At its most basic, laughter is the rhythmic opening of a mouth. Laughter sonorously opens the mouth, one in a series of orifices of the body and the paradigmatic opening of the face. Laughter is one of the extra-reasonable, animal-like activities of the mouth, alongside eating, breathing, spitting, or kissing. But the laughing mouth is also singular in that its mode of opening is unique. There is no incorporation of an object involved in laughter (as in eating), no expulsion (as in spitting or vomiting), nor a simple combination of the two(as in breathing). Likewise, there is no contact with an other, at least not immediately (as in kissing).

In laughter, the mouth opens, its "inside" touching the "outside," as if it wants to speak or "communicate," and yet what is communicated is only the very opening of the mouth, its gaping.

For the rhetoricians, the significance of the fact that laughter is an expression of scorn and contempt is essentially forensic in character. If it is true, they argue, that laughter is the outward manifestation of these particular emotions, one can convert it into a uniquely powerful weapon of moral and political debate."