This paper analyses laughter in spoken academic discourse, with the aim of discovering why lecturers provoke laughter in their lectures. A further purpose of the paper is to identify episodes in British data which may differ from those in other cultural contexts where other lecturing practices prevail, and thus to inform the design of study skills…

This chapter sets a context for the use of student development theory in student affairs work, summarizes several prominent theories, and offers examples of how the entertainment media can be used to facilitate understanding of these theories by both graduate and undergraduate students.