UNDERSTANDING LAUGHTER: A COMMUNICATIVE PARADIGM 

Mikhail Chernikov¹, Larisa Perevozchikova², Evgenia Avdeenko³

¹Doctor of philosophical sciences, Professor, Street 20 letia oktyabrya, house number 84, Voronezh, Russia. E-mail: mv.chernikov@gmail.com
²Doctor of philosophical sciences, Professor, Street 20 letia oktyabrya, house number 84, Voronezh, Russia. E-mail: perevozch@vgasu.vrn.ru
³Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Senior Lecturer, Street 20 letia oktyabrya, house number 84, Voronezh, Russia E-mail: jjaane@yandex.ru

Abstract

Discussion of the so-called The “riddles of laughter” associated with attempts to identify the nature of a person’s laughter reaction, its essential features and features of functioning in the sociocultural space, has a long history and rich bibliography, but has not yet received universally recognized final completion. The current situation within the framework of the study of the phenomenon of laughter makes the intention to return to the problems of laughter and, based on the latest data on the sciences of man, relevant and justified, try to deepen his understanding. Assistance in solving this kind of problem is the subject of this article.

The article analyzes and critically discusses the available approaches to the phenomenon of laughter, identifies their insufficiency and proposes a new conceptual vision of laughter interpreted as an involuntary reaction that occurs in the case of an unexpected but justified decrease in the "degree" of the situation and acts as a communicative signal (and therefore is fixed as stereotypical ) in the system of intersubject human relations.

Keywords: laughter, laughter reaction, comic, sociocultural functions of laughter, communicative paradigm of understanding laughter.