Toward Computational Recognition of Humorous Intent

Recognizing the intent of a written utterance is a difficult task. To understand the intended meanings, it may be necessary to recognize all possible meanings of the utterance; and, then choose the most appropriate one for the situation. The choice may be made using heuristics. A method for recognition of a humorous intent in a text is proposed. Computational recognition of a humorous intent can be broken down into two parts: recognition of a humorous text, and recognition of the intent to be humorous. To narrow the focus, we propose to recognize the humorous intent of short dialogs. A dialog will be considered humorous if the first part of the text can have two meanings; and, one of the meanings conflicts with the meaning of the punchline. The intent of the text is considered humorous if the schema related to the non-conflicting meaning of the setup has not been activated in the preceding text.