Personal narrative
Performance and narrative structure

The telling of a joke is an example of stories that are built into conversations that rely on the interaction between the teller and the audience. Harvey Sacks ' Analysis of the Telling of Joke in Conversation provides structural units in which conversation narratives can be coded: the preface sequence, the telling sequence, and the response sequence. Sacks defines the preface sequence as an instance that can take a minimum of two-turns, a proposal or request to tell a joke or a story by the teller, and the response from the listener or audience. Depending on the content of the story or joke being told, whether it is intended to be "dirty" or inappropriate or based on personal events, the request part of the preface will usually contain a warning or cue for a certain response (i.e. acceptance) from the recipient of the joke. Once the acceptance is given by the recipient, the telling sequence begins, in which the teller should provide the story or joke to the recipient in its entirety. Responses from the recipient are not necessary and are usually not prompted by the teller like in the preface sequence. The final unit, the response sequence is the recipients turn for reaction to the completion of the joke or story, generally highlighted by its punchline. The response sequence is dependent on the recipient's reaction to the joke, genuine or not genuine. The gaps or silences following a punchline, in which there is no initial laughter is very contextual and telling of both the teller's ability to tell a good joke and the listener's ability to either understand the joke or decline the joke. In this way the joke is both reflexive of the teller and evaluative of the context in which the joke is told.
detectable_format:constrained_response