Glenn2010a

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Glenn2010a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Glenn2010a
Author(s) Phillip Glenn
Title Interviewer laughs: shared laughter and asymmetries in employment interviews
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, laughter, asymmetries, employment interviews, delicates
Publisher
Year 2010
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Pragmatics
Volume 42
Number 6
Pages 1485–1498
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.01.009
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Routinely, in a corpus of videotaped employment interviews, the interviewer invites laughter. The interviewee laughs along. The interviewer may produce a next laughable or briefly topicalize the laughable materials, but the interviewee does not do so. Rather, the interviewee will wait for the interviewer to take the lead in returning them to the business of the interview. The asymmetries evident in the sequential organization of these shared laughs show participant orientation to respective institutional roles. These asymmetries are consistent with those identified in previous research examining doctor–patient and survey interviewer–respondent interactions. While laughing together might appear to reduce power distance and bring participants together, the organization and distribution of these shared laughter instances reflect and reinscribe the hegemony of the roles of interviewer and interviewee.

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