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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Laughter'
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Farris, Sara. "Desperate laughter /." View online, 1985. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211130497836.pdf.
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Bleasdale, John. "Shelly and laughter." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.366700.
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Piafsky, Michael. "Laughter and other lies." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/5974.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007.<br>The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 17, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.
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Torres, John L. "The laughter of faith." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2005. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p068-0562.
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Nugent, Michael Vincent. "The laughter of inclusion." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6531/.
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This study is concerned with school-children’s communication, behavioural, and emotional development, in which the first concern has been to focus on their laughter. Although commonly thought of as an integral component of childhood, children’s laughter seldom receives the attention it deserves. The significance of laughter’s correlation with children’s social connectivity remains largely undiscovered. Little account has been taken of laughter’s exclusive orientation, and the strain this may create in schools with an avowedly inclusive ethos. Teachers and pupils who agreed to take part in this study were recruited from two primary schools. Together, they formed the substantive part of a pair of ethnographic case-studies. Data obtained from a series of playground/classroom observations and informal interviews were framed around Robert Putnam’s theory of social capital, and its own inclusive-exclusive (bridging and bonding) dynamic. Findings indicate that our diminishing stocks of social capital may be directly correlated with our decline in laughter production. They also confirm the view that it is unhelpful to consider inclusive and exclusive entities in isolation. Exclusive laughter appears to be a fundamental condition of inclusive schooling, with pupils and their teachers apparently natural exponents of a form of behaviour that may be described as inclusive-exclusive.
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Cohen, David. "The development of laughter." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1985. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/8dbda20c-3386-4463-8d4f-7505f935edb9/1/.
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The development of laughter is little understood even though it is an area of human behaviour that long intrigued psychologists and philosophers. A framework for understanding is required. With guidance from existing literature, observational data is used to develop such a framework. It is argued that no one single approach can, in principle, explain the phenomenon. Laughter occurs in too varied situations for it to be possible to claim that it is due to one single cause. Moreover, laboratory studies usually require subjects to laugh at 'funny' stimuli on cue. As a result, they have focussed on responsive laughter rather than on the conditions under which subjects try to make others laugh. Given this background, observational data is useful. In this study observational data from a longitudinal study of two children and from a study of children in a playgroup are used to argue that very young children not only laugh responsively but also create occasions for their own laughter. Moreover, while their ability to laugh develops in many ways linked to their cognitive and social development, they can still laugh at the kinds of situations that made them laugh when they were very young. It is concluded that observations have helpfully added to ways in which the development of laughter has been conceptualised. It is also suggested that some observations of laughter in young children have implications for research on how young children are capable of intentional behaviour.
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Paul, Daniel. "We Take Laughter Seriously." OpenSIUC, 2013. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1209.
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Bown, Alfie. "Eventual laughter : Dickens and comedy." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/eventual-laughter-dickens-and-comedy(b53f285d-bac9-43c8-827f-e63609226ea6).html.
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This thesis attempts to redress the drought of work on Dickens on comedy, which is surprising considering how often Dickens is thought of as a comic writer. The thesis uses Dickens to demonstrate problems with and resistance to existing theorizations of laughter, and attempts to develop a new way of thinking about laughter through Dickens. The thesis begins with a theoretical section, which is a discussion of existing discussions of laughter followed by an attempt to develop a new way of thinking about laughter by making use Alain Badiou’s concept of the ‘event.’ The thesis then moves to Section Two, in which these ideas are discussed alongside Dickens’s novels. Chapter Four attempts to show in a general way how Dickens and these discussions of laughter belong together, and how a certain moment in the nineteenth century that Dickens was a unique part of shows that new ways of discussing laughter are needed. Chapter Five argues that laughter in Dickens is not natural or spontaneous but part of constructing an idea of natural spontaneity. Pickwick Papers, it is argued, is the novel of retroactive causes, showing how laughter can create ideas of ‘nature’ which then appear to explain social behaviour such as laughter itself. Chapter Six tackles the relationship between laughter and anxiety. It argues that laughter creates order by ‘dealing’ with anxiety, but that this order it produces is profoundly unstable and has new anxieties. Barnaby Rudge is the novel which shows this in its particular historical context. The final chapter argues that Dickens’s writing can be called ‘comic’ in the terms that have been established throughout the thesis. Discussing Great Expectations, it argues that laughter is a plotting force that creates narratives and structures. Finally, the conclusion discusses changes that may have happened to laughter in the nineteenth century and what it means to find ourselves laughing at Dickens’s texts today.
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Seeparsand, Feroud Mohamed. "The audiovisual perception of laughter : the influence of the laughing face upon the laughter sound." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.431862.
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Generally, the thesis reports on a series of eight experiments investigating how the face is communicating laughter, when using spontaneous and dynamic laughter clips. More specifically, the experiments are investigating how the laughing face may aid the ability to hear the laughter sound: an audiovisual laughter effect. The basic methodology was borrowed from the area of audiovisual speech perception, a well established area of research investigating how the speaking face aids the ability to hear the spoken word. Evidence for audiovisual laughter perception was found in each of the eight experiments. However, another question was how the face is aiding the ability to hear the laughter sound. Experiments one and two simultaneously investigated into the possibility of configurational processing in audiovisual laughter. Some evidence was found to this effect in experiment two but not experiment one. Experiments three, four and five simultaneously investigated into the possibility of featural processing in audiovisual laughter. Evidence was found to this effect in each experiment. Experiments six, seven and eight simultaneously investigated into the possibility that dynamic information, rather than static information is intrinsic to the audiovisual laughter effect. Evidence in favour of this possibility was found in each experiment. Overall, the data would appear to suggest the moving mouth is the single most salient feature for audiovisual laughter, with particular importance given to the moving featural detail of the intra-oral region. However, if this information is missing, the remaining parts of the moving laughing face are still able to aid the hearing of the laughter sound. Future research is necessary to further highlight the processes of the new perceptual phenomenon of audio visual laughter.
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Widegren, Johannes. "The Laughter of Literature : A diachronic study of the social functions of laughter in British literature." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-79777.
