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Laughing together: laughter as a feature of affiliation in French conversation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Yvette Ellis
Yvette Ellis
Affiliation:
Department of French, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this paper, I propose to show how the analysis of episodes of laughter in French interaction can be approached from the theoretical perspective of Conversation Analysis. Delicate microanalysis reveals how laughter is very carefully placed by participants during the course of their talk to achieve a range of interactional tasks. Using extracts from my corpus of naturally occurring French conversation, I examine how the collaborative construction of episodes of shared laughter contribute to the achievement of affiliation between co-participants. How the laughter is initiated, where it is placed and who joins in that laughter are shown to be significant to the task of constructing and displaying social relationships between the participants.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , September 1997 , pp. 147 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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