The interactional handling of misunderstanding in everyday conversations (original) (raw)
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.
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. [...]
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.
The Distribution of Repair in Dialogue
csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu
Repairs -the various ways in which people edit and reformulate conversational turns-are a characteristic feature of natural dialogue. However, relatively little is known about their overall frequency or distribution in conversation. We present a systematic, quantitative study of patterns of repair in two corpora: 'ordinary' dialogues from the British National Corpus (BNC) and task-oriented dialogues from the HCRC Map Task. We use this analysis to evaluate three hypotheses about patterns of repair 1) social 'preferences' 2) processing demands and 3) dialogue co-ordination. The results show that repair is more frequent in task-oriented dialogue, that use of repair is broadly unaffected by familiarity or mode of interaction but substantially affected by task roles. We argue that the complimentary patterns of repair used by conversational partners support the view of repairs as an integrated, cross-turn and cross-person, system for sustaining the mutual-intelligibility of dialogue.
Discourse markers as signals of self-repair in spontaneous Italian language
CAIETELE LUCIAN BLAGA - YEARBOOK, 2018
Repair is one of the fundamental mechanisms for the organization of spoken discourse, specially of natural, spontaneous conversation which is characterized by the linearity of discourse and a scarce possibility of planning. The presentation deals with the study of discourse markers (DMs) as signals of self-repair in spontaneous Italian language. The work presents the analysis of the metatextual function of DMs, as they facilitate the organisation of the conversation by enabling the speakers to intervene on their prior speech: by self-repair (providing examples, appropriate definitions and additional information or paraphrasing) or by self-correction (correcting morphological, syntactical or phonological mistakes, finding more suitable collocations of words or attenuating the meaning of their words). The analysis on seventeen native speakers has shown that the speakers are very creative in using (sometimes even inventing ad hoc forms) more than fifty different types of DMs to signal the above mentioned pragmatic functions for speech management. This multitude of forms demonstrates the dynamism and flexibility of spoken language, but it also proves that it is far more important and useful to deal with their pragmatic functions since bare classifications cannot capture all their (pragmatic) potential. On the other hand, it has been proven that self-repair i) is potentially pertinent to the structure of any utterance; ii) represents an effective alternative to other mechanisms of spoken discourse; iii) can predominate over the production of the following element(s) by reorganizing the syntactical organization of previously uttered discourse.
Interactive repair among English as a lingua franca speakers in academic settings
Brno studies in English
The paper presents the results of research which studies the use of English as a lingua franca in spoken academic discourse interactions, providing a deeper insight into the interactional practices utilized in the process of achieving the communicative purpose(s) of international university seminars. Drawing on audio-recorded data collected from English-taught seminars at the University of Ostrava and using conversation analytic procedures, the research explores the character and functions of interactive repair and its role in increasing mutual understanding and preventing communication breakdown in lingua franca academic talk. The article discusses strategies of providing language support and/or feedback to one's communicative partners in negotiating both meaning and form of talk, and offers findings which portray ELF speakers as competent communicators adaptable to different sociopragmatic contexts.
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...
A conversation analytic study of error correction outside of the second language classroom
Semiotica, 2018
This study investigates repair sequences between two nonnative speakers of English while they engaged in naturally occurring talk outside of the second language classroom. Eight hours of naturally occurring talk between native and nonnative speakers were collected and analyzed. The present study reports on one hour of the data which shows two types of repair: Self-initiated and other-corrected and other-initiated. The analysis of the repair sequences shows that the self-initiated and other-corrected repair sequences follow a distinct pattern of asking for confirmation on the production of a language item and receiving a correction, while the other-initiated repair is done differently from the ones found in the literature on repair and do not follow the rules of preference for self-correction described by some researchers in the Conversation Analysis literature. In addition, the other-initiated repair analyzed in this study does not appear to be modulated, that is, the person initiat...
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.
Some interactional achievements of other-initiated repair in multiperson conversation
Journal of Pragmatics, 1997
Based on video-taped multiperson conversation, this paper examines interactional achievements of affiliation and disaffiliation among conversationalists in spates of talk in which trouble in hearing or understanding is negotiated. In particular, this report focuses on three aspects of other-initiated repair unique to the multiperson setting. (1) In multiperson interaction, repair can be initiated by more than one speaker on the same trouble-source. Such a succession of repair initiation turns by different speakers shows a momentary affiliation to the repair initiation speaker. (2) Usually, the trouble-source turn speaker responds to the repair initiation. In multiperson interaction, a person other than the trouble-source turn speaker can respond before the trouble-source turn speaker's attempt to fix the trouble. In such instances, other coparticipants employ action:~ which display that such conduct is inappropriate if there is no apparent justification. (3) Initiating repair can be used as an entry and exit device to a conversation and to transformations; in the participation framework from a single conversation to two simultaneous conversations (schisming) as well as to return from schisming to a single conversation (merging).
