Misunderstanding Laughter As A Feature Of Tenor

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 35, 36):

Another possibility is to show our feelings by laughing at what is being put forward. Knight (2010a, 2010b) highlights the crucial importance of laughter in building solidarity in conversation.  

She argues it is a way of responding to something that pushes against shared values or knowledge – but in a ‘fun’ way (i.e., not in a way that requires outright rejection or condemnation). Laughing allows us to acknowledge that what is being said is 'unacceptable' in some sense, but that we all know it is unacceptable and so it’s not an issue. By implicating this shared knowledge, laughter in fact reinforces affiliation – we come closer. To put this more technically, Knight describes laughter as occurring when a person puts forward a coupling of attitude and ideation that wrinkles against assumed shared bond networks which align the speakers in the conversation. Rather than refusing to bond around an unacceptable coupling and so condemning the speaker, laughter allows the listener to ‘defer’ a direct reaction to what has been said, and express their understanding of alternative unspoken ‘real’ bonds that underpin the conversation. …

 In more detailed work, Knight (2011) explores the sound potential of laughter in terms of its articulation, prosody, and movement. Among a number of distinctions, she shows that different types of laughter can indicate positive or negative judgement of what is being said. In our terms, this means that laughter can also indicate support or rejection, in addition to deferring meaning.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, here the authors incongruously propose laughter as a feature of tenor, the cultural dimension of 'who is taking part'.

[2] To be clear, as semiosis, laughter is not language, since it does not have a stratified content plane. As protolanguage, in expressing emotive and cognitive states, it serves the personal microfunction (Halliday 2004 [1998]: 18). However, a way to get beyond the personal to the social is suggested by Halliday's linear taxonomy of complex systems, in which semiotic systems emerge from social systems. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

… a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning".

On this basis, laughter can be understood as social in the sense of being biological plus value. The value, in this case, is the positive value triggered by laughter when it releases endorphins. To induce laughter in another is to instantiate a positive value in their neurological system, and mutual laughter is the mutual instantiation of positive value. It is the sharing of a positive value that can create a social bond.

[3] To be clear, in Knight's example, the laughter provides the social means of bonding the interlocutors, when their interpersonal semiosis does not.

[4] To be clear, as above, the laughter that supports activates a positive value in the interlocutors, thus bonding them, and the laughter that rejects activates a positive value in the those laughing and a negative value in those not laughing, thus not bonding them.