Laughing on the Internet: Age-Grading in the Use and Understanding of Written Laughter

This study uses sociolinguistic lens to examine laughter, which has been largely considered a non-verbal element of speech.Focusing on written laughter, or laughter that is typed in computer-mediated communication, this study examines how different age groups (youth, adults, and seniors) used and understood written laughter and whether age-grading shaped written laughter use and understanding.Two data sets are analyzed: (1) a corpus of 5,000 laughter comments from a Facebook group page, and (2) interviews.The findings show that age-grading indeed shaped the (non)expression of written laughter.Meanwhile, agegrading did not appear to differentiate how written laughter was interpreted by FB users from different age groups.Regardless of their age, the participants understood the various kinds of written laughter because of the context surrounding it.