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This paper investigates the historical development of the social functions of laughter in literature using linguistic analysis. Many previous studies have analyzed the connection between humor and laughter, but very few have looked at laughter in literature. In this paper, using the eight social functions of laughter defined by Foot and McCreaddie (2007), instances of the word laugh and its variants were analyzed in canonical British literature from the 14th century to the 21st and then compared. In the literature investigated, derision laughter was the most common function during the 15th through 17th centuries. In the centuries to follow humorous laughter took that position. An explanation for this could be that there was no clear division between derision laughter and humorous laughter until the 18th century (Classen, 2010). Also noted was an increase in the frequency of instances of laughter per 1000 words since the 17th century in the investigated literature, as well as an increase in variation of social functions used. The low frequency of laughter in the past may have been a result of the teachings of the church in England. The increased variation in functions of laughter could indicate that the pragmatic feature of laughter has acquired new functions, or that some functions were not depicted in the older literature of this study.
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Kelen, Christopher, University of Western Sydney, and School of Communication and Media. "Metabusiness : poetics of haunting and laughter." THESIS_XXX_SCM_Kelen_C.xml, 1998. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/542.
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This thesis deals with the writing process in poetry. It consists of two types of text – theoretical and poetic. This thesis asks, for the purposes of a poetics of writing, what knowledge of language poetry requires. Questions as to the sources of poetry are resolved as questions asked of the ethics in which writing is possible. Poetry is that discourse which stands out of the bivalency of judgement, constituting, as speech does in its unending, the delay of freedom. Tropology is structure with which to represent the world, and by limitless tropology we inscribe the manner and scope of poetry’s indirection. What individuals negotiate among differends amounts to their own authenticity. The community of writing is made up of shifting personae whose roles blur between the work of making and the work of keeping the canon. Canon is to literature as langue is to parole – meta-awareness in the service of common sense. We, who make up this community, are constantly at the work of protecting and violating borders. This thesis considers the prospects for a heuristics of poetry writing by way of the affinities of that process for those of (first and foreign) language learning. It contents that poetry’s role is to do inside a language what the foreign language learner cannot help but do between languages<br>Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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WEEKS, MARK. "Freud and the Economics of Laughter." 名古屋大学大学院国際言語文化研究科, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2237/7842.
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Petridis, Stavros. "Audiovisual discrimination between laughter and speech." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.549710.
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Laughter is clearly an audiovisual event, consisting of the laughter vocalisation and involving facial activity around the mouth. Past research on automatic laughter classification has focused mainly on audio-based approaches. In this thesis we integrate the information from audio and video channels and show that this fusion may lead to improved performance over unimodal approaches. We investigated different types of audiovisual fusion, temporal modelling and feature sets in order to find the best combination. A novel approach to combine audio and visual information based on prediction is also proposed, which explicitly models spatial and temporal relationship between audio and visual features. Experiments are presented both on matched training and test conditions, using subject-independent cross validation in one database, and unmatched conditions using 6 databases. This presents a challenging situation which is rarely addressed in the literature. Comparison of the different fusion approaches is performed on these databases, confirming that the prediction-based method proposed usually performs better than standard fusion methods. The lack of suitable data is a major obstacle in studying laughter so we introduce a new publicly available audiovisual database suitable for studying laughter. It contains 22 subjects which were recorded while watching stimulus material, by two microphones, a video camera and a thermal camera. An analysis of the errors of the audio, video and audiovisual classifiers is also performed in terms of gender, language, laughter types and noise levels in order to get an insight of when visual information helps. Finally, results on the first attempt to discriminate two types of laughter, voiced and unvoiced, in an audiovisual way are presented. Overall, it is demonstrated that in most cases the addition of visual information to audio leads to improved performance in laughter-vs-speech discrimination and audiovisual fusion is really beneficial as the audio noise levels increase.
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Kelen, Christopher. "Metabusiness : poetics of haunting and laughter." Thesis, View thesis, 1998. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/542.
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This thesis deals with the writing process in poetry. It consists of two types of text – theoretical and poetic. This thesis asks, for the purposes of a poetics of writing, what knowledge of language poetry requires. Questions as to the sources of poetry are resolved as questions asked of the ethics in which writing is possible. Poetry is that discourse which stands out of the bivalency of judgement, constituting, as speech does in its unending, the delay of freedom. Tropology is structure with which to represent the world, and by limitless tropology we inscribe the manner and scope of poetry’s indirection. What individuals negotiate among differends amounts to their own authenticity. The community of writing is made up of shifting personae whose roles blur between the work of making and the work of keeping the canon. Canon is to literature as langue is to parole – meta-awareness in the service of common sense. We, who make up this community, are constantly at the work of protecting and violating borders. This thesis considers the prospects for a heuristics of poetry writing by way of the affinities of that process for those of (first and foreign) language learning. It contents that poetry’s role is to do inside a language what the foreign language learner cannot help but do between languages
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Kelen, Christopher. "Metabusiness : poetics of haunting & laughter /." View thesis, 1998. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030905.115414/index.html.
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Thesis (PhD. Philosophy) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998.<br>"Submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Communication and Media, University of Western Sydney, Nepean" Bibliography : p. 358-373.
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Millard, John F. "Laughter as sense, a study of meaning." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0008/NQ58659.pdf.
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Cook, Jonathan Neil. "The Carnivalesque Laughter of Flannery O?Connor." NCSU, 2006. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04212006-002139/.
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Critics often point out the incongruity between Flannery O?Connor?s grotesque humor and her self-proclaimed Christian purpose. This paper uses Mikhail Bakhtin?s conception of the carnivalesque to argue that O?Connor?s use of grotesque humor is essential to her purpose. Both O?Connor and Bakhtin distrust all-encompassing ideologies that claim to authoritatively categorize and explain existence. In the carnivalesque laughter created by the grotesque realism of Rabelais, Bakhtin finds a way to undermine worldviews that claim ultimate authority. Similarly, O?Connor uses concrete and grotesque, but humorous images to displace her readers? expectations and undermine their natural desire to explain existence at the expense of mystery. By opening her readers up to mystery, O?Connor prepares them to see the world, and the people in it, as they truly are: complex, flawed, and beautiful.
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Hayakawa, Hiruko. "The meaningless laugh : laughter in Japanese communication /." Connect to full text, 2003. http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/adt/public_html/adt-NU/public/adt-NU20050104.144246/index.html.
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Leone, Matthew J. (Matthew Joseph). "The shape of openness : Bakhtin, Lawrence, laughter." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39750.
