5. 'Got a date or something?': A corpus analysis of the role of humour and laughter in the workplace meetings of English language teachers

This chapter brings instances of humour and laughter into relief using a corpus of authentic institutional interaction of English language teachers in school staff meetings. Humour is used within the meetings as a means of showing mutual support and creating solidarity. The corpus also contains a large proportion of subversive humour, or humour which is directed against the institution, individuals in the group, the group itself and the students. Identifying humour in the data is not a simple case of finding instances of laughter or assuming that it signifies either the intention of the speaker to elicit laughter, or to be humorous.However, wherever humour is manifested, laughter frequently occurs. The methodological issue of identifying and transcribing humour is discussed.