Thèse (Ph. D.)--Université Laval, 2008. / Bibliogr. Publié aussi en version électronique dans la Collection Mémoires et thèses électroniques.

Diss.--Psychologie--Zürich, 1980. / Bibliogr. p. 141-143.

Akademisk avhandling--Filosofie doktorsexamen--Lund, 1986. / Résumé en anglais. Bibliogr. p. 181-184.

Thèse de doctorat--Arts, philosophie et esthétique--Paris 8 - Vincennes - Saint-Denis, 2004.

The thesis consists of a full-length novel and an exegesis that examines the ways in which humour can be used to restore the symbolic order and serve as a means of regaining control, thus allowing those involved in the most disturbing, painful and challenging situations to feel less powerless. The research component of the thesis involved critical reading, fieldwork, observations, and personal interviews. The texts examined include works by Michael Billig, Henri Bergson and Julia Kristeva, in particular her reference to the act of laughing at the abject as a kind of horrified 'apocalyptic laughter', a compulsion to confront that which repels (Kristeva 1982, pp. 204-206). As part of the fieldwork, I completed training to become a Laughter Club leader. Laughter Clubs are based on the notion that laughter, even fake laughter, is beneficial. This concept is explored in more detail in the exegesis. The fieldwork also included training in laughter-generating activities for students and staff at two local primary schools. The observational component, which involved the Australian War Memorial, the 'Reveries: Photography and Mortality' exhibition, Norwood Crematorium and the children's garden and babies' rose garden at the Gungahlin cemetery, enabled me to examine images and memories of death as well as the responses of other visitors. The final component of my research involved personal interviews. The participants in these interviews were drawn from a diverse range of fields including: volunteers at a local hospice, hospital clowns, general practitioners, cancer survivors and their carers, a psychiatrist, nurses, a paramedic, a police officer, a hospital teacher and bereaved parents. The findings from this research provided the framework for the creative piece, a novel set in present-day Canberra. The story begins one autumn evening when thirteen-year-old Sam is found unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. By the time Maggie, Sam's widowed mother, arrives at the hospital, Sam has regained consciousness. His x-rays show a large mass in his brain and he is kept in for further tests. The results confirm that Sam has an inoperable tumour. Maggie and Sam rely on humour in their interactions both with each other and with other people as a means of maintaining that 'baseline of social control' (Kristeva 1982, p. 99), staying on the edge of what Kristeva refers to as the place 'where meaning collapses' (p. 2). Humour is their anchor, enabling them to maintain a grip on their new normality. And, as if having a dying child isn't enough to cope with, Maggie is being pursued by a handsome and slightly younger man. Both the findings in my exegesis, and the creative work they led to, suggest that although there has been an enormous amount of research undertaken over the previous thirty or so years, there is no conclusive proof that humour can be closely correlated with health. At best, humour can provide a means of controlling that which would otherwise be outside our control.

Dans la société québécoise, l'utilisation du mot humour est omniprésente. Que ce soit dans le domaine du spectacle avec les stand-up d'humoristes, au cinéma avec les comédies ou encore dans les téléséries, il est un composant essentiel du secteur du divertissement et des arts au Québec. Incidemment, il se retrouve également dans la littérature. Alors que les manifestations provoquées par le phénomène se limitent généralement à une appréciation par le rire, nous oublions fréquemment que l'humour – selon son concept théorique – va prendre une forme plus subtile, telle que l'image du sourire au travers des larmes que Freud propose dans son essai Le mot d’esprit et ses rapports avec l’inconscient. Nous nous proposons donc dans ce mémoire d'analyser l'humour présent dans deux romans québécois contemporains, l'objectif étant de déterminer de quelle manière il fonctionne, quels thèmes il exploite et s'il existe une corrélation dans son interprétation entre chaque œuvre. Pour parvenir à nos fins, nous amorçons notre travail en circonscrivant les définitions des termes théoriques que nous utilisons ; par exemple, la différence primordiale existant entre le concept du comique, qui a pour objectif de produire un effet ludique – faire rire – et l'humour, qui, une fois décodé, produit une superposition de sens, de « scripts » différents. Pour décrypter ce sens second, nous procédons à l'analyse des personnages, de leurs interactions avec leur milieu et des interventions du narrateur dans la diégèse, en employant comme support méthodologique le modèle théorique de Violette Morin. Dans le premier chapitre, nous procédons à l'analyse des personnages principaux du roman de François Barcelo, Ha, aaa, aâh ou les amours malaisées, habitant sur chaque île. D'abord Catherine et le maréchal St-André qui proviennent de Ha, ensuite Anatolanskov et Bessaguérini, membres du peuple vivant sur l'île de Aaa, puis Celsius 1er et Magina, couple royal à la tête de l'île de Aâh. Le rapport conflictuel que chacun nourrit avec le monde qui l'entoure témoigne de leur relation ambiguë avec l'autre à l'origine d'une bonne partie de l'humour retrouvé dans le récit. Le second chapitre est consacré à l'analyse comparative de personnages dans la diégèse du roman de François Landry, Les dindons du destin, et qui manifestent une ressemblance troublante avec des figures mythiques importantes de la religion catholique. Ce chapitre analyse également les différents procédés stylistiques employés par le narrateur pour discréditer certains mythes de la chrétienté. La dernière étape de notre mémoire met en relation les deux récits, ce qui permet de constater en quoi ils sont similaires et participent d'un même domaine littéraire culturel.