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How is Bakhtin's conception of novelistic openness distinct from modernist-dialectical irresolution or open-endedness? Is Women in Love a Bakhtinian "open totality"? How is dialogic openness (as opposed to modernist indeterminacy) a "form-shaping ideology" of comic interrogation?<br>This study tests whether dialogism illuminates the shape of openness in Lawrence. As philosophers of potentiality, both Bakhtin and Lawrence explore the dialogic "between" as a state of being and a condition of meaningful fiction. Dialogism informs Women in Love. It achieves a polyphonic openness which Lawrence in his later fictions cannot sustain. Subsequently, univocal, simplifying organizations supervene. Dialogic process collapses into a stenographic report upon a completed dialogue, over which the travel writer, the poet or the messianic martyr preside.<br>Nevertheless, the old openness can be discerned in the ambivalent laughter of The Captain's Doll, St. Mawr or "The Man Who Loved Islands." In these retrospective variations on earlier themes, laughing openness of vision takes new, "unfinalizable" shapes.
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Ward, Matthew. "The sound of laughter in Romantic poetry." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6814.
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This thesis offers the first critical examination of the sound of laughter in Romantic poetry. Part one locates laughter in the history of ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and explores the interplay between laughter and key intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, and social issues in the Romantic period. I chart a development in thinking about laughter from its primary association with ridicule and the passions up to the early decades of the eighteenth century, to its emerging symbiosis with politeness and aesthetic judgement, before a reassertion of laughter's signification of passion and naturalness by the end of the eighteenth century. Laughter provides an innovative means of mapping cultural markers, and I argue that it highlights shifts in standards and questions of taste. Informed by this analysis, part two offers a series of historically aware close readings of Romantic poetry that identify both an indebtedness to, and refutation of, earlier and contemporaneous ideas about laughter. Rather than having humour or comedy as its central concerns, this thesis identifies the pervasive and capricious influence of the sound of the laugh in the writing of Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats. I detect the heterogeneous representations of laughter in their work that runs across a diverse range of genres, poetic forms, themes, and contexts. As such, I argue against the serious versus the humorous binary which prevails in literary criticism of Romanticism, and suggest that laughter articulates the interplay between the elegiac and the comic, the sublime and the ridiculous, the solitary and the communal. Moreover, I detect a double-naturedness to the sound of laughter in Romantic poetry that registers the subject's capacity to signify both consensus and dispute. This inherent polarity creates a tension in the poems as laughter ironically challenges what it also affirms. Never singularly fixed, the sound of laughter reveals the protean nature of Romantic verse.
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Hayakawa, Haruko. "The Meaningless Laugh: Laughter in Japanese Communication." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/656.
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This thesis explores the functions of laughter in Japanese communication. In orientation it contrasts markedly with previous studies and is the first study to have been based on such a large volume of data. In this paper I have focused on laughter as it serves to maintain a co-operative relationship between the participants in a conversation. I find that in the process of communication, people necessarily have to lay themselves open to others, and in doing so they become conscious of the barrier surrounding and protecting their field, i.e. their 'inner world'. I hypothesise that in Japanese at least it is consciousness of this barrier that causes the occurrence of laughter in discourse. In other words, people laugh as part of the process of opening up to others, and also to show their intention to be co-operative. By laughing, people are either confirming that they belong to the same in-group, or they are pretending to belong to the same in-group in order to show co-operation. In my model, laughter is classified: A: Joyful laughter for identifying with the in-group B: Balancing laughter for easing tension C: Laughter as a cover-up. A is also divided into 3 subcategories, B into 3, and C into 2 according to the subject of the utterance and the direction of movement into the protective barrier. Two types of statistical analysis were applied to the data in order to the test the validity of the classification. Keywords: interpersonal communication; laughter; field; barrier; co-operation; joy; balancing; cover-up gender
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Hayakawa, Haruko. "The Meaningless Laugh: Laughter in Japanese Communication." University of Sydney. Japanese and Korean Studies School of Language and Cultures, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/656.
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This thesis explores the functions of laughter in Japanese communication. In orientation it contrasts markedly with previous studies and is the first study to have been based on such a large volume of data. In this paper I have focused on laughter as it serves to maintain a co-operative relationship between the participants in a conversation. I find that in the process of communication, people necessarily have to lay themselves open to others, and in doing so they become conscious of the barrier surrounding and protecting their field, i.e. their �inner world�. I hypothesise that in Japanese at least it is consciousness of this barrier that causes the occurrence of laughter in discourse. In other words, people laugh as part of the process of opening up to others, and also to show their intention to be co-operative. By laughing, people are either confirming that they belong to the same in-group, or they are pretending to belong to the same in-group in order to show co-operation. In my model, laughter is classified: A: Joyful laughter for identifying with the in-group B: Balancing laughter for easing tension C: Laughter as a cover-up. A is also divided into 3 subcategories, B into 3, and C into 2 according to the subject of the utterance and the direction of movement into the protective barrier. Two types of statistical analysis were applied to the data in order to the test the validity of the classification. Keywords: interpersonal communication; laughter; field; barrier; co-operation; joy; balancing; cover-up gender
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Yancey, Jason Edward. "Dark Laughter: Liminal Sins in Quevedo's Entremeses." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195236.
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This dissertation investigates two areas rarely treated in Early Modern studies. First, it explores the origins, functions and importance of the entremes as a performance genre historically relegated to what Victor Turner has called the "liminal" spaces of social and scholarly discourse. These marginalized places of ambiguity in between one space and another provide the artist with a less restrictive creative setting in which to explore the otherwise difficult and even unmentionable social themes. Literally placed in between acts of the comedia performance experience, as well as chronologically placed in between the medieval pageant theater and the emerging early modern theater houses, the entremes serves as an entertaining breed of performance monster, building upon a thematic foundation "betwixt and between" acceptable and objectionable forms of theater.Second, the dissertation examines in detail the 12 lesser-known entremeses of Francisco de Quevedo as examples of liminality in the development of early modern theater practices. Specifically, the study analyzes these theater pieces as they subscribe to three categories of cardinal sin: desires of the ego (pride, wrath and sloth); desires of ownership (greed and envy); and desires of the body (lust and gluttony).As a result, this work hopes to demonstrate the aesthetic value of the interlude and the ways in which Quevedo's various manifestations of this liminal genre, based heavily on the construct of sin, both complement and contradict the model of the entremes as established by his predecessors.
