LINGUIST List 22.49 Wed Jan 05 2011 Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics; Socioling: Glenn (2010) Editor for this issue: Monica Macaulay <monicalinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     Giampaolo Poletto , Laughter in Interaction Message 1: Laughter in Interaction Date: 05-Jan-2011 From: Giampaolo Poletto <g.polettoyahoo.it> Subject: Laughter in Interaction E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-1112.html AUTHOR: Glenn, Phillip TITLE: Laughter in Interaction SERIES TITLE: Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 18 YEAR: 2010 PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press Giampaolo Poletto, Doctoral School, University of Pécs, Hungary SUMMARY Introduction This volume, which is a digitally printed version of a previously published book, represents an ideal synthesis of the author's twenty-year-long study on the sequential, systematic and social-oriented organization of laughter in everyday talk. The goals are to provide a comprehensive review of research on laughter in the framework of Conversation Analysis (CA); to organize, display, and foster a social interactional approach to laughter, which is a shift with respect to physical, psychological and social approaches. Chapter I: Towards a social interactional approach to laughter Laughter-in-interaction is both an effect and a cause, because we ''do'' it and it ''does'' us, as to meaning, self, relationship, society, culture. Towards its understanding as a social phenomenon, four sections focus on how and why people laugh, on social aspects of laughter, on the contribution and collocation of CA, on the perspective of past research, which focuses on it as a behaviour, and on new insights into the above questions. A first observation is that sounds of laughter tie to the interpretation of their meaning and are not context-bound (Milford, 1980). Laughter is a universal solitary and group form of expression, which is proper to three primates at least, although only humans have the cognitive sophistication to laugh at jokes, etc., display amusement, friendliness, etc. (among others, see Edmonson, 1987; Fry & Allen, 1975). Laughter also ties to emotions, although this may isolate it as individual rather than communicative. Superiority, incongruity, relief, and ''pleasant psychological shift'' theories show why humans should laugh, whereas Morreall (1983) extends the sources of laughter to non-humorous stimuli, situations and causes, tickling and embarrassment among others. Studying laughter as communication sheds light on its complexity, as an act and process with a jointly constituted meaning. Osborne and Chapman (1977) demonstrate how social environment influences both laughter and the perception of humor, in other words the presence, absence and characteristics -- gender, role, position, etc. - of hearers. Other social traits are engagement in play, affiliative function, shared nature, among others. The emphasis of the discussion is on the co-construction of sequences, interactions, meanings, understandings. Laughter is hypothesized to have orderly, regular production and placement features. Chapter II: Conversation analysis and the study of laughter This chapter turns to CA as a qualitative research method for a social interactional approach to shared laughter. In an ethnomethodological and more interdisciplinary perspective, CA orients to 'talk-in-interaction' (Psathas, 1995) as an orderly and organized speech-exchange system, which can be analysed in systematic and describable ways, through recordings and transcriptions, as naturalistic as possible, of utterances, turns at talk, and individual actions. The author pinpoints the difference with discourse analysis, along with Levinson (1983), in that CA deals with actual interactions and participants' procedures and orientations. Then he addresses the way CA methodology applies to laughter in talk, in coordination with other sounds and actions, in relation to 'laughables', a term used “to describe any referent which draws laughter or for which I can reasonably argue that it is designed to draw laughter” (p.49). Chapter III: Laughing together From the viewpoint of communication, shared laughter is thoroughly discussed as a social invitation-acceptance sequence, whose extension is processed as to its variable and different stages. As Jefferson (1979) observes, first laughs work as: an invitation, to be accepted or declined, through co-initiated laughter, silence, maintenance of serious talk, even through mid-points such as brief laugh particles and smiles; a cue to the speaker's orientation towards the talk-in-progress. Their placement is crucial to the sequential environment of occurrence, and is better rendered through visual cueing than through audio recordings, especially in the case of extensions - of a speech unit, of a single laughable, of a next-in-a-series laughable(s) - eventually up to prolonged communal laughter. Chapter IV: Who laughs first The main issue raised here is the alignment of interacting parties to the laughable and to each other, through laughing or not, regardless of the fact that laughter is first or follows. Along with the premise that turns are available to one party at a time (Sacks et al., 1974), ''current speaker'' and ''other'' designate the parties who simultaneously hold and do not hold the turn, by selecting the next speaker, by letting the others do it, by restarting if no-one takes the turn. Such distinctions are not so clear-cut, as participants do not always know or display the role they occupy, as the exemplifying transcripts and the relevant analysis put on evidence. They focus on the way laughter may become two- or multi-party and be shared, with reference to the laughable and its nature, and to the way and by whom laughter is initiated and spread. The picture is obviously complex. Case studies are reported and they stress and describe how interactional difficulties occur, work, are treated, and are overcome or not, in relation to elements such as self-praise or self-deprecation, bias, ownership, or credit, for instance. Accordingly, roles, steps and orientations in the ongoing interaction are defined, negotiated and taken, around laughables, the interpretation of them and of the speaker's move, the consequent enactment of or restraint from laughter. Chapter V: 'Laughing at' and 'laughing with': negotiating participant alignments Laughter contributes