No description available.

This thesis describes a formal model of a subtype of humour, and the implementation of that model in a program that generates jokes of that subtype. Although there is a great deal of literature on humour in general, very little formal work has been done on puns, and none has been implemented. All current linguistic theories of humour are over-general and not falsifiable. Our model, which is specific, formal, implemented and evaluated, makes a significant contribution to the field. Punning riddles are our chosen subtype of verbal humour, for several reasons. They are very common, they exhibit certain regular structures and mechanisms, and they have been studied previously by linguists. Our model is based on our extensive analysis of large numbers of punning riddles, taken from children's joke books. The implementation of the model, JAPE (Joke Analysis and Production Engine), generates punning riddles, from a humour independent lexicon. Pun generation requires much less world knowledge than pun comprehension, making it feasible for implementation. To support our claim that all of JAPE's output is punning riddles, we conducted an evaluatory experiment. We took JAPE texts, human-generated texts, nonsense non-jokes and sensible non-jokes, and asked joke experts to evaluate them. For joke experts, we used 8-11 year old children, since psychological research suggests that this age group enjoys, and can recognize, punning riddles better than other age groups. The results showed that JAPE's output texts are, in fact, recognizably jokes. The evaluation showed that our model adequately describes a significant subtype of verbal humour. We believe that this model can now be expanded to cover puns in general, as well as other types of linguistic humour.

Humour is one of the most interesting and puzzling aspects of human behaviour. Despite the attention it has received from fields such as philosophy, linguistics, and psychology, there have been only few attempts to create computational models for humour recognition and analysis. In this thesis, I use corpus-based approaches to formulate and test hypotheses concerned with the processing of verbal humour. The thesis makes two important contributions. First, it brings empirical evidence that computational approaches can be successfully applied to the task of humour recognition. Through experiments performed on very large data sets, I show that automatic classification techniques can be effectively used to distinguish between humorous and non-humorous texts, using content-based features or models of incongruity. Moreover, using a method for measuring feature saliency, I identify and validate several dominant word classes that can be used to characterize humorous text. Second, the thesis provides corpus-based support toward the validity of previously formulated linguistic theories, indicating that humour is primarily due to incongruity and humour-specific language. Experiments performed on collections of verbal humour show that both incongruity and content-based features can be successfully used to model humour, and that these features are even more effective when used in tandem.

In this thesis, I address the metaphysical question 'What is humour?' and the ethical question 'When is humour immoral?' Consulting a dictionary reveals a circle of definitions between 'amusement', 'funniness', and 'humour'. So I split the metaphysical question 'What is humour?' into three questions: 'What is amusement?', 'What is funniness?' and 'What is humour?' By critically analysing then synthesising recent research in philosophy, psychology and linguistics, I give the following answers: (1) x amuses y if and only if: (i) y is in a non-serious, non-threatened, non-goal-directed state. (ii) y simultaneously activates two incompatible interpretations of x via unsound logic. (iii) (ii) sufficiently increases the psychological arousal of y. (2) x is funny if and only if x merits amusement. (3) x is humour if and only if the function of x is to merit or elicit amusement. Similarly, I split the ethical question 'When is humour immoral?' into three questions: 'When is amusement immoral?', 'How does immorality affect funniness?' and 'When is humour immoral?' By using (1), (2) and (3), I give the following answers: (4) Amusement is immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines (1.i), (1.ii) or (1.iii) to be immoral. (5) Immorality negatively affects funniness. (6) Humour-types are not subject to moral evaluation. (7) Humour-tokens are immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines them to be immoral. This thesis contributes to the knowledge of the subject in two ways. First, by critically analysing and synthesising recent inter-disciplinary research, (1) provides a more precisely specified definition of amusement than that in the philosophical literature. Second, research on humour, across all disciplines, conflates the three closely related but distinct concepts of humour, amusement and funniness. By providing a linear sequence of definitions, (1), (2) and (3) avoid the conceptual confusions that commonly occur.