Pun and Non-Pun Humor in Second-Language Learning

We believe that the use of humor by conversational software agents would significantly improve secondlanguage learning. Puns help students to learn about homophony, and to distinguish between words with similar sounds or spellings; idiom-based jokes provide memorable contexts for idioms, which are notoriously difficult to memorize; and scalar humor introduces the student to common comparisons in the target language, and helps them build networks of vocabulary, particularly between nouns and adjectives. In general, humor is likely to motivate the student to study more often, and humanizes the interface, so that the conversational agent is perceived as a worthwhile dialogue partner. Moreover, because humor frequently rests on cultural concepts such as social station, rudeness, stereotypes and so on, studying humor can lead to the kind of deeper understanding that is necessary for true fluency. Finally, practice in the humorous forms of the target culture might allow a student to actively use humor in the same way a native speaker would, increasing the chances of genuine communication taking place. Here, we describe scalar humor in some depth, and discuss how computer-generated scalar humor could improve second language learning.