A laughing matter? Managing hearing difficulties in real life everyday social interactions with adults with hearing loss

Objective: This study examines the interactional management of hearing difficulties and hearing aids (HAs) in real-life, video-recorded social interactions with adults with hearing loss (HL) and their families/friends.

Design: 32 video-recordings in various social settings were analysed using Conversation Analysis. 

Study sample: 20 adults with HL and their families/friends. 

Results: HL and/or HAs did not typically become explicit in conversation. When adults with HL’ hearing difficulties did become explicit in the conversation, they were typically accompanied by laughter/humour. Sometimes the humour/laughter was initiated by the person with HL themselves (i.e. self-directed joking) but more frequently it was initiated by someone else within the conversation (i.e. a tease). 

Conclusions: The findings display the management of the “to tell or not to tell” dilemma in practice, and how humour was often used to lighten the tension when “telling” about HL and/or HAs. The findings also highlight that not all humour is equal: there are different outcomes for adults with HL depending on who initiated the humour/laughter within the context of the interaction. This study highlights stigma-in-action–how stigma related to HL and/or HAs is occasioned and managed within real-life social interactions.