Laughter is fundamentally social. People do sometimes laugh when alone, but it occurs more commonly in interaction. Furthermore, as research reviewed in Chapter 1 has demonstrated (see p. 26), people are more likely to laugh if others around them are laughing. In many, though not all, social environments, laughs beget laughs, and laughter invites laughter. This shared quality is captured in the lines of a famous poem:

Although thoroughly integrated into various other activities, “laughing together” is also an activity in its own right (Jefferson, Sacks, and Schegloff, 1987, p. 158), for which at times people will stop whatever else they are doing. Extended laughings together become memorable, reportable, and storyable events. They offer relationally potent moments which may contribute to group solidarity, developing romance, or hurt feelings. Like other social activities (such as meetings, arguments, and storytellings), laughings together occur, not accidentally or randomly, but through recognizable, systematic means. The focus of this chapter is on how people initiate shared laughter and extend it into lengthier laughings together.

Initiating shared laughter

To understand how laughing together begins, we must examine how speakers create the sequential environments in which it occurs. Because these same environments lead as well to other activities, in the course of examining shared laugh beginnings we will also characterize alternative possibilities.

Shared laughter is not necessarily unison laughter (Jefferson, Sacks, and Schegloff, 1977, p. 2).