Literature Review
In this thesis, I will study the characteristics of the conversational mechanism of repair in Chine conversational discour. T o that end, it is necessary to conduct a review of the relevant literature on conversational repair. I shall start with an elaboration of the notion of “repair”, going on to rearches into the organization of conversational repair and conclude with the interdisciplinary and multi-linguistic application of “repair” rearch.
1. From Correction to Repair
As a relatively new field in conversation analysis (CA), the proper study of the conversational phenomenon of repair didn’t start until the publication of Schegloff et al’s minal paper in 1977. Before that, there were only some sporadic discussions of the phenomenon under such generic headings as tongue slips (Laver 1973, e Schegloff 1977) and error correction (Jefferson 1975, e Schegloff 1977). As a still often-ud term, “correction”, “commonly understood to refer to the replacement of an ‘error’ or ‘mistake’ by what is ‘correct’” (Schegloff 1977: 363), not only limits rearch to a minority of the natural occurrences of repair but also misleads rearchers about the nature of the trouble-sources.
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The shift of focus was led by Schegloff et al (1977), who study was an empirically bad effort to examine the organization of repair as a t of ordered, but not equal possibilities. The phenomenon of correction was therefore proven part of a much wider picture, i.e. repair and the scope of discussion was greatly expanded from the mere correcting of some “hearable [usually linguistic] errors” (1977: 363) to all possible “practices for dealing with problems or troubles in speaking, hearing, and understanding the talk in conversation” (2000: 207), a definition given by Schegloff himlf some 20 years later. In deed, potential trouble-sources in conversation include not only correction of information, but also and more importantly replacement of inappropriate items or ambiguous anaphors, word arch and clarification of the pragmatic
function/understanding of a previous turn. The and many other occurrences may only be subsumed under the more general scope of repair. Incidentally, correction may not always be categorized under repair either, as is exemplified by the disagreement over the so-called “embedded correction” (Jefferson 1987) –basically a covert form of other-correction –which Schegloff (2000) ruled out as not constituting a kind of repair. Equally important as the expansion in the scope of rearch was the change in the view of the trouble-sources that directly occasion the repair. According to Schegloff et al (1977), trouble-sources are not lf-evident but determined interactively
by participants. In other words, all the gments in an utterance is, in theory, potential trouble-sources and often the existence of a trouble-source can only be evidenced by the actual mobilization of the practice of repair on the part of either the hearer or the speaker (and sometimes both). It is worth noting that just as the status of a trouble-source is an uncertainty to be interactively determined, the actual need and proper protocol of its repair is not any more certain. This dynamic and interactive view of repair has proven rewarding in terms of revealing not only its own mechanism but also other cognitive, social and psychological aspects of conversational discour, as may be interestingly explained by such everyday wisdom: you don’t know something’s at work until it goes wrong.
2. The organization of repair
Many studies have been carried out with regard to the various dimensions of conversational repair itlf, e.g. its classification, sites, forms and caus.
Schegloff et al (1977) classified four interactional types of repair according to the subject(s) of initiation/repair, namely lf/other-initiated lf/other repair. This classification has been adopted by many rearchers later, making it easier to tackle conversational data. Yet Geluykens (1994: 56) sug
gests, rightly I think, that this classification is in need of refinement as it is not always possible to draw a sharp boundary between lf and other initiation. He found a sort of other-prompted lf-initiation, which underlines the interactive aspect of conversational discour.
Along with the interactional four-type classification, Schegloff et al (1977) propod the unequal distribution of the four types. To be more exact, lf-repair is preferred to other-repair and lf-initiation to other-initiation. It follows that the most favored type is lf-initiated lf-repair. Their claim was put forward with no statistical evidence so later rearchers have discusd their empirical findings with reference to either or both of the two preferences. Many studies, including some bad on data in languages other than English, are in support of the obrvation that lf-repair is preferred, e.g. Geluykens (1994) and Ma (2007). Yet some remain doubtful as to the preference of lf-initiation over other-initiation, e.g. Gaskell (1980), Schwartz (1980) and Gass & Varonis (1985) (e Wang 2007).
