Cover not available
Part of
The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters
Edited by Villy Tsakona and Jan Chovanec
[Topics in Humor Research 7] 2018
► pp. 155–180

Chapter 7
Laughter and non-humorous situations in TV documentaries

| Masaryk University, Brno
In this paper, I explore the role of laughter in broadcast TV documentary programs. Although the primary design of many TV documentaries is to attend to the smooth transmission of information to the audience, some program formats include components of seemingly unscripted interpersonal interaction between the participants. In these interactions, we frequently find situations that evoke the participants’ laughter, even though they are not designed as humorous and may not contain any evident intentional humor. Based on data obtained from a recent British documentary series, this paper documents how laughter emerges within interactions between the presenter and other interlocutors in order to deal with situations of personal failure and success arising from joint collaborative effort. The paper argues that laughter indexes extreme emotional reactions, thus being indicative of an underlying incongruity between the participants’ expectations and the actual state. Moreover its presence in the program attests to the hybrid nature of modern documentary formats by actually priming the audience’s positive reception and enjoyment of the broadcast.
Keywords: laughter, broadcast talk, TV documentary, footing, laughable
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Laughter, pragmatics and broadcast talk
  • 3.Material for analysis
  • 4.Laughter and non-humor
    • 4.1Laughing at failure
    • 4.2Laughing at success
    • 4.3Laughing in disbelief
    • 4.4Laughing in disgust
  • 5.Discussion of the findings and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 5 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.7.07cho
References (72)
References
Adelswärd, Viveka. (1989). Laughter and dialogue: The social significance of laughter in institutional discourse. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 12 (2): 107–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Archakis, Argiris & Tsakona, Villy. (2011). Informal talk in formal settings: Humorous narratives in Greek parliamentary debates. In Villy Tsakona & Diana Elena Popa (Eds.), Studies in Political Humor (pp. 61–81). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arundale, Robert B. (2006). Face as relational and interactional: A communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behavior, Culture, 2(2): 193–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore. (1994). Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
. (2012). Smiling, laughter, and humor. In Paolo Santangelo (Ed.), Laughing in Chinese (pp. 421–436). Rome: Aracne.Google Scholar
. (2015). Humor and laughter. In Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton & Deborah Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis. 2nd ed. (pp. 168–188). Malden: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society, 13(2): 145–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bell, Nancy. (2015). We are not amused: Failed humor in interaction. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humor. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bonner, Frances. (2003). Ordinary television: Analyzing popular TV. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Carter, Elisabeth. (2011). Analyzing police interviews: Laughter, confessions and the tape. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Chovanec, Jan. (2008). Focus on the form: Foregrounding devices in football reporting. Discourse & Communication, 2(3): 219–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2016a). Eavesdropping on media talk: Microphone gaffes and unintended humor in sports broadcasts. Journal of Pragmatics, 95, 93–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2016b). “It’s quite simple, really”: Shifting forms of expertise in TV documentaries. Discourse, Context & Media. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2017a). Interactional humor and spontaneity in TV documentaries. Lingua, 197, 34–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2017b). Wordplay and football: Humor in the discourse of written sports reporting. In Wladyslaw Chłopicki & Dorota Brzozowska (Eds.), Humorous discourse (pp. 131–154). Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. (2007). Talk in a play frame: More on laughter and intimacy. Journal of Pragmatics 39(1): 29–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coles, Gail. (2000). Docusoap: Actuality and the serial format. In Bruce Carson & Margaret Llewellyn-Jones (Eds.), Frames and fictions on television: The politics of identity within drama (pp. 27–39). Exeter and Portland, OR: Intellect.Google Scholar
Conboy, Martin. (2002). The press and popular culture. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. (2007). Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
D’hondt, Sigurd, Östmann, Jan-Ola & Verschueren, Jef. (2009). The pragmatics of interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Jongste, Henry. (2013). Negotiating humorous intent. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humor theory (pp. 179–210). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta. (Ed.) (2011). The pragmatics of humor across discourse domains. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2012). Humor on the House: Interactional construction of metaphor in film discourse. In Jan Chovanec & Isabel Ermida (Eds.), Language and humor in the media (pp. 83–106). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
