Pragmatic Functions Of Laughter In Chinese Interaction:a Conversation Analytic Perspective

Laughter, an innate ability, is used to show the pleasure inside and send messages. As something fundamentally social, it has been studied a lot in such various fields as psychology, philosophy, rhetoric, sociology and many others.Based on their study on the structure of daily conversation, Sacks, Jefferson and Schegloff put forward Conversation Analysis (CA) in early1970s. CA is a relatively new branch in linguistic analysis which aims to understand the features in talks through the analysis of daily spoken language. Being an important part of nonverbal communication, laughing should become one of the interests of linguists. According to the research so far, Jefferson primarily demonstrates the initial observations to describe laughter with the help of CA. However, few researchers are found to discuss laughter in Chinese interaction. In this regard, the present study focuses on the laughs in the Cui’s Talk Show program from the perspective of conversation analysis, with the interactions related to laughter being transcribed in detail. Evidence from the transcriptions suggests the pragmatic functions of laugh. There is an attempt to find the contribution for laughter to accomplish conversation and the relationship between laughter and politeness.To construct the theoretical basis for the whole thesis, the writer first introduce three basic theories, including intercultural communication, humor research and conversation analysis. On the basis of the study of laughter, this thesis manages to answer how people initiate shared laughter and extend it into lengthier laughings together. Moreover, the data is examined to explain the pragmatic functions of laughs, with an emphasis on its polite effect on talk-in-interaction.The three main contributions of this study are on the findings and the theoretical and practical aspects. The first contribution is the exploration of how laughter appears to bring emotional communication between interactants. The second one is the establishment of data-driven research, which enables one to prove laughing as a useful communicative strategy. The third is the application of pragmatic functions of laughter, which plays the same important role as language, if not more powerful.