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A strong objection to the preference of lf-correction was put forward by Norrick (1991, e Jiang & Li 2003), who data was collected from conversation in parent-child, teacher-student and NS-NNS contexts. After examining the organization of corrective exchanges in the contexts, he contended that the party abler to perform the correction – not necessarily the speaker – does it. Further, he dis
misd the alleged preference as a sub-ca which is only possible between adult native speakers, who ability of repair is approximately equal. In other words, the abnce of such preference is the norm while the preference is a special ca. Interestingly, Schegloff et al (1977) has also obrved that other-correction “ems to be not as infrequent” and “appears to be one vehicle for socialization” in tho contexts where someone not-yet-competent in a certain domain –be it language facility or background information –is involved (381). However, they further argued that this exception to the infrequency of other-correction is only a transitional stage and will be superded by the preference of lf-correction eventually. Joining in the heated discussion are Jiang & Li (2003), who also questioned the validity of Schegloff’s claim about the preference for lf-repair. They offered as proof the work of Norrick (1991) and Zhao (1996). The latter, on the basis of data obtained in academic minars, of which other-repair takes up a remarkable proportion, suggested that the option of lf- or other-repair should take into account of the context, including the content of conversation and the respective social status of the participants (Jiang & Li 2003: 42). In their own survey, Jiang & Li (2003) calculated the frequencies of repair in
two categories and found the preference of lf-repair only existent in the category that included clearing up misunderstandings, word arch or lf-editing while in the correction of real errors, othe
星光现场>肮脏r-repair enjoys a bigger percentage of 60%. Therefore they blamed the mystery of the preference on the overly broad definition of repair put forward by Schegloff et al.
Besides the interactional four-type classification, repair has been classified by other ways. In terms of the kind of trouble-spot being repaired, Levelt (1989, e Geluykens 1994:20) distinguishes between E[rror]-repair and A[ppropriateness]-repair. Considering the temporal aspect of repair, there are immediate repairs and delayed repairs (Geluykens 1994: 22).
There has also been in-depth discussion on the sites, or what is called the quential environment for repair initiation and reparans (the repairing gment). A usual way of referring to the position of repair initiation is by reference to the turn where the trouble-source occurs. Schegloff et al (1977) found lf-initiation mainly in three positions, namely the same turn as the trouble-source, the same turn’s transition place and the third-turn to the trouble-source turn; other-initiation, on the other hand, was found mainly in the next turn (to the trouble-source turn). Levinson (1983, e Geluykens 1994) identified four similar opportunities, which are ordered with decreasing preference and most often ud by either lf- or other-initiation.
In particular, Schegloff (2000) elaborated the locus of other-initiation (OI) that occurs in positions oth
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er than the turn following the trouble-source turn. He suggested veral interactional constraints that may be accountable for the somewhat deviant OIs, constraints related to the organization of repair, of turns or of turn-taking. In addition, he obrved occasional delays in OIs which implies the speaker’s intention of “tting aside the understanding problem” (233) or asssing it later. This obrvation was of great relevance to the study of Wong, who examined a form of “delayed next turn repair initiation” in N-NN English conversation and propod that it might be accounted by the differences between native and non-native participants in their ways of social interaction – more specifically, in the u of certain tokens and quential organization in
conversation.
From the comparison between Schegloff (2000) and Wong (2000), it ems that the instantaneity and complexity of conversation spell danger for hasty generalization and due attention should be paid to minute differentiation. A ca in point may be found in Schegloff (1997)’s distinction between “third turn repair”and “third position repair”, both of which occupies as a rule the turn subquent to the turn following the trouble-source turn, hence “third”. Yet a clor look with a focus on quential relevance will clear up the confusion of the two. While “third position repair”is usually lf-repair in respon to other-initiation in the cond turn, “third turn repair”is a kind of lf-initiated lf-repair
parated from the trouble-source turn only by a not full-fledged turn of acknowledgement or irrelevant interpolation.
Another dimension of conversational repair, i.e. its forms, has also received considerable academic attention. Firstly, on the various forms of initiation, Schegloff (1979) distinguished between lexical and non-lexical initiation; Kuang (2001) specified five forms of repair initiation with decreasing extent of repetition of the trouble-source turn; Drew (1997) developed a quential analysis of the u of ‘open’ initiators (such as “pardon?”, “sorry?” and “what?”), in which specific forms of initiation are correlated with specific types of trouble sources.新年老师祝福语
顺治皇帝Secondly, the forms of the reparans (the repairing utterance) prove a complex issue, as rearchers have found an undeniable relation between repair and syntax. For one thing, the four forms taken by same-turn reparans – recycling, replacing, inrting and restarting (Schegloff 1979) may change the syntactic structure of the trouble-source turn. As it is, repair “can [drastically] change the syntactic form by subsuming, under another ‘frame’ ntence, the whole ntence being said or starting to be said” (Schegloff 1979: 280). This interaction between repair and syntax is partly responsible for the confusion of repair with other constructions, e.g. dislocations. In this interesting aspect, Geluykens (1994) explored intensively the mechanism of right dislocation (RD), which often overlaps with anaph
oric repair becau of their similarity in syntactic characteristics,
