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When one party to a conversation pursues a particular interactional project, there is sometimes a potential for actions to be heard as problematic. For example, a speaker may form a description that might have the potential to be heard as a complaint. An action of this kind will make a response relevant from the recipient: an account, a counter complaint, and such like. This may hinder the progress of the interaction and generate further trouble. Our analysis suggests that speakers can manage these problems by inserting laughter particles into the transition space after their (potentially) troubling action. This provides a way of modulating the action, softening or neutralizing its problematic features, and thereby heading off problematic recipient actions, without disrupting the progressivity of the talk. Laughter particles are ideal for this as they are brief, nonpropositional, and can be interpolated into words if required. This interactional role for laughter particles may be fundamental, and distinct from whatever role they have in relation to humor and what is “funny”. This chapter works with a collection of laughter particles that are issued following the completion of actions. It will show how they are used to modulate the speaker’s action and manage the recipient’s response requirements. The analysis will draw on and refine Schegloff’s (1996) discussion of “post-completion stance markers” and Jefferson’s (1984) work on laughter in the management of troubles telling, as well as take up broader issues in the analysis and role of laughter.

A further focus is on the way the prosodic delivery of laughter tokens in post position is closely fitted to the modulating action …