Conference paper
A Case of Seinfeld Laughing: A Critical Feature of the Text and Audience Relationship That Makes Laughter an Available Option
Proceedings of the 2003 Australian Sociological Association Conference, pp.1-9
Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Conference: New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, 2003 (Armidale, Australia, 04-Dec-2003–06-Dec-2003)
Australian Sociological Association and the University of New England
2003
Abstract
It is hard, in fact almost impossible to get through the day without 'being an au-dience'. It is a practical, common sense and an everyday experience. The very fact that it is done so well, reproduced without effort is extraordinary. Yet, there have been to date no studies on this common sense activity. How do we do 'being an audience'? This study draws on the approaches of Harvey Sacks (1992) who looked at the ordinary as something extraordinary. The act of doing ordinary things within the formal structures of living as an achievement. You have to know what is ordinary before you can do ordinariness. This study is about the very 'ordinary' act of being an audience. Exposing the formal structures involved that make the work of audiences a practicality. This will be done by the marriage of two theoretical perspectives, which focus on locally produced order. This lo-cally produced order found in Erving Goffman (1981) and Harvey Sacks (1992) will isolate the context of the audience relationship with the textual environment. This context is made available for study because of audience laughter. As the laughter in Seinfeld is recorded from a live audience the interaction is one that exists in real time. Laughter is an opportunity to study the relationship between the audience and the text, the critical features of this relationship - the context.
Details
- Title
- A Case of Seinfeld Laughing: A Critical Feature of the Text and Audience Relationship That Makes Laughter an Available Option
- Authors
- Eryn L Grant (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
- Contributors
- Peter Corrigan (Editor)Margaret Gibson (Editor)Gail Hawkes (Editor)Eric Livingston (Editor)John Scott (Editor)Steven Thiele (Editor)Gillian Carpenter (Editor)
- Publication details
- Proceedings of the 2003 Australian Sociological Association Conference, pp.1-9
- Conference details
- Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Conference: New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, 2003 (Armidale, Australia, 04-Dec-2003–06-Dec-2003)
- Publisher
- Australian Sociological Association and the University of New England
- Date published
- 2003
- ISBN
- 0646429272
- Copyright note
- Copyright © 2003 The Authors. Reproduced here with permission.
- Organisation Unit
- Centre for Human Factors and Systems Science; School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99450190702621
- Output Type
- Conference paper
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