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In:Register and Discourse through the Lens of Corpus Linguistics
Edited by Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Dolores González-Álvarez and Esperanza Rama-Martínez
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 127] 2026
► pp. 158–181

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Chapter 6
A corpus-based investigation of interruptions and humour in FOMC deliberations

 | NHH Norwegian School of Economics
 | NHH Norwegian School of Economics
Published online: 24 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.127.06and
Abstract
This chapter investigates the interaction of participants in high-stakes meetings, more specifically, the ways in which the deliberations of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the United States are characterized by interruptions and humour. We explore the recently compiled FOMC corpus (Langerfeld & Andersen, 2023) that contains approximately 12-million tokens of meeting transcripts from 1987 to 2018. The FOMC is part of the U.S. Federal Reserve System and makes key decisions on monetary policy that impact the American and global economies, such as the key interest rate. Methodologically, we base our study on a complementary quantitative and qualitative approach, as embodied in the framework of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (Partington, 2004; Partington & Marchi, 2015; Gillings et al., 2023). Our findings show that humour is utilized commonly by chairs and delegates in ways which are similar to but also distinct from everyday conversational humour (Norrick, 2003) and from humour in the workplace more generally (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003). They also show that, although interruption is inherently a disruptive discourse strategy, it also contributes to driving the deliberations forward and leading to the decisions and outputs that this community of practice is expected to deliver.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material and methods
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Humour and laughter in FOMC meetings
      • 3.1.1Quantitative analysis
      • 3.1.2Qualitative analysis
    • 3.2Interruptions in FOMC meetings
      • 3.2.1Quantitative analysis
      • 3.2.2Qualitative analysis
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (38)
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