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Shumway, Jacob Holt. ""Laughter Is Part of My War Effort": The Harmonizing and Humanizing Influences of Laughter in Andrea Levy's Small Island." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2018. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/7435.
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Most critical analyses of humor in postcolonial literary settings have focused on its power to critique and subvert dominant hegemonic systems in ways that tend to divide participants according to predictable dichotomies. Yet humor theorists have long recognized laughter's equivalent potential as a bonding mechanism. An examination of the rhetorical functions of humor in Andrea Levy'sSmall Islandreveals the extent to which these affiliative forms of humor can be successfully deployed across cultural divides within a migrant context, as well as the risks and limitations inherent to such an approach. Ultimately, the novel's gentle, inviting, and accessible humor provides the basis for a convincing, character-driven appeal to reduce racial prejudice.
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Namba, Ayako. "Listenership in Japanese interaction : the contributions of laughter." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5985.
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This thesis contributes to the body of research on listenership. It accomplishes this through an investigation of the functions of laughter in the listening behaviour of participants in Japanese interaction. The majority of studies concerning conversational interactions have focused on the role of the speaker rather than on that of the listener. Notable work on the listener's active role in conversation includes research done by Goffman (1981), Goodwin (1986) and Gardner (2001). Laughter research has shifted from an early interest in the causes of laughter to an interest in how it is organised and how it functions in conversational interaction. Despite many studies on listenership and laughter as distinct areas of research, there have been relatively few studies on how laughter contributes to listenership behaviour. In order to explore the relationship between listenership and laughter, I used a corpus of spoken interactional data. This data consists of conversations between Japanese participants (university students and teachers) who were asked to tell each other stories about a surprising moment that they had experienced. The corpus was constructed in such a way as to make it possible to compare (1) solidary (student-student) and non-solidary (student-teacher) interactions and (2) higher status story-teller (teacher telling student) and lower status story-teller (student telling teacher) interactions. Qualitative methods (drawing on a variety of techniques of discourse analysis) were used to discover laughter patterns and functions in relation to the role of the listener both at the micro-level and in relation to the macro-structure of the surprise story-telling. Quantitative methods were used to analyse the relationship between laughter patterns/functions and the above interaction types (solidary/non-solidary and lower status/higher status interactions). I found, firstly, at the micro-level of analysis, that the listener’s laughter contributed to the co-production of conversation through functions that included: responding/reacting, constituting and maintaining. There were two patterns of the listener’s laughter that were motivated by the speaker’s laughter invitation: acceptance, and declination. Acceptance involved the functions of responding/reacting or constituting, with the listener’s laughter functioning to support mutual understanding and bonding between the participants. Declination could be related to signal the listener’s lack of support for the speaker, however, the listener used the third option, the ambivalence. This shows that despite the absence of laughter, a verbal acknowledgement or understanding response was alternatively used. In a problematic situation, the listener’s laughter was found to reveal the listener’s third contribution: the maintaining function, helping to resolve an ongoing interactional problem. At the macro-level of analysis, based on the three phases in a surprise story, I found that laughter played a key role at phase boundaries (1st: preface/telling; 2nd: telling/response; and 3rd: response/next topic). The laughter patterns and functions appeared in each boundary. The acceptance pattern was more frequent than other patterns in all of the boundaries. The responding/reacting and constituting functions mainly appeared in the acceptance. The patterns of laughter in a trouble context were rare because they only appeared in a trouble context. The maintaining function in such a context also occasionally occurred in order to repair the trouble situation. Looking at laughter in relation to the different interaction types, I found, lastly, that the solidary dyads tended to demonstrate acceptance (constituting the responding/reacting and constituting functions), while the non-solidary dyads had a greater tendency to show declination. In addition, the lower-ranked listeners tended to show ambivalence, while the higher-ranked listeners tended to be more flexible in showing either acceptance or declination. These findings suggest the existence of a relationship between laughter patterns/functions and politeness: a higher degree of solidarity and a lower degree of status can influence the display of acceptance patterns/functions and listenership behaviour; a lower degree of solidarity and a higher degree of status can indicate flexibility when choosing a response type. In a trouble situation, laughter in its various patterns/functions was used in all interaction types to recover resolutions to any impediments in the ongoing engagement. All in all, I found that laughter contributes to listenership, both through supporting affiliation and through helping to resolve ‘trouble’ situations. I showed how listenership expressed through laughter plays a role in negotiating, creating, and maintaining the relationship between the self and the other in mutual interactions. As implications, I finally indicated that such laughter activities as the display of listenership could be closely connected to the Japanese communication style.
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Crangle, Sara Katherine. "Mortal infinites : modernist knowing, boredom, laughter, and anticipation." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.613715.
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Reeves, Kate. "Laughter and madness in post-war American fiction." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4521/.
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Two philosophical positions seem evident in post-war American fiction: one realist, one anti-realist. Using the terms 'revelation' and 'apocalypse' to reflect the former, and 'entropy' the latter, this thesis proposes that distinctions between the two can be made by analysis of a text's treatment of the nexus between laughter and madness. After an Overview that identifies and defines key terms, the Introduction considers various theoretical treatments of laughter from which its function can be ascertained as being both to reinforce stability within social groups and to explore new alternatives to existing modes of thought. Madness being defined as an inability to balance the opposing forces of system and anti-system, laughter is therefore vital to maintain sanity. The Fool emerges as a crucial figure in this process. Chapter One explores, with reference to Heller's Catch-22, Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kerouac's On The Road, the Laughter of Revelation: a laughing relationship between a Protagonist who is trapped within the system of an Institution and a Fool who communicates to the Protagonist (through laughter) a means of escape. Chapter Two then discusses, with reference to Blatty's The Exorcist, King's It, Morrison's Sula, and Nabokov's Lolita, the Laughter of Apocalypse: a laughing relationship in which the Fool's laughter (as mockery) is potentially destructive of both the Protagonist's sanity and the stability of the Institution. Chapter Three explores, with reference to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5, Ellis's American Psycho, and Heller's Closing Time, the Laughter of Entropy: the failure of the laughing relationship that obtains when the dialectic between Institution (as system) and Fool (as anti-system) collapses. The concluding remarks reflect the metafictional implications of the foregoing analyses. It is suggested that, with the collapse of this dialectic (expressed by the Laughter of Entropy), the traditional relationship between Author and Reader becomes problematic.
