Involvement and joking in conversation

Abstract

This paper seeks to relate involvement and joking in conversation through close investigation of passages from everyday talk. Conversationalists maintain involvement - or the coherent give and take of talk in interaction - by signaling their understanding of and attitudes toward their jointly constructed discourse. Joking impinges on involvement in various ways, affecting coherence at the micro-level, expressing both rapport and aggression, and reframing the interaction as play. Thus word play tends to disrupt topical turn-by-turn coherence, though it signals rapport overall, just as exchanging personal anecdotes enhances positive affect. Sarcasm and mocking seem to signal negative affect, but even these aggressive forms of joking reframe the interaction as play like the other joking strategies, so they end up conveying solidarity and modulating involvement, especially among conversationalists who maintain a customary joking relationship.