The display and management of affectivity in climaxes of amusing stories

•Climaxes of conversational stories are “staged” points of displayed affectivity.•Their construction involves verbal, vocal, and visible practices.•Affectivity in story climaxes is managed in an Affect Display Sequence.•Recipients' affiliation is preferred, non-affiliative responses are dispreferred.•The Affect Display Sequence may be expanded in pursuits of affiliation.

This paper reports on work on the accomplishment and negotiaton of affectivity in everyday interaction. It analyzes climaxes of amusing stories as a locus for the display and management of affectivity, here predominantly on the basis of data from German interaction. The empirical investigation of participants' verbal, vocal, and visible practices and resources in managing affectivity in climaxes of amusing stories has revealed a normatively oriented-to 'Affect Display Sequence', in which affiliation is the preferred response. The discussion of trajectories with non-understanding and non-affiliating responses in the second part of the paper, in turn, shows how the 'Affect Display Sequence' is expanded and dealt with in more complicated and dispreferred cases. Thereby the paper contributes to the description and understanding of affectivity in interaction as an orderly and normatively oriented-to phenomenon that is displayed and managed with multimodal practices and resources and co-constructed by the participants in the interaction.