Got a date or something?: An analysis of the role of humour and laughter in the workplace discourse of English language teachers.

This chapter brings instances of humour and laughter into relief using a corpusof authentic institutional interaction of English language teachers in school staffmeetings. Humour is used within the meetings as a means of showing mutualsupport and creating solidarity. The corpus also contains a large proportionof subversive humour, or humour which is directed against the institution,individuals in the group, the group itself and the students. Identifying humourin the data is not a simple case of finding instances of laughter or assumingthat it signifies either the intention of the speaker to elicit laughter, or to behumourous. However, wherever humour is manifested, laughter frequentlyoccurs. The methodological issue of identifying and transcribing humour isdiscussed.