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Mazzocconi, Chiara. "Laughter in interaction : semantics, pragmatics, and child development." Thesis, Université de Paris (2019-....), 2019. https://theses.md.univ-paris-diderot.fr/MAZZOCCONI_Chiara_va2.pdf.
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Le rire est une vocalisation universelle à travers les cultures et les langues. Il est omniprésent dans nos dialogues et utilisé pour un large éventail de fonctions. Le rire a été étudié sous plusieurs angles, mais les classifications proposées sont difficiles à intégrer dans un même système. Malgré le fait qu’il soit crucial dans nos interactions quotidiennes, le rire en conversation a reçu peu d’attention et les études sur la pragmatique du rire en interaction, ses corrélats neuronaux perceptuels et son développement chez l’enfant sont rares. Dans cette thèse, est proposé un nouveau cadre pour l'analyse du rire, fondé sur l'hypothèse cruciale que le rire a un contenu propositionnel, plaidant pour la nécessité de distinguer différentes couches d'analyse, tout comme dans l'étude de la parole: forme, positionnement, sémantique et pragmatique. Une représentation formelle de la signification du rire est proposée et une étude de corpus multilingue (français, chinois et anglais) est menée afin d’approfondir notre compréhension de l’utilisation du rire dans les conversations entre adultes. Des études préliminaires sont menées sur la viabilité d'un mappage forme-fonction du rire basée sur ses caractéristiques acoustiques, ainsi que sur les corrélats neuronaux impliqués dans la perception du rire qui servent différentes fonctions dans un dialogue naturel. Nos résultats donnent lieu à de nouvelles généralisations sur le placement, l’alignement, la sémantique et les fonctions du rire, soulignant le haute niveau des compétences pragmatiques impliquées dans sa production et sa perception. Le développement de l'utilisation sémantique et pragmatique du rire est observé dans une étude de corpus longitudinale de 4 dyades mère-enfant de l’age de 12 à 36 mois, locuteurs d’anglais américain. Les résultats montrent que l'utilisation du rire subit un développement important à chaque niveau analysé et que le rire peut être un indicateur précoce du développement cognitif, communicatif et social<br>Laughter is a social vocalization universal across cultures and languages. It is ubiquitous in our dialogues and able to serve a wide range of functions. Laughter has been studied from several perspectives, but the classifications proposed are hard to integrate. Despite being crucial in our daily interaction, relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of laughter in conversation, attempting to model its sophisticated pragmatic use, neuro-correlates in perception and development in children. In the current thesis a new comprehensive framework for laughter analysis is proposed, crucially grounded in the assumption that laughter has propositional content, arguing for the need to distinguish different layers of analysis, similarly to the study of speech: form, positioning, semantics and pragmatics. A formal representation of laughter meaning is proposed and a multilingual corpus study (French, Chinese and English) is conducted in order to test the proposed framework and to deepen our understanding of laughter use in adult conversation. Preliminary investigations are conducted on the viability of a laughter form-function mapping based on acoustic features and on the neuro-correlates involved in the perception of laughter serving different functions in natural dialogue. Our results give rise to novel generalizations about the placement, alignment, semantics and function of laughter, stressing the high pragmatic skills involved in its production and perception. The development of the semantic and pragmatic use of laughter is observed in a longitudinal corpus study of 4 American-English child-mother pairs from 12 to 36 months of age. Results show that laughter use undergoes important development at each level analysed, which complies with what could be hypothesised on the base of phylogenetic data, and that laughter can be an effective means to track cognitive/communicative development, and potential difficulties or delays at a very early stage
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Walker, James Cody. "O ho alas alas : poetry and difficult laughter /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9354.
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Adédínà, Fémi A. "Death's laughter (novel) and crafting a novel (exegesis)." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2011. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/388.
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This thesis consists of a creative component, a novel, Death’s laughter and an exegetical essay, Crafting a novel. The novel centres on a true Nigerian story: a Pentecostal pastor, who died in a plane crash, was a government official found out to have amassed large sums of money and assets that were far greater than could be accrued from his modest salary. In addition, he was accused of bigamy because he had two wives who did not know each other in two different cities within the country. This basic story serves as the nucleus of the novel. The novel tells the stories of various characters who were created with the intention of telling their own stories and, in doing this, giving the readers a montage of the pastor who was passive but ever present in the novel. Though the pastor dies in Chapter One of the novel, each character -- who is related or has a relationship with the pastor -- tells their own stories and together builds a picture of what happened to the pastor and the kind of person he was. Pastor Jude Akanmu Babajide in the novel represents the Pastor Femi Àkànní, who was the character in the true Nigerian story. This novel does not paint a picture based on the research into the Nigerian pastor, it creates a fictional account of the pastor and of the various characters who populated the novel. As the reader goes through the various tales he/she is given an insight into Nigerian society and an introduction to some Yoruba cultural concepts.
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Sherlock, Benjamin. "No joke : theorising laughter from Charles Baudelaire to Arthur Koestler." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2012. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=186103.
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This thesis examines the responses of several thinkers to the question of laughter according to a thematic division of critical concerns. A reflexive focus is adopted querying the diversity of such responses. Contextual assumptions are considered as crucially informing each individual interpretation. Laughter is here approached from three distinct perspectives each treated in three respective chapters. 1. ‘Laughter, Society and Play’ interrogates those border territories where laughter arises. Arthur Koestler here initiates an examination of laughter’s social or formal determinants which takes in alternative contributions from Henri Bergson and Wyndham Lewis. Helmuth Plessner’s work is then appropriated in order to situate this debate. It is proposed that the social role of laughter is best understood under the aspect of communal play. 2. In ‘Laughter and the Play of the Psyche’ Freud’s work traces a trajectory from the passivity of laughter to the agency of the instigator. The arousal of laughter is then read according to the grammatical persons as distinguished from discrete individuals. Freud recognises a latent infancy in laughter which is examined with respect to his ongoing thinking. Here a complex relationship between anticipation and imagination emerges from reading Freud’s early joke-book through his later considerations on play and phantasy. 3. ‘Laughter and Being in Play’ suggests that the adoption of a broadly comic or tragic paradigm will fundamentally inform laughter’s local reception. Charles Baudelaire’s thought is explored here as he proposes laughter to be symptomatic of both Original Sin and of prefigured redemption. In this context Hegel, Kierkegaard, Leopardi, de Man and Dante each provide individual perspectives on the intersection of laughter, guilt and redemption which is then treated in the light of Georges Bataille’s radical account of laughter as an encounter with the unknown.
