Laughter in L2 Computer Mediated Discourse (original) (raw)

Laughter as language

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2020

Understanding the import of laughter, has interested philosophers and literary scholars for millennia and, more recently, psychologists, biologists, neuroscientists, and linguists. However, the assumption has been that laughter lacks meaning akin to what words and phrases possess and that it does not contribute to the compositional construction of meaning. In this paper, we argue that, in fact, laughter (and other non-verbal social signals like smiling, sighing, frowning) has propositional content—it involves reference to external real world events, has stand alone meanings, and participates in semantic and pragmatic processes like repair, implicature, and irony. We show how to develop a formal semantic and pragmatic account of laughter embedded in a general theory of conversational interaction and emotional reasoning and show how to explain the wide, indeed in principle unbounded range of uses laughter exhibits. We show how our account can be extended to other non-verbal social sig...

THE ROLE OF HUMOUR IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: WHEN STUDENTS FLUENTLY SMILE IN L2

As opposed to conservative instructors from decades ago, more and more educators seem to adopt humorous approach to make students more comfortable and attentive in classrooms, and where a safe space for risk-taking can be generated. The role of humour as a teaching tool has been discussed/ researched in numerous disciplines and even in academic settings—which had formerly been considered “serious”—the moments of laughter in classes have become more frequent. However, we might wonder: What is humour? Why do we use it? How does it affect our understanding, learning and socialising abilities? Can humour harm us in any way? Is exposing L2 learners to humorous discourse in their target language “too much to ask”? Trying to find some answers to these questions, this paper will analyse humour, sense of humour and humorous discourse from perspectives of various disciplines, while having a close look at the effects of humour in second language learning/teaching. After a brief etymological analysis of the word “humour”, the first focus will be on different categorisations/interpretations of humour types and styles throughout decades. In the light of some valuable studies, the paper will further review the perception/appreciation, production as well as neuro-scientific values/outcomes of humour, prior to analysing and exemplifying its various pedagogical functions in L2 classrooms. If not otherwise indicated, all illustrated moments of humorous discourse have been self-created/self- experienced examples in various classroom settings.

A multi-layered analysis Laughter

2016

This paper presents a multi-layered classification of laughter in French and Chinese dialogues (from the DUEL corpus). Analysis related to the form, the semantic meaning and the function of laughter and its context provides a detailed study of the range of uses of laughter and their distributions. A similar distribution was observed in most of the data collected for French and Chinese. We ground our classification in a formal semantic and pragmatic analysis. We propose that most functions of laughter can be analyzed by positing a unified meaning with two dimensions, which when aligned with rich contextual reasoning, yields a wide range of functions. However, we also argue that a proper treatment of laughter involves a significant conceptual modification of information state account of dialogue to incorporate emotive aspects of interaction.

The use of humour in the off-task spaces of the language classroom

ELT Journal, 2019

The focal point of most investigations into classroom discourse tends to be on the institutionally sanctioned and legitimized on-task exchanges between teachers and students with particular attention to the IRF/E structure. Liminal spaces of interaction such as during the small talk just before the 'lesson proper', transitions between activities, and playful moments before or immediately after breaks are often unexplored. Using transcribed naturalistic spoken data collected via participant observation over 12 weeks, examples of teacher-initiated humour are analysed to shed light on how off-task, 'non-teaching' spaces can be used as a pedagogical resource. This study puts the spotlight on how humour can be deployed in these obscured interstices of the L2 classroom to create a space not only to build rapport between students and teachers but also to impart new vocabulary and sociocultural knowledge.

Laughter in interaction : semantics, pragmatics, and child development

Université de Paris, 2019

Science du Langage Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle-UMR 7110 Doctor of Philosophy Laughter in interaction: semantics, pragmatics, and child development by Chiara M Laughter is a social vocalization universal across cultures and languages. It is ubiquitous in our dialogues and able to serve a wide range of functions. Laughter has been studied from several perspectives, but the classifications proposed are hard to integrate. Despite being crucial in our daily interaction, relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of laughter in conversation, attempting to model its sophisticated pragmatic use, neuro-correlates in perception and development in children. In the current thesis a new comprehensive framework for laughter analysis is proposed, crucially grounded in the assumption that laughter has propositional content, arguing for the need to distinguish different layers of analysis, similarly to the study of speech: form, positioning, semantics and pragmatics. A formal representation of laughter meaning is proposed and a multilingual corpus study (French, Chinese and English) is conducted in order to test the proposed framework and to deepen our understanding of laughter use in adult conversation. Preliminary investigations are conducted on the viability of a laughter form-function mapping based on acoustic features and on the neuro-correlates involved in the perception of laughter serving different functions in natural dialogue. Our results give rise to novel generalizations about the placement, alignment, semantics and function of laughter, stressing the high pragmatic skills involved in its production and perception. The development of the semantic and pragmatic use of laughter is observed in a longitudinal corpus study of 4 American-English child-mother pairs from 12 to 36 months of age. Results show that laughter use undergoes important development at each level analysed, which complies with what could be hypothesised on the base of phylogenetic data, and that laughter can be an effective means to track cognitive/communicative development, and potential difficulties or delays at a very early stage.

Humour Discourse in Internet Memes: An Aid in ESL Classrooms

Asia Pacific Media Educator, 2019

In the ever-changing classroom dynamics of the twenty-first century, teaching needs to be innovative in order to be effective. The youth of the present age are members of virtual societies communicating mostly through the digital medium. This digital communication has its effects on the traditional classroom lectures. There has been a marked decline in basic language skills. Learners are less attentive and need more motivation. Interactive method of teaching is the best method of teaching language. But for this, the learners have to participate in the classroom and contribute something of their own. Learners have to be taught in a method that interests them and makes the language taught to them relevant in context. There is a need to incorporate digital communicative medium inside the language classroom in an enterprising and novel way while maintaining a low affective filter. For this, teachers have to adopt a systematic approach to digital technology. They need to be more versatil...

Integrating laughter into spoken dialogue systems: preliminary analysis and suggested programme

FAIM/ISCA Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Multimodal Human Robot Interaction

This paper presents an exploratory scheme, which aims at investigating perceptual features that characterise laughables (the arguments laughter is related to) in dialogue context. We present the results of a preliminary study and sketch an updated questionnaire on laughables types and laughter functions aimed to be used for Amazon Mechanical Turk experiments. Furthermore we present preliminary programme for integrating laughter into spoken dialogue systems.

Humour in interaction and cognitive linguistics: critical review and convergence of approaches

Complutense Journal of English Studies, 2019

Linguistic humour studies have been undertaken from different perspectives. The present paper offers a review of the most influential theories seeking synergies and convergence between them under the umbrella of cognitive linguistics, and, more specifically, resorting to Langacker’s (2001) current discourse space (CDS) as the overall framework which can accommodate and encompass those perspectives, along with Fauconnier and Turner’s (2003) Conceptual Integration Theory. A sketch of various theories is included (Raskin, 1985; Attardo, 1994; Coulson, 2005a; Veale, 2015, etc.), along with an analysis of points of convergence and similarities as the rationale for bringing them together against the backdrop of the CDS.