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In:Emancipatory Pragmatics: Innovative approaches to pragmatics incorporating the concept of “ba”
Edited by Yoko Fujii, William F. Hanks, Sachiko Ide, Scott Saft and Kishiko Ueno
[Culture and Language Use 24] 2025
► pp. 170–195

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The emergence of affect through resonance and “thin laughter”

An interpretation from the ba perspective

 | University of Tsukuba
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 2 December 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.24.07ide
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to reinterpret kyoowa or collaborative talk in Japanese discourse from the pragmatic perspective based on ba theory. Applying the idea of the self as a dual-mode existence within the ba, I analyze parts of a Japanese narrative in which the speaker talks about the experience of a large earthquake. I focus the analysis on the climax of the telling where frequent speaker and listener overlaps occur through backchannels, repetition, induced-fit utterances, and light laughter, which I call “thin laughter”. I argue that these interactional phenomena do not rise out of the interactant’s intention or strategy to be involved with the other, but from the self-organizational emergence of affect in ba through entrainment and resonance.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ba and ba theory
    • 2.1The folk notions of ba and basho
    • 2.2Ba theory and the non-separation of the self and other
    • 2.3Entrainment and induced-fit interaction
  • 3.The nature of the data
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Aizuchi and the rhythm of interaction
    • 4.2Repetitions, overlaps, take-overs, and thin laughter
    • 4.3Emerging affect through resonance
  • 5.Beyond collaboration
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (61)
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