to both affiliation and disaffiliation -- namely distancing, disparagement, feelings of superiority, etc. The underlying distinction is between 'laughing with' and 'laughing at'. The focus is herewith on both and on the shift from the former to the latter and vice versa, when parties negotiate four distinctive key factors such as the nature of the laughable, first laugh, (possible) second laugh, and subsequent talk on topic. If affiliative laughter -- hence 'with' - reflects agreement with the speaker's position, disaffiliative laughter -- in other words 'at' -- shows, for instance, that the speaker's words are not to be taken seriously, but may also be implied in the former. Shift occurs when requirements for the former are not met, as the enactment of the latter displays, as in failed joke-telling. Shift also takes place from the latter to the former, when, for example, the person laughed at attempts a realignment of their role via some activities. This is to briefly portray how people create, modify and maintain social relationships through laughter and related phenomena. Chapter VI: Laughing along, resisting: constituting relationship and identity This chapter offers an insight into the bonding effect of laughter, with reference to interactional intimacy and the role of 'laughing along', which ties to the notion of play in conversation as a metacommunicative frame (Bateson, 1972; Goffman, 1974). In this sense, laughter can both imply the use of improprietous language and be used to show resistance, as facets of identity are at stake, for instance, gender. Laughing or not, length and placement of a laugh may actually support the empirical demonstration of the assumption according to which women concentrate on politeness and the ''work'' of conversation, whereas men focus more on status and holding the floor. The issues are expanded affiliative sequences and the ''work'' that laughter may be doing. Teasing is accounted for (Drew, 1987), in the sense that response to it may be laughter, although the substance of the tease may as well be taken seriously, even more seriously when improprieties are involved, as responses range from disaffiliating to declining to respond, from disattending to affiliating and escalating, with laughter at a midpoint (Jefferson et al., 1987). Chapter VII: Closing remarks The book closes with future perspectives for development and research on the topic. After a review of the chapters of the volume and the major issues discussed, the author stresses the importance of the shift of the treatment of laughter, from a behavioural to a communicative standpoint. The result is that laughter is a complex social phenomenon, which implies sharing by the co-intervention, co-construction and interaction of the involved parties, therefore a multiplicity of aspects, consequently, different disciplines. In this perspective, CA seems to provide the appropriate tools to deal with laughter as part of talk-in-interaction. Admittedly, laughter is an orderly systematic and organized sequence, a process which goes through different stages. Each infers the enactment of strategies by the participants, as laughter directly ties to meaning and relationship. Given that a thorough and complete understanding of the above aspects and their interrelations has not been achieved yet, there are many stimuli to pursue research, and carry out further analyses and investigations. EVALUATION The author effectively pursues his plan to display the social and communicative nature of laughter and the feasibility of research on the topic, carried out in the framework of CA. Nevertheless, laughter is not just a matter of qualitative studies conducted through the analysis of recordings and transcripts, of communicational moves, steps and turns by the participants, of interpreting a laughable as affiliative or disaffiliative, of reframing and play. It is also a matter of emotion, unpredictability, spontaneity and ambiguity, as acknowledged in the very closing remarks. In the end, so much has been done, and so much is still to be done, in terms of interdisciplinary investigations and contributions. REFERENCES Bateson, Gregory (1972) A theory of play and fantasy. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, (177-193) New York: Ballantine. Drew, Paul (1987) Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics 25 (219-253). Edmonson, Munro Sterling (1987) Notes on laughter. Anthropological Linguistics 29 (23-34). Fry, William, and Allen, Melanie (1975) Make 'em laugh. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books. Goffman, Ervin (1974) Frame analysis; an essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row. Jefferson, Gail (1979) A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In G. Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: studies in ethnomethodology (79-96) New York: Irvington. Jefferson, Gail, Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel (1987) Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button and J.R.E. Lee (eds.) Talk and social organisation (152-205) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Milford, Patricia (1980) Perception of laughter and its acoustical properties. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, College Park. Abstract in 1981 Dissertation Abstracts International, 41A, 3779A. Morreall, John (1983) Taking laughter seriously. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Osborne, Kathryn and Chapman, Antony (1977) Suppression of adult laughter: an experimental approach. In A.J. Chapman and H.C. Foot (eds.), It's a funny thing, humor (429-431) Oxford: Pergamon. Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel, Jefferson, Gail (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language 50 (696-735). ABOUT THE REVIEWER Giampaolo Poletto is a doctoral candidate in Applied Linguistics at the Doctoral School of Pécs University, in Hungary. He has published in journals and online, and participated in international conferences. His interests range from Pragmatics to Discourse Analysis, from Applied Linguistics to Second Language Teaching, given his unifying field of research, which is organically displayed in his book 'Humor in the language classroom. A discursive analysis of interactions in the educational environment', 2010, Lambert Academic Publishing. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 05-Jan-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.