The emergence of affect through resonance and “thin laughter”

要旨

Abstract This paper is an attempt to reinterpret kyoowa or collaborative talk in Japanese discourse from the pragmatic perspective based on ba theory. Applying the idea of the self as a dual-mode existence within the ba , I analyze parts of a Japanese narrative in which the speaker talks about the experience of a large earthquake. I focus the analysis on the climax of the telling where frequent speaker and listener overlaps occur through backchannels, repetition, induced-fit utterances, and light laughter, which I call “thin laughter”. I argue that these interactional phenomena do not rise out of the interactant’s intention or strategy to be involved with the other, but from the self-organizational emergence of affect in ba through entrainment and resonance.

主題