Turn-initial vs. turn-final laughter: two techniques for initiating remedy in English/Italian bookshop service encounters

This article analyses patterns of laughter in bookshop service encounters in England and Italy with the function of initiating remedy. Laughter sometimes occur in the turn of a dispreferred response by the assistent (i.e the book required is not available, it cannot be supplied, etc.), both in English and Italian. However, the preferred organization of laughter in such turns is different: In the English corpus, laughter is recurrently turn-initial, anticipating an account by the assistent in the same turn, whereas in the Italian corpus it is recurrently turn-final, leaving to the customer the possibility of elicitating an account and/or an alternative solution. the different mechanisms adopted in such remedial sequences in English and Italian can provide clues to culture-specific regularities in the organization of talk in the two langauges.