Humour et métaphore : quelques éléments d’une analogie pour la construction d’un sens inattendu

Belief revision and incongruity: is it a joke?*

“…With humor, there is a manipulation of what listeners are meant to believe in order to make them fall into a trap Raccah (2015). In this section, we simply propose to translate this idea in terms of belief revision as also suggested by Ritchie (2002) who introduced a logical language to formalize the interpretation of jokes.…”

Jokes and Belief Revision

“…Lastly, Raccah (2016) draws a parallel between metaphor and bon mot, both of which rely on a "manipulative" effect in communication. According to him, humor requires three conditions: i) a story; ii) an intention to make people laugh; iii) that the story causes laughter.…”

“…In humor, according to Raccah (2016), there is a manipulation of what the joker wants the listener to believe, in order to make him fall into a trap. In this article on humor, we propose to translate Raccah's analysis in terms of belief revision.…”

“…This definition of a potentially funny story is directly inspired by Raccah (2016), except that we have tried to define the revealing character of the punchline rather than its inevitability (which could be understood as K • α β, denying the surprising character of β).…”

“…Humor and art also have in common that they often play with, or even shake up the prohibitions and prejudices. In both cases, there seems to be a surprise effect (Raccah 2016;Williams 1996) for the public when discovering what is presented. Very schematically, while art addresses first of all our sensitivity and arouses our emotions, it seems that jokes solicit above all a logical apprehension of the world (one speaks of "understanding a joke").…”