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In:Structures in Discourse: Interaction, adaptability, and pragmatic functions
Edited by Martin Gill, Aino Malmivirta and Brita Wårvik
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 345] 2024
► pp. 83–102

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The uses of laughter in epideictic radio interviews

 | Lancaster University
Published online: 7 August 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.345.05mye
Abstract
A number of researchers have dealt with laughter as a strategic device in broadcast interviews and press conferences. I consider how laughter works in a genre in which part of the purpose is to praise the interviewee – what I call epideictic interviews. These interviews have interactional problems around presenting and accepting praise. Laughter can be placed so that it acknowledges and mitigates these problems. Typically, interviewee laughter comes in response to interviewer praise, or in the performance of humorous material. Interviewer laughter often marks for the audience that material is to be taken as non-serious. Analysis of laughter tells us both about the peculiarities of interaction in this broadcast genre, and about the difficulties in performing and listening to praise.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Approaches to laughter in broadcasting
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.The rhetoric of praise
  • 5.Responding to praise
  • 6.Interviewer laughter – signalling non-seriousness and seriousness
  • 7.Moving out of laughter
  • 8.Working together
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data excerpts
  • References
References (46)
Data excerpts
BBC Desert Island Discs, David Attenborough (21/1/2012) [URL]
BBC Desert Island Discs, Rt. Hon. Alex Salmond (16/1/2011) [URL]
BBC Desert Island Discs, Baroness Hollins (13/5/2012) [URL]
BBC Desert Island Discs, Desmond Tutu (8/9/1995) [URL]
BBC Desert Island Discs, Martin Sorrell (4/12/2011) [URL]
BBC Today, Dalai Lama (15/5/12) [URL]
BBC Women’s Hour, Axelle Lemaire (25/6/2012) [URL]
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