Only when I laugh? Notes on the becoming interview

This paper starts from the observation that particularly rewarding parts of a set of research interviews were all accompanied by laughter. The interviews in question inquired into organizational practice as sites for individual and collective ‘becoming', conceived as a set of ongoing authoring acts situated in everyday work. The research interview should be considered amongst those events where such authoring takes place. Interviews constitute events of understanding within the hermeneutics of becoming. Based on two exemplifying strips of dialogues from my interviews, I identify and discuss three kinds of laughter. ‘Positioning laughter' has the function of affirming authoring acts, welcoming elaboration and creating a general atmosphere of trust. ‘Resonating laughter' addresses a form of pattern recognition that I suggest amounts to the tuning-in to an unutterable ‘we'. The function of resonating laughter is that it marks and celebrates this emerging understanding and plants the seeds of a prolonged interpretive effort. ‘Liberating laughter' addresses and potentially releases from constraints in the event of understanding: whether that be in patterns of the interview as a social event, in prior understanding or in investments into self-conceptions. The overall function of laughter is that it may enhance implicit interpretation and maintain an open dialectic in understanding; both qualities of particular relevance in becoming interviews.