Markaki2010

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Markaki2010
BibType ARTICLE
Key Markaki2010
Author(s) Vassiliki Markaki, Sara Merlino, Lorenza Mondada, Florence Oloff
Title Laughter in professional meetings: The organization of an emergent ethnic joke
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Membership categorization, Laughter, Meetings, Sequential organization, Jokes
Publisher
Year 2010
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Pragmatics
Volume 42
Number 6
Pages 1526–1542
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.01.013
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

On the basis of a single case analysis of the emergence of an ethnic joke, this paper explores issues related to laughter in international business meetings. More particularly, it deals with ways in which a person's name is correctly pronounced. Speakers and co-participants seem to orient towards ‘proper’ ways of vocalizing names and to consequent ‘variations’ or ‘deviations’ from them, making different ways of pronunciation available as a laughable. In making such pronunciation variations available, accountable and recognizable, participants reflexively establish as relevant the multilingual character of the activity, of the participants’ competences and of the setting; conversely, they exploit these multilingual features within specific social practices, leading to laughter.

Our analysis focuses on the contexts of action, the sequential environments and the interactional practices by which the uttering of a name becomes a ‘laughable’ and then a resource for an ethnic joke. Moreover, it explores the implications of transforming the pronunciation into a laughable in terms of the organization of the ongoing activity, changing participation frameworks and membership categorizations. In this sense, it highlights the flexible structure of groups and the way in which laughter reconfigures them through local affiliating and disaffiliating moves, and by making various national categories available and relevant.

Notes