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Part of
How Emotions Are Made in Talk
Edited by Jessica S. Robles and Ann Weatherall
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 321] 2021
► pp. 163–186

Chapter 2.3
Embodiment in reciprocal laughter

Sharing laughter, gaze, and embodied stance in children’s peer group

ORCID logo | Linköping University
ORCID logo | Linköping University

Laughter is a mundane phenomenon that is ubiquitous in social life. This chapter examines young children’s laughter, specifically focusing on the calibration of shared laughter as it typically occurs in multiparty interactions. It discusses children’s interactional competences in calibrating emotional stances and affiliation. The analysis takes into account the multimodal features that characterise situations of reciprocal laughter, contributing to the understanding of laughter as a fully embodied social phenomenon. It shows that laughter was interactionally accomplished in ways that established affiliation between a group or a dyad of children. The establishment of mutual gaze was important in initiating, reciprocating and sustaining shared emotional stance through the performance of laughter. The embodied calibration of the children’s shared stance shows that laughter is used in the establishment of affiliation and rapport. Young children’s situated humor and ‘funniness’ is thus clearly a joint, shared interactional and social – dyadic or multiparty – accomplishment.

Keywords: laughter, children’s interactions, multimodality, social interaction, affective stance, emotion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Shared laughter
    • 1.2Children’s laughter
  • 2.Analysis
    • 2.1The emergence of a multiparty laughing bout
    • 2.2Embodied reciprocation and sharing of laughter in peer dyad
    • 2.3Responding to teacher disciplining by sustaining and escalating Peer affiliative laughter
  • 3.Concluding discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.321.06str
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