This article focuses upon the role of laughter in a cross-cultural English language interaction between a NSET (native speaking English teacher)and two NNSETs (non-native speaking English teachers) in a private high school staffroom in Tokyo, Japan. Within the transcribed interaction, laughter patterns that resemble laughter from a Japanese speaker's L1/C1 (first language/first culture) are discovered in L2 (second language) speech and appear to have an overall positive effect on the talk. Using a Conversation Analysis (CA)approach, I seek to explore and increase awareness of two phenomena: the effect that laughter can have (locally and globally) in a bicultural interaction, and the effect of L1/C1 laughter patterns, from a type of laugh that is `particularly prevalent in Japanese communication' (Hayakawa, 2006, p. 5), on second language speech. The importance that this laughter has on the mood and trajectory of the talk may make it worthy of consideration in future recontextualisations of communicative competences (Leung, 2005) in an emergent Japanese English.
Native language laughter transfer?:Language Notes on Cross Cultural Laughter in a Japanese High School Staffroom.
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