| Laughter is a sound produced by the vocal organs and described as an elusive,ambivalent and enigmatic phenomenon.Researchers explore laughter in various fields abroad,including language teaching and acquisition.However,conversational analysis of the features of laughter is an under-researched area in Chinese classroom settings,especially from a bipartite perspective of epistemics and emotion.Using the framework of conversational analysis and based on the data of 55 hours of video-recordings with 234,599 words collected in EFL classroom peer interactive conversations,this study mainly investigates the features of voiced laughter in language learning settings.In further analysis,it aims at exploring its causes and effects on learners’ language acquisition and emotional development on the basis of a bipartite perspective of epistemics and emotion.The present study achieves a number of findings about the distribution features of voiced laughter as follows:(1)A total of 389 voiced laughter appear in the collected interactive conversations with two types: solo voiced laughter(with a frequency of 71.2%)and shared voiced laughter(with a frequency of 28.8%).(2)Voiced laughter can be indicated by the epistemic/emotional discourse markers along with them,between which the proportion of voiced laughter related to epistemics is 60.7%,which is slightly higher than voiced laughter related to emotion(39.3%).(3)Voiced laughter with epistemic discourse markers manifests the following four types which are ranked from high frequency to low: “pronouns”,“pause or searching for words”,“modal verbs” and “citations” while voiced laughter with emotional discourse markers display the following three types: “positive and negative words”,“other non-verbal behavior” and “words overlapping and repetitions”.(4)Four types of voiced laughter are investigated in the study: solo voiced laughter related to epistemics(RD,49.4%),shared voiced laughter related to epistemics(RQ,11.3%),solo voiced laughter related to emotion(QD,21.8%)and shared voiced laughter related to emotion(QQ,17.5%).When it comes to the epistemic/emotional causes of voiced laughter,the study finds that :(1)Solo voiced laughter claims the higher frequency than shared voiced laughter due to the individual differences and less efforts “laughing alone” takes than “laughing together”.(2)The epistemic issues are so common in interactive conversations that they contribute to the higher production of voiced laughter related to epistemics than voiced laughter related to emotion.(3)RD tend to be more easily produced by the epistemic incongruity while QD triggered by the emotional incongruity.RQ tend to be more easily produced by the epistemic congruity while QQ tend to be more easily produced by the emotional congruity.(4)Since the epistemic and the emotional incongruity were more easily to be achieved,RD occurs more frequently than RQ and QD occur more frequently than QQ.In respect of the effects of voiced laughter on learners,it is found that voiced laughter,as an interactional resource,supplements verbal behavior and promotes the progress of the talk as well as the successful completion of the task while helping the learner’s individual knowledge reconstruction in epistemic development as well as constructing a harmonious language learning community while negotiating learners’ individual identity from an individual perspective in emotional development.This study not only leads in more significant inquiries into non-verbal behavior studies in classroom settings,but also sheds some implications on teaching and learning practice in EFL classrooms since it helps learners be fully aware of the importance of voiced laughter to use it properly and avoid the interaction trouble caused by inappropriate voiced laughter.At last,limitations of the present study and recommendations for future research are put forward. |
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