Laughter in Finnish, French, and German parliamentary debates

Abstract

Drawing upon data from the Finnish Eduskunta, French Assemblée nationale, and German Bundestag, we examine lesser-studied nonverbal actions in parliamentary debates. We applied conversation analysis to the sequential analysis of these actions, while considering restrictions related to written transcripts. In this study, we concentrated on laughter-related actions. Although the parliaments examined use different terms to transcribe laughter-related activities, such as the distinction between Lachen (‘laughter’) and Heiterkeit (‘cheerfulness’) in German and between rires (‘laugher’) and sourires (‘smiles) in French, they all served both affiliative and disaffiliative functions, as well as some other functions including those related to interpersonal needs. Our study shows that nonverbal actions are a way to extend the boundaries of participation in parliamentary debates.