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Dalla, Costa Dario. "The complexities of farce : with a case study on Fawlty Towers." University of Western Australia. English, Communications and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2004. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2004.0063.
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This thesis will counter the argument that farce is a simplistic dramatic form low in the theatrical hierarchy and demonstrate that it is both complex and multifaceted. It will be shown to have a long history and to have influenced many different dramatic forms. The thesis is in two sections. The first will explore farce in general, and the second will use the sitcom Fawlty Towers as a case study in order to explore the televisual mode and its relevance to the contemporary context. The question “What is farce?” will be answered in detail, thus developing an unambiguous perception of the genre which will form a contextual basis for the rest of the thesis. Recurring themes will be used to link chapters together and certain issues raised in early chapters will be expanded upon in later ones. A key aspect to be taken into consideration is the importance the physical plays in farce. Thus, my focus will be specifically on performance texts, and not limit itself to the “literary” texts. The theatrical hierarchy will be addressed directly, exploring why and how the genre has been delegated to the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder. Such a classification will be destabilised and shown to be unfounded because it is based on such assumptions as tragedy being the “best” genre because it is tragedy, and farce the worst because it is farce. The conclusions made in this section will then be demonstrated by approaching farce in a more oblique manner through an exploration of Commedia dell’Arte and Medieval Carnival. This will reveal the extent to which farce and/or its techniques have manifested themselves. Fawlty Towers will be introduced to determine how farce has translated to the televisual medium. Fawlty Towers is useful because, unlike the “literary texts” studied earlier, its recordings provide visual/aural examples which are more practical in exploring farce’s physical characteristics. The farcical aspects of Commedia and Carnival will be re-explored to show how they have evolved and manifested themselves in the sitcom form. Integral to the thesis is a study on laughter. Various laughter theories will be studied in relation to Fawlty Towers to establish that, like farce, laughter is also a complicated subject matter worthy of study. Through association, farce is shown to be even more complex. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the Fawlty Towers performance text to illustrate farce’s multifaceted nature, and that it can, and should, be taken “seriously”. The series’ “closed world” will be examined to discover how it ideally suits the farcical paradigm. Then, using Victorian beliefs and ethics as a contextual base, I explore how farce parodies this outdated value system as it is played out anachronistically through the character of Basil Fawlty. The thesis terminates with a brief conclusion summing up what was analysed, while affirming that the premise proposed in the introduction has been achieved.
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Plaza, Maria. "Laughter and derision in Petronius' Satyrica : a literary study." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, 2000. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-70112.
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Jansen, Henry. "Laughter among the ruins : postmodern comic approaches to suffering /." Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : Lang, 2001. http://www.gbv.de/dms/bs/toc/324707363.pdf.
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Taylor, Paul Alan. "Theories of laughter and the production of television comedy." Thesis, University of Leicester, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/8433.
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In order to examine the context of entertainment (through studying the particular form of television situation comedy) it was felt necessary to review the literature referring to humour in general. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 look at contributions from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Psychology has little to offer if an understanding of the mass media is sought; philosophy places man in society but concentrates on the individual perception of humour; ‘sociology’ confirms the useful concept of comedy as dealing with values and conventions. The audience may be asked to laugh at what is determined to be unacceptable behaviour in society, just as it may applaud correct ways of acting. Chapter 5 contains a discussion of approaches to the mass media and concludes that studies of production may be more relevant than studies of effects. Chapter 6 offers a perspective of the development of situation comedies, from music hail sketches through radio to television. The views of producers and writers of comedy are reported in Chapter 7; the major conclusion is that they are not free agents but work to provide entertainment as demanded by the television companies. Chapter 8 gives two approaches to the audience. An analysis of information about programmes suggests that major themes may be identified. An examination of the 'studio audience' brings the thesis back to its main drift - that laughter is social communication of an order above mere response to joking and comedy.
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Alessandrini, J. L. "Jörg Wickram's Rollwagenbüchlein : a study of laughter and narrative." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1443882/.
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The phenomenon of laughter in early modern narrative texts is central to literary and cultural history. Particularly rich sources of laughter are early modern collections of German secular short prose narrative, known as ‘Schwanksammlungen’ (1555-1565) that were read for entertainment and pleasure. Such comic (anecdotal) tales, narrated in ways that appear to reproduce the language used by ordinary people, offer literary historians a deeper insight into contemporary understanding and appreciation of laughter in literature. This thesis offers a fresh reading of the motif of laughter in Jörg Wickram’s Rollwagenbüchlein (1555), which may be regarded as the epitome of this type of literature. This study considers laughter as an important key for interpreting the Rollwagenbüchlein, and explores what a close reading of scenes featuring laughter can tell us about Wickram’s narrative technique in his collection. It principally investigates to what extent the inclusion of explicit references to laughter adds to the Rollwagenbüchlein in ways that exceed comic functionality, on the basis of which a more nuanced reading of the text as a whole may be undertaken. It examines the extent to which this collection evinces a broader thematic interest in laughter and related phenomena – which provides further insight into early modern cultures of laughter. The main contention of this thesis is that Wickram capitalises on the social and emotional significance of laughter in order to flesh out his portrayal of everyday life, thereby also illuminating ideas about laughter that are irreducible to norms. Laughter is read as a revealing expression of urban mores and mentalities in mid-sixteenth-century Germany. Such a reading allows us to trace how burgher attitudes to laughter helped to shape German early modern conceptions of society, psychology, and life in general. This study falls into two parts, the first of which tackles the Rollwagenbüchlein’s portrayal of laughter’s social significance (chapters two ‘laughter and social processes’ and three ‘laughter and religious practice’), and the second - its emotional-psychological dimension (chapters four ‘laughter and emotionality’ and five ‘laughter and rationality’).
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Leister, Wiebke. "Unjoyful laughter and the non-likeness of photographic portraiture." Thesis, Royal College of Art, 2006. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/13247/.
