Fuzziness and Humor: Aspects of Interaction and Computation

Abstract

The paper addresses the fuzzy status of verbal humor for the first time in studies of fuzziness as well as in humor research. After a brief introduction to a dominant class of linguistic theories of humor, it focuses on the ontological semantic theory of humor, where the relationship is made obvious and reaches the computational level of formality. A couple of ordinary jokes are analyzed both within ontological semantics and from the point of view of fuzziness. The final section illustrates how native speakers manipulate fuzziness in humor by maximizing the membership functions.