The Linguistics of Laughter by Alan Partington - 9780415544078

The Linguistics of LaughterA Corpus-Assisted Study of Laughter-Talk\nAuthor(s): Alan Partington\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9780415544078, 978-0415544078\nSynopsis\nThe Linguistics of Laughter examines what speakers try to achieve by producing laughter-talk (the talk preceding and eliciting an episode of laughter) and, by using abundant examples from language corpora, what hearers are signalling when they produce laughter.\n\nIn particular, Alan Partington focuses on the tactical use of laughter-talk to achieve specific rhetorical, and strategic, ends: for example, to construct an identity, to make an argumentative point, to threaten someone elses face or save one's own. Although laughter and humour are by no means always related, the book also considers the implications these corpus-based observations may have about humour theory in general. \n\nAs one of the first works to have recourse to such a sizeable dat.