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This research investigates photographic portraits that can be considered as potentially non-mimetic images. It uses the portrait of laughter in theory and in practice to explore a ́non-like ́, iconic relation between a photograph and its model. In opposition to portraying a specific laughing sitter, here the photograph is more informed by what the viewer brings to his or her subjective encounter with that photograph. Among other subjects, my research compares portraiture to clownish performance. Hence, the photographic portrait shifts register, becoming less a likeness of the sitter, rather a portrait of the viewer ́s process of interpretation. As an extension of our understanding of the genre portraiture, I am using and testing the German term 'Bildnis', trying to find a clearer understanding of portraits that are Non-Likenesses. My main case study looks at 19th-century photographs by the French physician Duchenne de Boulogne. Duchenne researched emotional expressions by capturing the moving face twice: with medical electrization and with photography. Based on muscular contraction, he also established a theory distinguishing 'true' from 'false' laughter. Starting by isolating one photograph from the context of Duchenne ́s medical work as a leitmotif for my studies, considering it as an image in its own right, my research raises questions regarding the relation between model and photographer in photographic portraiture. It investigates what is commonly thought to be the Photographic – the photograph ́s referential status as an index in opposition to the meaning arising from its surface. In re-considering Duchenne ́s photograph within photographic histories, theories of representation aesthetics, and in relation to other photographs, I aim to lift his image out of its strictly utilitarian context as a record of an experiment. Expanding the discussion on its genres and applications, this change of context opens up a new emphasis on content and encourages its interpretation as an imaginary photograph. This claims to be not just image-informed, but also informed about the nature of images in general and photography in particular. Methodologically, the first part consists of a visual investigation into the depictibility of 'unjoyful' laughter as a 'non-like' photographic image. The second part re-stages the play of questions and answers arising from the studio practice by re-contextualizing them within a specific theoretical and historical framework of portraiture. Ultimately being two separate practices, both parts inform and reflect upon each other in approach and subject matter, deepening and widening an understanding of the medium of photography as a multi-faceted research tool.
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Hatzipapas, Irene. "Exploring experiences of care-workers participating in laughter therapy." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/31603.
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The study seeks to explore the experiences of care workers participating in laughter therapy. Community care workers play a vital role in the support of the HIV/AIDS infected and affected members of the community. However, the nature of this type of work contributes to high levels of emotional distress such as depression, anxiety and stress. The purpose of the study is 1) to explore the effects of working with orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) on the care workers and their experiences of participating in laughter therapy; and 2) the effects of laughter therapy on care workers’ levels of depression and stress. Given that laughter has been found to have several positive effects, many variations of this intervention have been developed. For the purpose of this study, a specific type of laughter therapy was used, namely that of Aerobic Laughter Therapy (ALT). The study was part of a project run by InHappiness Institution and was conducted at Nanga Vhutshilo in Soweto. The care workers at the centre provide care services for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Purposive sampling was utilised to recruit seven care workers from the centre who participated in a laughter intervention. The study was phenomenological in nature and utilized both qualitative and quantitative methodology. Quantitative data was collected through two questionnaires administered before and after the laughter therapy intervention: The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was used to compare pre- and post- results of the scale scores for each participant. Results showed a significant difference between the pre- and post-intervention assessment scores for both Anxiety and Depression (-2.226 (p<0.05) and -1.876 (p<0.05) respectively). In addition, the Wilcoxon signed rank test showed that the post-intervention total scores for PSS were significantly lower than the pre-intervention assessment total scores (-1.863). The significantly lower post-intervention assessment scores show that the laughter therapy intervention produced a positive change with regards to anxiety, depression and stress in the participants. Qualitative data was collected through pre and post –intervention face- to- face semi-structured interviews and were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The three themes that emerged from data analysis of the pre-intervention interviews were: motivation to become a care worker, work stresses and coping mechanisms. The five themes that emerged from the post-intervention interviews were: Initial reactions and expectations, effects on interpersonal relationships, improved effective coping ability, collective participation and laughter as a change agent. The study revealed that care workers experience high levels of stress, and anxiety. These emotions manifested in emotional distress in the form of frustrations, exhaustion and feelings of being overwhelmed. Emotional distress was found to be related to care workers’ personal involvement with their clients and high levels of emotional investment in them. Furthermore the study revealed the cyclic link that identification not only contributed to employment in such contexts, but it served to increase levels of personal involvement. Such personal involvement subsequently caused care workers to experience high levels of emotional distress when unable to meet the needs of the community in this respect. Findings from this study support laughter, with specific reference to Aerobic Laughter Therapy (ALT), as a positive therapeutic intervention that can possibly improve behaviour with regards to coping with difficult situations and providing a buffer against the negative effects of stress. However, the sample used in this study was not sufficient to conclusively make a generalised finding.<br>Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013.<br>Psychology<br>unrestricted
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Jones, Errin. "Humour and laughter in children with autism spectrum disorders." Thesis, University of Ballarat, 2009. http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/40358.
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Studying humour and laughter in children with ASDs can provide unique insights into their socio-communicative impairments, and aid in the development of effective interventions. The current study investigated humour and laughter in 16 school-aged children with autism and Asperger Syndrome (AS).<br>Doctor of Psychology (Clinical)
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Deal, John G. "The Effects of Humor and Laughter on Induced Anxiety." W&M ScholarWorks, 1990. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625636.
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Molchan, Deidre Gayl. "Laughter Frequency, Pain Perception, and Affect in Fibromyalgia Patients." ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/6069.
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Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), a common chronic pain condition, is often incompletely treated by conventional medical therapies. It can cause disability, psychological distress, work-related absenteeism, increased use of healthcare resources, and result in the inability to carry out the tasks of daily living. The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to investigate the potential influence of laughter on affect and pain in individuals with FMS. Laughter produces beneficial effects on acute pain and on chronic pain in general and has been found to improve temporary affective states, but there have been no studies testing the effects of laughter on the pain and affect of fibromyalgia patients. Informing this study were the gate control and neuromatrix theories of pain, as well as the dynamic model of affect theory. The research questions addressed whether laughter frequency is associated with affect and or with perceived chronic pain levels in these individuals. Forty-one adult fibromyalgia patients documented all laughter episodes daily and assessed their pain and affective states 3 times per day for 14 days. Hierarchical regressions revealed that increased overall laughter frequency was significantly associated with decreases in overall pain and increases in overall positive affect but was not associated with measures of negative affect. Also, morning laughter frequency was predictive of increased afternoon and evening positive affect ratings, as well as with decreased afternoon pain ratings, but was not significantly associated with evening pain ratings. The knowledge gained from these results may have positive social change implications at the individual level, within those individuals' larger social networks, and within the research and medical communities.
