This chapter brings instances of humour and laughter into relief using a corpus
of authentic institutional interaction of English language teachers in school staff
meetings. Humour is used within the meetings as a means of showing mutual
support and creating solidarity. The corpus also contains a large proportion
of subversive humour, or humour which is directed against the institution,
individuals in the group, the group itself and the students. Identifying humour
in the data is not a simple case of finding instances of laughter or assuming
that it signifies either the intention of the speaker to elicit laughter, or to be
humourous. However, wherever humour is manifested, laughter frequently
occurs. The methodological issue of identifying and transcribing humour is
discussed.