Thèse complémentaire--Université de Paris. / "Bibliographie": p. 169-170.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska, 1931. / Bibliography: p. 88-90.

This thesis examines the role of “the frolic” in Frances Burney’s Camilla. Frolics take the form of light-hearted pranks centered on ritualized public humiliation; they are comically framed and particularly painful, encouraging a discussion about the ethics of laughter and the dynamics of power operating in both Camilla and Burney’s world. The purpose of this study is twofold: firstly, this project seeks to qualify current emphasis on politeness in the eighteenth century by tracing a history of violent comedy, engaging with jestbook humour, print culture, conduct literature and theorists such as Fielding, Hobbes, Smith and Locke. This study suggests that Camilla responds to popular debates about laughter and propriety, pushing the boundaries of comic acceptability with violent pranks and the use of animal and deformity humour. Secondly, this study explores the structure of the frolic itself, its function as a system of domination and control. The prankster, a socially transgressive figure able to displace the rules governing propriety through a prank, is also a social tyrant – seizing complete control over others, causing humiliation and shame. The frolic is based on plotting, secrecy, deception and public exposure, and Burney aligns the prankster with other transgressive figures in the novel, such as guardians and mentors, who exert the same type of power over the vulnerable and the weak. Burney’s pranks bring as much pain as they do laughter, becoming an important satiric device that explores both the politics of laughter and the social forces at work in her novel. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to focus on the laughter-provoking events and situations that supported the teaching, learning, and relationships of 13 kindergarten children, one teacher, and one researcher in a public school classroom in Southwestern Virginia. This study drew on principles from portraiture, ethnography, and case studies, and primarily utilized observation, fieldnotes, informal interviews, and audiotape to document daily events and conversations. Discussion of the importance of laughter for these children, teacher, and researcher begins with three short case study portraits on different children, including how their varying personalities and interests prompted me to use laughter with them in varying ways. Next, the importance and meanings of laughter in the group is given focus, specifically the daily morning group where the entire class came together at once with the classroom teacher. Next, four themes that surfaced early in my research that were filled with laughter are portrayed, primarily how they demonstrated continuity throughout the semester. Then, the stimuli in the daily curriculum or discourse that were laughable are described, with specific focus on how laughter can be important to, or help facilitate learning. Last, I will summarize my findings to discuss the practical applications of laughter and humor for the teacher. / Ph. D.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate Mark Twain's awareness of and sensitive reaction to the cruelty which surrounded him throughout his lifetime, and to evaluate his literary use of cruelty for both comic and satiric effects.

<p>All though laughter is traditionally thought of as divergent from the goals of science learning, this perspective seems to be a cursory assumption about which little empirical evidence is provided. Taking a situated and embodied approach to learning, this study details the affordances of laughter in an afterschool STEM program for resettled Burmese refugee high school youth. The informal learning setting in the afterschool program provides a space where laughter is often present, yet the meanings of laughter in these settings are not well understood. Through micro analysis of video data collected from the afterschool setting, three interactions between youth and facilitators in the setting were examined to investigate the work that youth’s laughter does in the moment to challenge insular concepts of science discourse. Interaction ritual analysis was used theorize the examined interactions’ connections to other moments in the learning setting. In doing so, the affordances of laughter were found to be its work in generating solidarity, democratizing power relations, and providing ways to deal with uncertainty in science. Overall, findings from this research indicate that the informal learning context and responsive pedagogy provided important localities for youth to draw on their resources and they do so even in seemingly insignificant moments along the margins of what is traditionally considered to be science discourse. </p>

published_or_final_version / Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

The Nose of Death considers the common matrix of the English scientific revolution and the modern English novel through the indicator of laughter. Whereas death is the paradigmatic object of laughter in the premodern period, animate or thinking matter is the prevailing object of laughter in modernity. The change is located in texts of the English baroque period from 1607 to 1767. Baroque discourse is defined by the language developed by writers loyal to both the Christian and the Copernican world views. Contradictory allegiances required them to institute a narratorial position based on simultaneous attachment to and detachment from a single point of view. This position is the defining feature of baroque discourse, the basis of both the perspective of modem science and the animation of multiple viewpoints in the modern novel. / The Nose of Death develops Walter Benjamin's reading of baroque "muting" and "fragmentation," processes that free matter, language, and time for alternative composition. The dissertation likewise adapts M. M. Bakhtin's account of the "grotesque method," considered as the approach to language and the human body that the modern "scientific method" posits itself against. This study treats baroque novelistic discourse in forgotten texts drawn from McGill's Redpath Tracts by Thomas Tomkis, Thomas D'Urfey, Tobias Swinden, and a selection of anonymously authored pamphlets. It considers, as well, two early medical works by Robert Boyle and Walter Charleton. Analogous fragments are similarly analyzed from three canonical works: Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady (1747--48), and Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759--67).