response was measured by quantifying cellular proliferation and expression of an important extracellular matrix protein, fibronectin. The pore architecture of the scaffolds was altered using freeze-casting technique to make both large and small pores that were aligned or with a non-aligned random structure. The composition of the scaffolds was altered with the addition of chondroitin sulfate and/or hyaluronic acid. It was found that the hTM cells grown on large pore scaffolds proliferate more than those grown on small pores. There was an increase in the fibronectin expression with the incorporation of GAGs, and its morphology was changed by the underlying pore architecture. This work will help provide an insight into the behavior of hTM cells when introducing changes in their microenvironment.

Study on Development of Humor Discriminator for Dialogue System

Studies on automatic dialogue systems, which allow people and computers to communicate with each other using natural language, have been attracting attention. In particular, the main objective of a non-task-oriented dialogue system is not to achieve a specific task but to amuse users through chat and free dialogue. For this type of dialogue system, continuity of the dialogue is important because users can easily get tired if the dialogue is monotonous. On the other hand, preceding studies have shown that speech with humorous expressions is effective in improving the continuity of a dialogue. In this study, we developed a computer-based humor discriminator to perform user- or situation-independent objective discrimination of humor. Using the humor discriminator, we also developed an automatic humor generation system and conducted an evaluation experiment with human subjects to test the generated jokes. A t-test on the evaluation scores revealed a significant difference (P value: 3.5×10-5) between the proposed and existing methods of joke generation.

The Realationship Between Managers’ Humor Styles and Employees’ Perceptions of Organizational Culture

The workforce of Generation Z members are increasing in number, especially in the retailsector. The fact that they are young causesthem to leave their jobs easily. It is crucial to make them adopt the organizational culture so as to prevent high turnover rates. The use of appropriate style of humor in organizations can result in making this workforce adopt the organizational culture by heart. This paper focuses on examining the relationship between managers’ humor styles and organizational culture of Generation Z employees in retail sector by means of quantitative analysis. A survey form that consists of two scales and demographical questions is used. The former scale is “Humor Styles Questionnaire” (HSQ) with 32 items, which is developed by Martin and Puhlik-Doris (2003). The latter scale is “Organizational Culture Questionnaire” with 36 items, which is developed by Denison (1999). According to the findings, there is a statistically significant relationship between managers’ humor styles and Generation Z employees’ organizational culture perceptions.

Breaking frame and frame-shifting in Bassem Youssef’s satirical TV show al-Bernāmeg

This paper reviews how humor is made in terms of three theoretical models. First, it draws on the contribution of the structural semantics to the understanding of the text of the joke, especially the related notion of isotopy and the linear organization of the text of the joke. Second, this paper discusses humor in light of the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH), and the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). Third, this paper draws also on two pragmatic and discursive approaches, namely Grice’s cooperative principle, and Simpson’s model of satire as a discourse. This paper argues that semantic incongruities and their resolutions, as well as the violations of the cooperation principle can be best apprehended in light of the frames theory as developed in social sciences by Erving Goffman and frameshifting theory as it has been developed by Seana Coulson. The aim of this paper is to reveal the mechanism used toproduce humorand laughter in one of the most popular satirical shows in the Arab world, Bassem Youssef’s al-Bernāmeg. The focus is not only on what humor/satire does (ridicule, mockery, attack of targets, overstepping of boundaries…), but also on how it does it (violation of codes, breaking frames, frame-shifting, conceptual blending) and why these discursive strategies are used (implications in light of historical and cultural context). This paper also argues that the generation of humor can be based broadly on breaking frames, which is inclusive of incongruity (both verbal and contextual), but studied in a multimodal content where incongruity is based on breaking and shattering frames that are constructed in verbal and visual forms. Humor generation is conducted through a continuous chain-like process of building, shattering, and rebuilding frames. It also deals with the frame-shifting and conceptual blending mechanisms at the level of interpretation and the construction of the meaning of humor. The aim is to account for the creative and flexible use of language for satiric purposes and thus to enhance the ability of traditional frame-based systems, including script-opposition theory to account for such flexibility in light of context and with reference to background.