Synopses & Reviews
Laughter in Interaction is an illuminating and lively account of how and why people laugh during conversation. Bringing together 25 years of research on the sequential organization of laughter in everyday talk, Glenn analyzes recordings and transcripts to show the finely-detailed coordination of human laughter. He demonstrates that its production and placement, relative to talk and other activities, reveals much about its emergent meaning and accomplishments. The book shows how participants in a conversation move from a single laugh to laughing together, how the matter of 'who laughs first' implicates orientation to social activities, and how interactants work out whether laughs are more affiliative or hostile. The final chapters examine the contribution of laughter to sequences of conversational intimacy and play, and to the invocation of gender. Engaging and original, the book shows how laughter plays a significant role in how people display, respond to, and revise identities and relationships.
Review
"Recommended." Choice"The book is a typical Cambridge high quality book...a very significant book within its field. As a contribution to the interdisciplinary field of humor research, it presents a wealth of interesting data and several interesting ideas that deserve further elaboration." - Humor, Slavatore Attardo, Youngstown State University
Synopsis
A conversational-analytic study of the phenomenon of laughter.
About the Author
Phillip Glenn is Associate Professor and Chair at the Department of Organizational and Political Communication, Emerson College.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Towards a social interactional approach to laughter; 2. Conversation analysis and the study of laughter; 3. Laughing together; 4. Who laughs first; 5. Laughing At and Laughing With: negotiating participant alignments; 6. Laughing along, resisting: constituting relationship and identity; 7. Closing remarks; References.