The function of laughter and joking in negotiation activities

This article presents an analysis of the distribution and function of laughter in three different types of authentic international negotiations, in which both native and non-native speakers of English took part. All the instances in the corpus where one, some, or all of the participants could be heard to laugh or pronounce a phrase laughingly were identified. The analyses focused on when the participants laughed, what the participants laughed at and how the participants laughed - jointly or unilaterally. The analyses indicate first that laughter works as a discourse boundary device; second, that laughter signals what topics are important or less important, sensitive or less sensitive. Third, earlier findings that unilateral laughter, as opposed to joint laughter, is more frequent with participants who are at a disadvantage were confirmed.