Laughing Alone and Punching Self: The Alignment of Laughter in Interviews With Men Convicted of Sexual Offences

Laughter plays a significant role in narrative storytelling but the extent to which it appears (and is useful) during interviews with justice-involved populations is not well understood. The psychological value of “gallows” humor is well established in the buffering of work stress for first responders and emergency personnel, but criminologists are yet to fully explore the presence, or the benefit (if any) of laughter during field interviews. This paper analysed the occurrences of laughter in interviews with North American men incarcerated for sexual violence. We present a preliminary descriptive typology of how laughter emerged during in-depth interviews. The typology applies two analytical lenses in sequence. The first is drawn from humor research and probes the direction of power imbalance in an exchange. It identifies the intended “butt of the joke” and proposes a trichotomy of punching up, punching down , and punching self. The second is drawn from interactional pragmatics and identifies the uptake of the laughter. This yields the distinction between “ laughing at/laughing with ” and we propose, “ laughing alone. ” The two lenses reveal together what neither can show alone: not just what participants are laughing about, but also how they are responding to each other’s laughter. This preliminary typology offers linguistic rigor to the criminological understanding of interactions.