The interactional handling of misunderstanding in everyday conversations (original) (raw)
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In: I. Koutny, I. Stria & M. Farris (Eds.) (2020). Rolo de lingvoj en interkultura komunikado / The role of languages in intercultural communication. Poznań: Rys., 2020
Communication breakdowns have deservedly been attracting the interest of researchers, as they constitute important factors influencing the process of linguistic interaction and language acquisition. Not only do they affect the process of communication per se, but also have other, often serious, consequences. Particular interest should be accorded to the process of achieving—and failing to achieve—understanding when English is spoken as a vehicular language. We present the results of the first comprehensive analysis of the complete conversations subcomponent of the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), focusing on the i) possible causes of communication breakdowns, and ii) strategies employed by speakers in order to both prevent and overcome such failures. We categorise and show the distribution of the sources of 122 detected breakdowns as well as the compensatory strategies employed by interlocutors to successfully avert and solve communication problems. All of the material was examined in search of characteristic features and communication breakdowns. These were then analysed in detail with regard to what caused the failures and how they were resolved, or at least how the speakers attempted to resolve them. Finally, the remaining data were again scrutinised in search of preventative strategies. The chapter concludes with pedagogical recommendations.
Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2006
The default assumption in human communication is mutual intelligibility between interlocutors. Nevertheless, misunderstandings also occur, and languages have resources for managing these in communicative interaction. When speakers do not share a native language, misunderstandings are generally expected to arise more frequently than between native speakers of the same language. However, it is not clear that communication breakdown is more common among second language users; the anticipation of communicative di‰culty may in itself o¤set much of the trouble, and speakers resort to proactive strategies. This paper investigates misunderstanding and its prevention among participants in university degree programs where English was used as a lingua franca. The findings suggest that speakers engage in various clarification and repair strategies in an apparent attempt to ensure the achievement of mutual intelligibility and thereby the achievement of important communicative goals.
Repairing Conversational Misunderstandings and Non-Understandings 1
1994
Participants in a discourse sometimes fail to understand one another, but, when aware of the problem, collaborate upon or negotiate the meaning of a problematic utterance. To address nonunderstanding, we have developed two plan-based models of collaboration in identifying the correct referent of a description: one covers situations where both conversants know of the referent, and the other covers situations, such as direction-giving, where the recipient does not. In the models, conversants use the mechanisms of refashioning, suggestion, and elaboration, to collaboratively refine a referring expression until it is successful. To address misunderstanding, we have developed a model that combines intentional and social accounts of discourse to support the negotiation of meaning. The approach extends intentional accounts by using expectations deriving from social conventions in order to guide interpretation. Reflecting the inherent symmetry of the negotiation of meaning, all our models c...
Dealing with Communicative Problems in English as a Lingua Franca
Kalbotyra, 2008
The aim of the article is to discuss, first, how the differences in socio-cultural interaction styles can influence communication, second, what is interaction participants’ orientation to the problems originating in those differing styles and finally, how such troubles are negotiated, and more specifically, repaired in communication. Conversation analysis (CA) will be used to analyze an illustrative excerpt of interaction in English. [...]
Repairing conversational misunderstandings and non-understandings
Speech communication, 1994
Participants in a discourse sometimes fail to understand one another, but, when aware of the problem, collaborate upon or negotiate the meaning of a problematic utterance. To address nonunderstanding, we have developed two plan-based models of collaboration in identifying the correct referent of a description: one covers situations where both conversants know of the referent, and the other covers situations, such as direction-giving, where the recipient does not. In the models, conversants use the mechanisms of refashioning, suggestion, and elaboration, to collaboratively refine a referring expression until it is successful. To address misunderstanding, we have developed a model that combines intentional and social accounts of discourse to support the negotiation of meaning. The approach extends intentional accounts by using expectations deriving from social conventions in order to guide interpretation. Reflecting the inherent symmetry of the negotiation of meaning, all our models can act as both speaker and hearer, and can play both the role of the conversant who is not understood or misunderstood and the role of the conversant who fails to understand.
In this paper, we discuss borderline examples of (mis)understanding where it is not clear whether or not a misunderstanding has occurred, whether or not communication was successful, and where the participants do not try to negotiate an understanding, even though different interpretations are very likely to exist. By analyzing real data, we point out various types of such borderline examples of (mis)understanding, attempt to analyze their source and explain why they are a normal constitute of process of coming to an understanding. Using discourse comprehension theory, we define the level of propositional strategies, local coherence strategies, strategies for the use of knowledge, and interactional and pragmatic strategies as the main sources of reduced understandings. In spite of the fact that there is no complete understanding, and, consequently, some level of differences in understanding can be perceived as ‘normal’, we discuss other possible reasons why discourse participants do not explicitly negotiate an understanding.
Across languages and cultures: Brokering problems of understanding in conversational repair
The article examines the interactional construction of language competence in bilingual immigrant communities. The focus is on how participants in social interaction resolve problems of understanding that are demonstrably rooted in their divergent linguistic and cultural expertise. Using the methodology of conversation analysis to examine mundane video-recorded conversations in Russian American immigrant families, I describe a previously unanalyzed communicative practice for solving understanding problems: by one participant enacting the role of a language broker in a repair sequence. The article thus contributes to the existing research on the interactional construction of language competence, on the one hand, and on the organization of repair and its relationship to social epistemics, on the other.