Humour Recognition
Chair: Stephen Skalicky
The strange case of laughing alone when talking
Angus McLachlan, Federation
Cracking Smiles: the Zygomaticus Major Response to Different Joke Types
Luca Bischetti, Paolo Canal, Chiara Bertini, Irene Ricci, Serena Lecce and Valentina Bambini
IUSS Pavia
Training Japanese Learners of English to Recognize Verbal Irony in Conversation
Caleb Prichard and John Rucynski, Okayama
Comments 10
Hello Everyone!
My name is Stephen and I am a member of the organising committee for AHSN 2021! Many thanks to the authors of these three wonderful talks for putting in the time to record and upload their presentations. These papers are presented under the theme “humour recognition,” and we can see that they all touch on different aspects of what is indeed a complicated and fascinated process. Two major aspects immediately stand out to me: the importance of context and the inability to separate humour from language use. For context, we see that humour is associated with more than just the linguistic aspect of the jokes, for it is also related to contextual cues, physical movements of the face, and cultural knowledge. Moreover, this research highlights how critical it is to consider the communicative, social, and cultural functions associated with humour as it is embedded in language use.
I’ll start us all off with a general question: do these presentations further complicate the “role” of laughter and smiling when it comes to humour, or does it further entrench some of our current understandings, such as the danger of associated laughter with humour?
I encourage you all to make active use of this discussion in the next few days and look forward to the conversation. Moreover, please continue the conversation afterwards by sending emails directly to the presenters if you’d like to learn more!
Thanks again,
Stephen Skalicky
Interesting papers, I enjoyed watching them.
For Caleb Prichard.
Thank you for your presentation, Caleb. Of course I’m familiar with your and John’s work across the street from me. 🙂
Your discussion of what sarcasm is makes me want to reconsider it somewhat. Is it a refined type of humor (perhaps by “refined” I mean subtle and requiring a lot of cues and extra thought processing), or is it actually a pretty flat and unimaginative type of humor (i.e., lacking anything else humorous to say, simply say the opposite of what you mean)? (I speak as a serial user of sarcasm.)
What do you think? If someone has difficulty registering a phrase like “Wow, I can see you’ve been working hard on the dishes” as (humorous) sarcasm, do you think it is difficult because it’s so nuanced, or do you think it’s difficult because it’s so blunt and obvious that it just doesn’t reach that person’s threshold of “funny”?
I sometimes think that with my Japanese students it’s not so much that they can’t “register” sarcasm, but more that they can’t “tolerate” it, like it doesn’t quite meet their standards of what is worth laughing and joking about. But of course, as you said, there is sarcastic humor in Japan.
Thanks again.
Thanks Scott,
I think it varies; some is subtle and some is obvious (dripping sarcasm).
Some sarcasm is “refined,” “nuanced,” and keeps listeners on their feet. In fact, research show intelligent people have an easier time getting it. It takes simultaneous processing of the verbal message, the context, visual cues, & prosody.
However, you are right that some is so obvious and simple, like just stating the opposite of what you mean.
In the training, my students did not always get it, and if they did, they may not have always liked it. However, I think they did appreciate some sarcasm/jocularity, especially jocular irony when delivered in a silly way. They also liked modelling the “slow clap,” which is often a sarcastic applause.
Hi Scott. Thank you for your comments and questions.
It is interesting to consider whether Japanese people just don’t “tolerate” sarcasm. However, I think there often is the case of not registering sarcasm, often because it is so spontaneous and unexpected. I would imagine that a lot of the sarcasm used in Japan is between close acquaintances. While this is also fairly true in our own culture, there are exceptions. I think back to a long-distance bus trip me and Caleb took in the States. As we are about to depart, the driver (obviously a complete stranger to all of us), looked back and noticed that the bus was at about 10 percent capacity and yelled out “No fighting over the seats!” I can’t imagine a bus driver in Japan making such a spontaneous comment with strangers, so this is just one example of when the sarcasm could indeed be hard to “register.” This is also another example of how humor often is dependent on factors other than just linguistic proficiency.
