ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to consider a particular aspect of humour, namely laughter. With a few notable exceptions, conducted under the auspices of conversation analysis, laughter as a socially organized phenomenon in its own right remains uninvestigated as a practical accomplishment. The chapter seeks to illuminate some sequential-organizational and some categorical-organizational features of the ‘missing organizational whatness’ of laughter in some instances of naturally occurring social interaction. It considers the methodical character of the production of laughter as a social phenomenon in its own right and laughter as a method utilized in the accomplishment of social action. The chapter offers categorical-organizational analyses of the intelligibility of a report as laughable and of an instance of interaction in which the relevance and appropriateness of laughter is topicalized by interactants.
