Psychologische Ansätze zur Erforschung des Lachens

Abstract

The following article provides a selective review of more than 130 years of research on the definition, types, and functions of adult vocal laughter from the point of view of psychology. The review shows that laughter has not been extensively researched, although it has been claimed to be a promising topic for psychologists. Empirical approaches have, in the course of time, focused increasingly on the communicative functions of laughter in spoken dialogue. Methodologically, this approach has included the interdisciplinary efforts of phonetics, linguistics, and conversation analysis. The field-observational research of the present authors, presented in summary fashion, has conceptualized laughter as a paralinguistic, nuanced rhetorical tool in the hands of experts (Hannah Arendt) and politicians (Hillary and Bill Clinton) in media interviews, and actors in the movie The Third Man and in the BBC mini-series Pride and Prejudice. The findings indicate that the two types of laughter (HA-HA laughter and suprasegmental laughter) may have different communicative functions, that gender may be an important variable in determining type, amount, duration, and function of laughter, that vocal laughter is not necessarily related to humorous content, and that HA-HA laughter may be functionally similar to interjections.