5 - Laughing at and laughing with: negotiating participant alignments

Summary

We think of laughter as an occasionally risky pleasure, like sex, which is a good thing in itself, or at least when done in the right way and kept in its place.

(de Sousa, 1987, p. 228)

The phrases laughing at and laughing with suggest a long-recognized distinction between the power of laughter to promote distancing, disparagement, and feelings of superiority; or, conversely, to promote bonding and affiliation (see Chapter 1). Within CA research, Jefferson (1972) proposes (in passing) laughing at versus laughing with as a distinction to which participants orient. More recently, Clayman (1992) analyzed the affiliative status of audience laughter during the televised 1988 US presidential debates. Out of a total of 174 audience laughs in three different debates, Clayman codes twenty-four as “disaffiliative.” Of these, twelve are “disaffiliative laughter” and four are “equivocal laughter.” Affiliative laughter tends to follow (and refer to) one speaker's criticisms of his/her opponent – criticisms which are marked as humorous through such devices as warning that a joke is coming; using far-fetched, metaphorical descriptions; and employing fillers and hesitations after the laughable to allow turn space for the anticipated response by the audience. Disaffiliative laughter occurs following positive self-talk by a candidate (including descriptions or assessments of speakers' own qualities and accomplishments); and in such a context laughter can be heard as treating positive self-praise as “not-serious.” Clayman's study demonstrates that analysts (like participants) must look to features of the local sequential environment to disambiguate laughter's status as affiliative or disaffiliative.