. (Ed.) (2013). Developments in linguistic humor theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ekström, Mats. (2011). Hybridity as a resource and challenge in a talk show political interview. In Mats Ekström & Marianna Patrona (Eds.), Talking politics in broadcast media (pp. 135–155). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eriksson, Göran. (2009). The management of applause and laughter in live political interviews. Media, Culture & Society, 31(6): 901–920. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita. (2006). “Minister, we will see how the public judges you”: Media references in political interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(2): 180–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E. & Fox, Barbara A. (2010). Multiple practices for constructing laughables. In Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Elisabeth Reber & Margret Selting (Eds.), Prosody in interaction (pp. 339–367). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Roger. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. (1960[1905]). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. Trans. by J. Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Glenn, Phillip. (2003). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2010). Interviewer laughs: Shared laughter and asymmetries in employment interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(6): 1485–1498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glenn, Phillip & Holt, Elisabeth. (Eds.) (2013). Studies in laughter in interaction. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. (2007). Interactive footing. In Elisabeth Holt & Rebecca Clift (Eds.), Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction (pp. 16–46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haarman, Louann. (2001). Performing talk. In Andrew Tolson (Ed.), Television talk shows: Discourse, performance, spectacle (pp. 31–71) Mahwah and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. (2001). The pragmatics of humor support. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 14(1): 55–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Anette. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and popular factual television. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2007). Restyling factual TV: Audiences and news, documentary and reality genres. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet. (2007). Making humor work: Creativity on the job. Applied Linguistics, 28(4): 518–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, Ian. (2006). Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting. Maidenhead: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In George Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 79–96). New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
. (1984). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In J. Maxwell Atkinson & John Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 346–369). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga. (1996). Impoliteness and conversational joking: on relational politics. Folia Linguistica, 30: 299–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2006). Pragmatics of performance and the analysis of conversational humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 19(3): 271–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A. & Graham, Sage L. (Eds.) (2010). Interpersonal pragmatics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Garcés-Conejos Blitvitch, Pilar. (Eds.) (2013). Real talk: Reality television and discourse analysis in action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lunt, Peter. (2004). Liveness in reality television and factual broadcasting. The Communication Review, 7(4): 329–335. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Messerli, Thomas C. (2016). Extradiegetic and character laughter as markers of humorous intentions in the sitcom 2 Broke Girls . Journal of Pragmatics, 95: 79–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Martin. (2000). Televised talk: Face work, politeness and laughter in The Mrs Merton Show . In Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill & Frances Rock (Eds.), Dialogue analysis VII: Working with dialogue (pp. 121–135). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2001). Defining authentic talk. Discourse Studies, 3(4): 397–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2007). The discourse of broadcast news. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morreall, John. (1983). Taking laughter seriously. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. (2003). Issues in conversational joking. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(9), 1333–1359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. & Spitz, Alice. (2008). Humor as a resource for mitigating conflict in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(10): 1661–1686. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. & Chiaro, Delia. (Eds.) (2009). Humor in interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, Alan. (2006). The linguistics of laughter: A corpus-assisted study of laughter-talk. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Priego-Valverde, Beatrice. (2009). Failed humor in conversation: A double voicing analysis. In Neal Norrick & Delia Chiaro (Eds.), Humor in interaction (pp. 165–183). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Psathas, George. (1995). Conversation analysis: The study of talk-in-interaction. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scannell, Paddy. (1991). Broadcast talk. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Seewoester Cain, Sarah. (2013). Giving voice to the studio audience: Ratified and dynamic participation statuses in a television stand-up performance. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humor theory (pp. 145–178). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thornborrow, Joanna. (2001). Authenticating talk: Building public identities in audience participation broadcasting. Discourse Studies, 3(4): 459–479. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2015). The discourse of public participation media: From talk show to Twitter. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tolson, Andrew. (1991). Televised chat and synthetic personality. In Paddy Scannell (Ed.), Broadcast talk (pp. 178–200). London: Sage.Google Scholar
. (2006). Media talk: Spoken discourse on TV and radio. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Van Zoonen, Liesbet. (2005). Entertaining the citizen: When politics and popular culture converge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Weizman, Elda. (2013). Political Irony: Constructing reciprocal positioning in the news interview. In Anita Fetzer (Ed.), The pragmatics of political discourse (pp. 167–190). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar