Temporal distribution of laughter in conversation

Laughter, as component of social interaction, has attracted interest within conversational analysis [2, 5]. While laughter can be expressed in different contexts, voluntary or involuntary [6], and diverse in function and degree of functionality [2], it is not random. We study timing of laughter during conversation in relation to topic changes: whether recurrent patterns in laughter distribution with respect to topic changes exist; whether laughter is a reliable topic termination cue. Others also approach this problem [3, 4]. Regularities have been analyzed in the occurrence of shared and not-shared laughter and their different conversational functions [3]. From a large collection of instances two persistent patterns are noted: shared laughter is often associated with topic termination and solo laughter, topic continuation. It has been observed that laughter invites reciprocal laughter [5]; however, Holt qualifies this with analysis of cases in which the listener seemingly refuses the laugh-invitation by continuing the topic with further information, instead. Keeping in mind Holt’s analysis [3, 4], we explore a corpus of multiparty spontaneous chat approaching the problem in two steps: at a coarse-grained level, we analyze the temporal distribution of laughter with respect to topic boundaries; then, at a finer level we will analyze the differences in distribution of shared and solo laughter. The two main points of our work can be summarized by these two questions: I) how laughter is distributed around topic boundaries? II) is there evidence of the “shared laughter-topic termination” relation and of “solo laughter-topic continuation” relation?