Laughter as Strategies in Business Communication Between Thai and Burmese Professionals

Tabtip Kanchanapoomi,Wannapa Trakulkasemsuk

doi:10.1163/26659077-24020007

Tabtip Kanchanapoomi, Wannapa Trakulkasemsuk

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1163/26659077-24020007

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Abstract

Abstract Laughter is not just an element in human communication that signifies happiness and enjoyment, it can be used as a communication strategy to lubricate successful interaction including business communication. Nonetheless, not many studies have paid attention to laughter in business communication. Therefore, this paper sheds light on how Thai and Burmese participants used laughter in a restaurant and in a business meeting in Yangon, Myanmar. Audio data was collected together with various pieces of ethnographic data, for example, participant observations reported from extensive field notes, semi-structured interviews and audio recordings. The analysis was based on the classification of laughter adopted from Hayakawa (2003), and Murata and Hori (2007). The findings reveal that laughter is deployed as a communication strategy with different purposes such as to make fun of work, to ease tension and to threaten other interlocutors and unveil those factors which stimulate the laughter in informal and formal settings.

Highlights

Global mobility does involve economic globalization but it entails other aspects such as business interactions, business etiquette, cultural knowledge exchange, effective communication etc.The issue of multinational workplace communication attracted the field researcher’s attention in 2014 when working for a family business in Thailand which has a joint-venture in Yangon, Myanmar
Laughter was identified as a striking feature which recurred in the data collected in informal and formal business meetings
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of laughter and the factors that drove laughter to occur during an international business communication between 2 Thai and 3 Burmese professionals involved in the glass and aluminium construction field in informal and formal settings

Summary

Introduction

Global mobility does involve economic globalization but it entails other aspects such as business interactions, business etiquette, cultural knowledge exchange, effective communication etc.The issue of multinational workplace communication attracted the field researcher’s attention in 2014 when working for a family business in Thailand which has a joint-venture in Yangon, Myanmar. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of laughter and the factors that drove laughter to occur during an international business communication between 2 Thai and 3 Burmese professionals involved in the glass and aluminium construction field in informal (a brunch meeting at a restaurant) and formal (a business meeting at an office) settings. This group of research participants and two contexts were selected because it was interesting to study how similar or different a group of business professionals from the same region with partially shared cultural-based communication were, how laughter was included in their business dealings and how laughter was interpreted. Laughter is considered to be an element of communication (Bachorowski and Owren 2001) and is an embedded cultural element, it is possible that the laughter can convey a message and communicate specific emotions and intentions to other interlocutors (Gervais and Wilson 2005)

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