ABSTRACT
There is a long-standing notion, central to Freud’s theorising about jokes, that humour is closely related to the expression of ideas which are sensitive or unacceptable in the social or cultural context. This can be represented in our framework by allowing the logic within a viewpoint to reason about social standards indicating which topics or combinations of concepts may or may not be mentioned openly or obliquely. The mechanisms also have to allow for linguistic impropriety, such as swearing, and for the unacceptability of mentioning certain concepts in a light-hearted way. Sometimes impropriety is not part of the core of the amusement, but occurs in the set-up of a joke, and hence must be accepted by the audience if the joke is to be understood. It is possible that certain topics are, by convention, treated as improper within jokes even though they are no longer socially unacceptable.
