1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Pragmatics
  4. Volume 14, Issue 4
  5. Article
Volume 14, Issue 4
  • ISSN 1018-2101
  • E-ISSN: 2406-4238
PDF

Abstract

Laughter in dialogue has been researched under the aegis of many different disciplines. The present approach is psycholinguistic, but with some reliance on recent research in phonetics and conversation analysis (CA). A corpus of laughter from four TV and two radio interviews of Hillary Clinton was analyzed by means of the PRAAT software (www.praat.org) for acoustic measurements. All the interviews had taken place in the several weeks immediately following the publication of her memoirs (2003) The results showed that her laughter was concentrated mostly during the speech of the interviewers rather than during her own speech, and in the TV rather than in the radio interviews. The most frequent topic of her laughter concerned her own presidential candidacy rather than the historical contents of her book. The strong punctuation effect (Provine 1993, 2000), i.e., the claim that laughter occurs only during the pauses after phrases and sentences, was not confirmed; instead laughter occurred most frequently as a sort of back channeling on the part of the auditor. Contrary to the claim of Clayman and Heritage (2002) that media interviewers maintain a professional neutralism, interviewers in this corpus manifested their personal perspectives by laughing. These findings are discussed in light of current empirical research and in terms of a theory of perspectivity that conceptualizes laughter both in general and more specifically in media interviews as a nonverbal expression of personal perspective.

© 2004 International Pragmatics Association
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/prag.14.4.03con
2004-01-01
2023-11-29

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/prag.14.4.03con
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Augustine of Hippo
    (397/1961) Confessions. New York: Penguin.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Bachorowski, J.-A. , M.J. Smoski , and M.J. Owren
    (2001) The acoustic features of human laughter. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America110: 1581-1597. doi: 10.1121/1.1391244
     https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1391244 [Google Scholar]
  3. Carroll, D.W
    (2003) Psychology of language (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Chafe, W
    (2003a) Laughing while talking. In D. Tannen & J.E. Alatis (eds.), Georgetown University round table on languages and linguistics 2001. Linguistics, language, and the real world: Discourse and beyond. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp.36-49.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. (2003b, July) Importance of not being earnest. Paper presented at themeeting of the International Society for Humor Studies, Chicago, IL.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Clayman, S. , and J. Heritage
    (2002) The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511613623
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613623 [Google Scholar]
  7. Clinton, H
    (2003) Living history. New York: Random House.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Darwin, C
    (1872/1998) The expression of emotions in man and animals. New York: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Duncan, Jr. S. , and D.W. Fiske
    (1977) Face-to-face interaction: Research, methods, and theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Glenn, P
    (2003) Laughter in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511519888
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519888 [Google Scholar]
  11. Goethe von, J.W
    (1809/1963) Elective affinities (trans. E. Mayer & L. Bogan ). Chicago: Henry Regnery.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Goffman, E
    (1981) Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Graumann, C.F. , and W. Kallmeyer
    (2002) Perspective and perspectivation in discourse: An introduction. In C.F. Graumann and W. Kallmeyer (eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp.1-11. doi: 10.1075/hcp.9.01gra
     https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.9.01gra [Google Scholar]
  14. Haakana, M
    (2002) Laughter in medical interaction: From quantification to analysis, and back. Journal of Sociolinguistics6: 207-235. doi: 10.1111/1467‑9481.00185
     https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00185 [Google Scholar]
  15. Hall, G.S. , and A. Allin
    (1897) The psychology of tickling, laughing, and the comic. American Journal of Psychology9: 1-44. doi: 10.2307/1411471
     https://doi.org/10.2307/1411471 [Google Scholar]
  16. Harley, T
    (2001) The psychology of language: From data to theory(2nd ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis. doi: 10.4324/9780203345979
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203345979 [Google Scholar]
  17. Hecker, E
    (1873) Die Physiologie und Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen. Berlin: F. Dummler.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Hopper, R
    (1992) Telephone conversation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. James, W
    (1890/1981) The principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Jefferson, G
    . (no date) Some features of the serial construction of laughter. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. (1974) Notes on the sequential organization of laughter in conversation; onset sensitivity in invitations to laugh. Paper presented at theAmerican Anthropological Association Convention, Mexico City.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. (1979) A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In G. Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. New York: Irvington, pp.79-96.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Jefferson, G. , H. Sacks , and E. Schegloff
    (1984) On laughter in pursuit of intimacy. Working paper Università di Urbino, no. 135, serie C.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Kowal, S. , and D.C. O’Connell
    (2000) Psycholinguistische Aspekte der Transkription: Zur Notation von Pausen in Gesprächstranskripten. Linguistische Berichte183: 353-378.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Kuschel, K.-J
    (1994) Laughter: A theological essay (trans. J. Bowden ). New York: Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary
    (11th ed.) (2003) Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
  27. Mulkay, M
    (1988) On humor; its nature and its place in modern society. Cambridge: Polity.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. O’Connell, D.C. , and S. Kowal
    (1998) Orality and literacy in public discourse: An interview of Hannah Arendt. Journal of Pragmatics30: 543-564. doi: 10.1016/S0378‑2166(98)00034‑4
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00034-4 [Google Scholar]
  29. (under review a) The research status of Clayman and Heritage’s (2002) The news interview. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. (under review b) Uh and um revisited: Are they signals of delay?Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. O’Connell, D.C. , S. Kowal , and C. Ageneau
    (in press) Interjections in interviews. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 33:.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Provine, R.R
    (1993) Laughter punctuates speech: Linguistic, social and gender contexts of laughter. Ethology95: 291-298. doi: 10.1111/j.1439‑0310.1993.tb00478.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1993.tb00478.x [Google Scholar]
  33. (1996) Laughter. American Scientist84: 38-45.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. (2000) Laughter: A scientific investigation. New York: Penguin.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Psathas, G
    (ed.) (1979) Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. New York: Irvington.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Ruch, W. , and P. Ekman
    (2001) The expressive pattern of laughter. In A. Kaszniak (ed.), Emotion, qualia, and consciousness. Tokyo: World Scientific Publishing, pp.410-425. doi: 10.1142/9789812810687_0032
     https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812810687_0032 [Google Scholar]
  37. Spinos, A.-M.R. , D.C. O’Connell , and S. Kowal
    (2002) An empirical investigation of pause notation. Pragmatics12: 1-9.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Trouvain, J
    (2001) Phonetic aspects of Aspeech-laughs@. In C. Cave , I Guaitella , and S. Santi (eds.), Oralité et Gestualité: Actes du colloque ORAGE, Aix-en-Provence. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp.634-639.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. (2003) Segmenting phonetic units in laughter. In M.J. Solé , D. Recasens , and J. Romero (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, pp.2793-2796.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/prag.14.4.03con
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Dialogue; Laughter; Media interviews; Perspectivity

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error