Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

510 Part 6: Language and Interaction
the product-item; where laugh tokens alternate with syllables of the repeat’
(1972: 299). The following case is taken from talk among four-year-old
children:
(16) ICS_02_09_06(1of2)JKT4.mov 32: 47
01 Nora: My dad is a doctor and my mom is a professor
02 Cathy: A professor(h) ha ha ha ha ha
03 Nora: heh hah hah
Here when Nora announces that her dad is a doctor and her mom a
professor, Cathy repeats ‘a professor’ in next turn position. By virtue of the
laughter that infi ltrates the repeat, Cathy takes up a stance towards what
Nora has just said, appreciating it as something funny (see also Goodwin
& Goodwin, 1987). Notice that such laugh token repeats, like laughter in
general, are typically treated as invitations to laugh by their recipients and
may thus initiate sustained bouts of joint laughter. Jefferson suggests that:
the ‘laugh token’ repeat differs from the ‘questioning’ repeat not only
in that they do not ‘mean’ the same thing (for example, that the former
demonstrates some sort of approval and the latter demonstrates some
sort of disapproval), but in that they do not do the same work. Laugh
tokens in general are regularly associated with termination of talk and
it can be proposed that the laugh token repeat is regularly associated
with termination of talk with reference to its product-item. ( Jefferson,
1972: 300)
The proper way for a recipient to handle a laugh token repeat then
according to Jefferson is to ‘ignore it, since, if it is heard as an object signaling
appreciation via laughter, then it is a terminator’ (Jefferson, 1972: 301).
However, Jefferson also notes that a laugh token repeat can ‘converge’
with a questioning repeat ‘if it is found to be possibly non-appreciative;
that is, it may then call for some remedial work’. Consider the following
fragment in this light – here Shelagh Rogers is interviewing interim
President of the University of Toronto Frank Iacobucci. At the time of the
interview, Iacobucci was a Supreme Court justice in Ottawa. Prior to this
he had been Dean of the University of Toronto law school. The interviewer’s
fi rst question here invokes this previous history with the University.
(17) Sounds like Canada – Iacobucci 20/4/05
01 SR: [(it- di-) an this is a retur:n to you fer
02 the- to the University of Toronto.
03 FI: That’s right I: ah I was uh u-in the university
04 fer nearly twenty years then went to Ottawa,
05 (.)
06 → o h to do things there: an’ [( turn )
07 SR: [hhh hah heh
08 → to do thi(h)ngs there. =