Two weeks ago I delivered a presentation to the Early Career Academic conference at the University of Newcastle. The presentation was largely an updated version of my PhD confirmation presentation. The updated sections included an expanded overview of theories of humour and a discussion of how to implement a pair of chat bots.
The feedback was quite positive. However, the feedback that surprised me was that my audience (mostly people from a Science and IT background, with some Communication folk) were interested in the idea of empirical testing. How will I know that the bot interchanges are funny? How can this be tested? Should I use a test audience as part of my research? Should I ask 'experts' (members of the 'field' to use Csikszentmihalyi's term) like stand-up comedians and writers to give their opinion?
This is not something that I had initially planned. And I'm in two minds about it. At this stage I would prefer not to go down this path. Rather, I plan to use an established technique for understanding the structure of humorous exchanges, something like the linguistic / discourse techniques of Raskin and Salvatore (SSTH - Script Theory and/or GTVH - General Theory of Verbal Humor).
This will develop with more reading in the area.
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