The Comprehension of Jokes

The Comprehension of Jokes consolidates and develops the tradition of analysing jokes, by de-ning a framework of concepts which are suited to capturing what happens when someone understands a joke.

Graeme Ritchie began his academic career in artificial intelligence in the 1970s, and for the past twenty-five years has increasingly concentrated on research into humour.

Preface 1 The programme of work 2 Towards a theory of jokes 3 The process of joke comprehension 4 Text comprehension 5 Processing and prediction 6 Logic in jokes 7 Incongruity and resolution 8 Surprise 9 The role of language 10 Impropriety 11 Superiority and aggression 12 What's in a joke? 13 Applying the framework 14 The way forward