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Knight, Naomi K. "Laughing our bonds off: Conversational humour in relation to affiliation." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/6656.
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The laughter that proliferates in casual conversation between friends indicates that humour is a common device in talk that does important social work. However, this humour does not involve recognisable joking structures but rather highly implicit meanings that are interpreted only by those who appear to be “in on the joke”. This thesis considers the functions of this “unfunny” type of humour, called convivial conversational humour, by focusing on the social relations at stake in conversations between friends in the Canadian context. Through a functional discourse analysis (Martin & Rose, 2007) of phases (cf. Gregory & Malcolm, 1995[1981]) of co-constructed humour in conversation, it is found that evaluative meanings bound with ideational experience (evaluative couplings) are the cause of laughter in these phases, and that these construe a social process of affiliation. Building on notions of bonding (e.g. Boxer & Cortès-Conde, 1997; Martin, 2004b; Stenglin, 2004) and coupling (Martin, 2000a), this thesis develops a model of affiliation to account for how we identify ourselves communally as members of a culture and create social bonds through language. Through the analysis of humorous phases, this model is developed with laughter as a way in, since it serves as an explicit and meaningful signal that the particular coupled meanings presented in discourse can create affiliative tension for the participants in the social sphere. Affiliation thus describes the different strategies through which we discursively co-construct who we are, who we are not, and through laughter, who we might otherwise be in other conversations. Conversational humour between friends is shown to be a method for confirming solidarity in friendships while allowing flexibility in the construction of identity. The significance of humour as a linguistic device is emphasized through its use in social interaction as we constantly negotiate our affiliations in casual talk.
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Malick, Neeraj. "The politics of laughter : a study of Sean O'Casey's drama." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39493.
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This is a study of popular festive laughter in Sean O'Casey's drama. It argues that O'Casey's use of the strategies of laughter is an integral part of his political vision. The concept of festive laughter is derived from the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, and is related, in this thesis, to the culture of low life in O'Casey's Dublin. Through a detailed analysis of O'Casey's plays, this study shows how the forms of laughter function to interrogate the hegemonic political, economic, and cultural discourses of the Irish society of his time. The Dublin trilogy counters the nationalist ideology and its constructions of history, while the later comedies focus on the issues of cultural domination and religious authoritarianism. This negative critique of the dominant order is accompanied, in these plays, by a celebration of the rich energy of popular, collective life, and its capacity to resist domination and to create an alternative society. The study concludes by focusing on the festive nature of O'Casey's theatre.
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Mather, Nigel Derek. "'Tears of laughter' : 1990s British cinema in the comic mode." Thesis, University of Kent, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.410597.
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Zobkiw, Jacob Charles. "Political strategies of laughter in the National Convention, 1792-1794." Thesis, University of Hull, 2015. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:12370.
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Doove, Edith M. "Laughter, inframince and cybernetics : exploring the curatorial as creative act." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/10382.
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This thesis identifies and responds to a contemporary impasse in the curatorial, which is thought of as the realm that encompasses curating as a complex action and interaction; a verb that includes the conceiving, organising and executing of exhibitions as well as critical thinking around curation as a discipline. The current impasse in curation the thesis responds to is caused, on the one hand, through its rapid expansion since the late 1980s and, on the other, through its mainstream and populist appropriation, which confuses understandings of it. The thesis proposes a strategy for the recovery for curating’s most basic work of ‘taking care’ and situates the curatorial as a creative act. It adopts Duchamp’s inframince as an artistic concept, and uses it as a lens to reveal the role of the speculative, poetic and absurd, the personal and subjective and the instant of emergence of creativity in curatorial practice. This facilitates an essentially diffractive methodology as well as a textual method of ‘an imaginative leap’ through friction, rhythm and repetition, building on Whitehead and Barad, (among others) to connect ideas of non-linearity and relay in (art) history. Opening up this rich meshwork thus allows for a reconnection of the curatorial to its original provenance and connoisseurship. The poetic investigation of an invisible force, the inframince, which is seen as instrumental to the curatorial and meaning making in general, is underpinned by the investigation of two other major, intertwining narratives – laughter and cybernetics. This liberates the inframince’s versatility and makes it potentially an operative tool, following Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming minor and O’Sullivan’s interpretation, within a wider trans-disciplinary framework of art-science collaborations. Through this discussion, the thesis then reaffirms the curatorial (as it is intended here) as a practice that shapes the collaboration between specific human and nonhuman elements: the curator, and the artist (and/or scientist) and texts, artefacts, spaces and time.
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Woods, Barbara Jane Simmons. "Mirthful Laughter and Directed Relaxation: a Comparison of Physiological Response." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1985. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc331273/.
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The differences among certain physiological changes occurring in response to mirthful laughter, directed relaxation, and verbal speech were investigated. These changes included amount of muscle tension, as measured with surface electromyography, in the forehead and in the upper body as recorded from the forearms bilaterally, peripheral surface skin temperature, heart rate, and respiration rate. The study sought to determine whether the net effect of laughter, as measured on these five variables after a three-minute refractory period, is a more relaxed state than existed before the laughter. Determination of the similarity between the changes following laughter and the changes following directed relaxation was made in comparison with the changes following verbal speech. Factors of prior anxiety, pre- and post-self-esteem levels, humor level, and laughter intensity were examined. Historical and theoretical perspectives were reviewed, as well as the known information on physiological responses to laughter.
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Peterson, Anna I. "Laughter in the Exchange: Lucian's Invention of the Comic Dialogue." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1275416015.
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Izzo, Francesco. "Laughter between two revolutions : opera buffa in Italy, 1831-1848 /." Ann Arbor (Mich.) : UMI, 2005. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb400428616.
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Wiklinski, Barbara Cartnick. "Has humor a meaning for persons adapting to a cancer experience? : a phenomenological question /." Access Digital Full Text version, 1993. http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/bybib/11547066.
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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1993.<br>Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Keville Frederickson. Dissertation Committee: Maxine Greene. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-206).