Just watched and enjoyed Luca’s presentation. Couple of points: (1) what instructions did participants received ? Did they expect to only read jokes? (2) What difference might it make, if any, were the jokes to be delivered orally? Angus
Dear Angus, thanks for your comments.
Concerning (1), participants were instructed to read the short stories (or dialogues) on the screen. Punchlines were presented in a word-by-word fashion, with the EMG analysis time-locked to the onset of the specific word that triggered the humorous ending vs a non-humorous, plausible, and straightforward word. We do not have an exact measure of humor expectancy, yet we imagine that after few short stories participants understood that the experiment involved humorous and non-humorous dialogue. Due to the manipulation and experimental question, the experiment was rather long and we had no space (nor machine time) to include a higher number of fillers.
Concerning (2), if we compare our results with previous studies, and specifically with Fiacconi & Owen (2015, Plos One), it appears that the humor begins to evoke higher EMG activity over the zygomaticus major about 800ms after the onset of humorous triggers (even if they presented participants with funny riddles, rather than canned jokes). Therefore, it seems that something crucial happens between ~700ms and 1000ms after humorous target word onset, across the written and auditory modality: this directly connects with EEG/ERP results showing the P600 component for humor comprehension (and pragmatic inferencing towards joke resolution) as shown in Canal et al., 2019 (Brain Cognition). Also, running an experiment with auditory stimuli would strengthen our (and previous) results. Thank you for the idea.
I also think that more research in this domain is needed: for instance, there is still little evidence on how single words could modulate the EMG activity, of both the zygomaticus and corrugator supercilii muscles. If you want to develop a more detailed conversation, please reach me at luca(dot)bischetti(at)iusspavia(dot)it
Thanks again,
Best
Luca
Thanks to all the presenters. Looking forward to discussing these talks online later today.
4-5pm AEDT (Melbourne/Sydney/Canberra). Zoom link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83269611574 [Meeting ID: 832 6961 1574]
Caleb, Picking up on John’s comments, I wonder if sarcasm is in fact not humour at all but is an aggressive comment, made all the more hurtful because it apes the ironic form. I offer the following example: suppose my wife is driving and we have a minor accident (which is entirely my wife’s fault) – losing the wing mirror when trying to park in a narrow space. Immediately it happens, I can say “Oh well done” in a very flat manner. In fact, the more sincerely I offer the ‘praise’, the more hurtful the remark is. There is no attempt at humour – I just use the ironic form to criticise my wife’s driving. I might also say “Oh (h) we(h)ll h do(h)ne” (laughingly) but if really mean it (and why not – no-one is hurt and the damage is slight, if a little expensive), I have spoken ironically . In this case, however, my wife realises I am not at all concerned. She would not be hurt, and is comforted (I hope) by my taking the whole thing so lightly. Fascinating area – thanks for the presentation. Angus
Thanks for the comment. Some sarcasm is not intended to be humorous and is just criticism. However, I think some critical sarcasm is humorous when uttered to a third party who is on your side. For example, if there is another passenger in the back seat who is also critical of your wife’s driving skills, they may be amused and chuckle at your sarcastic quip. This often goes only with the “superiority” theories of humor, I think.
Also, even critical sarcasm is not necessarily cruel to the target. Sarcasm has been shown in one study to be responded to more proactively than literal criticism. (However, I can see many cases where the reverse could be true.)
Although I used the term “sarcasm” a bit too much in the presentation, verbal irony also includes jocularity, which is playful and silly (though usually not laugh-out-loud funny).
The simplest way I have seen to differentiate jocular and sarcastic verbal irony is… jocularity is negative words with positive meaning; and, sarcasm is positive words with negative meaning. I think this is a fair guideline but the lines are often blurred.