Signaling trouble: on the linguistic design of other-initiation of repair in English conversation
2012
Kim: she had a baby right 2 (0.2) 3 Jill: who 4 (0.5) 5 Kim: your sister in law= 6 Jill: =yeah yeah (.) yeah About five minutes into the call, Kim asks Jill the question we see in line 1 ("she had a baby right"). In order for Jill to answer, she needs to have an adequate grasp of what she is being asked. This requires, among other things, that she can work out who the "she" is referring to. It appears she can't. In line 3, she signals trouble with this reference and asks Kim to fix it ("who"). Kim complies ("your sister in law", line 5) and Jill then resumes the conversation (line 6), her problem evidently resolved. It is this class of repair activity, launched by a recipient's "who?", "huh?", "you mean this weekend?", or similar action, which is the focus of this thesis. A review of the literature reveals that these phenomenon have been studied under many names. Within linguistics they are known as clarification questions, echo questions or rejoinders (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), within psychology as grounding utterances/sequences (Clark & Schaefer, 1987; 1989), within artificial intelligence as clarification/correction (sub)dialogues (Litman & Allan, 1987; Grosz & Sidner, 1986), within research on second language acquisition as feedback or uptake (Lyster & Ranta, 1997), and so on. The reason for this plurality is clear: These phenomena are "so ubiquitous that very few approaches within the human and social sciences have avoided commenting on, or contending with them, in some way" (Hayashi et al., 2013, p. 1). 1 https://sites.google.com/site/trevormbenjamin/audiofiles 3 The common name in the CA literature is "other-initiated repair" (or OIR). Note, however, that this label can describe both the activity as a whole and the repair proper ("your sister in law" is indeed a repair initiated by "other"). While this ambiguity is motivated-repair activities are launched in order to bring about the repair proper-I will avoid this term. Similarly, I will avoid "repair initiator", a term regularly used to refer to both the repair initiating speaker (Jill) and the means by which they do it (the repair initiation "who"). Newport, LA97), work related talk among veterinarians, bankers, and politicians (parts of SBCSAE, Watergate), and the planning of a class project among a group of university students (Free Lunch). The recordings were made at various points over the past 50 years, and the participants involved vary considerably in their socioeconomic background, age, and language variety (e.g. many dialects of American English and some 12 hours of British data). This thesis makes few attempts to document the constancy or variation of various OI practices across different social contexts, settings or groups. Nevertheless, the range of data suggests that most are quite generic and widespread (see Chapter 5 for some exceptions). While the corpus contains 9 hours of video recordings and an additional 22 hours of audio-recorded face to face interactions (Santa Barbara Corpus), the bulk of the interactions (80%) took place over the telephone. Phone calls are, of course, limited in the number of participants involved (typically only two) and the types of semiotic resources that can be used (no gestures, gaze, etc.), two factors which have been shown to be consequential for the study of other-initiation of repair (see Egbert, 1997; Bolden, 2011; and Egbert, 1996; Seo & Koshik, 2010; Enfield et al., 2013 respectively). While in one sense a weakness, this type of data can also be seen as a "natural experiment". Phone calls offer an accountable basis for excluding these more complex cases (Schegloff, 1968). 5 All data is used with permission, and all names and other identifiers have been anonymised.
To Fix What’s Not Broken. Repair Strategies in Non-Native and Native English Conversation
The thesis investigates conversations involving native speakers and non-native speakers of English. The non-native speakers partaking in the study have a well developed knowledge of the foreign language. The study is particularly concerned with the function and interactional relevance of repair strategies that interlocutors employ when they talk to each other. The results of the analyses highlight issues such as participants' self-representations as competent speakers, the notion "nonnativeness", and language learning, relating to current developments within conversation analytic research on second/foreign language conversations. Comparisons between non-native and native speakers are made, highlighting similarities as well as di¡erences in participants' use of repair strategies. The study adopts a conversation analytic framework but is also in¤uenced by studies of second/foreign language acquisition. Conversation analytic research has, until recently, dealt with conversations involving non-native speakers who have a limited or intermediate command of the second/foreign language. Repair behaviours of advanced foreign language users are thus a little investigated area. Whereas non-native speakers with limited experience in using the second/foreign language often employ repair in order to solve problems that are related to their linguistic knowledge, such as ¢nding or knowing words and constructing utterances that are understandable in the context in which they occur, this thesis shows how an increased knowledge of the foreign language involves a shift in focus as repair is carried out, i.e. repair is used to address problems of a linguistic as well as of a social nature. Since an increased knowledge of a foreign language is accompanied by an increase in the range of jobs that repair strategies do, "doing repair" is an important part of the development of non-native speakers' interactional and linguistic competence.
Formats for Other-Initiation of Repair across Languages: An Exercise in Pragmatic Typology
Dingemanse, Mark, Joe Blythe, and Tyko Dirksmeyer. (2014) Studies in Language 38 (1): 5–43. doi:10.1075/sl.38.1.01din., 2014
In conversation, people regularly deal with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. We report on a cross-linguistic investigation of the conversa- tional structure of other-initiated repair (also known as collaborative repair, feedback, requests for clarification, or grounding sequences). We take stock of formats for initiating repair across languages (comparable to English huh?, who?, y’mean X?, etc.) and find that different languages make available a wide but remarkably similar range of linguistic resources for this function. We exploit the patterned variation as evidence for several underlying concerns addressed by repair initiation: characterising trouble, managing responsibility, and handling knowledge. The concerns do not always point in the same direction and thus provide participants in interaction with alternative principles for selecting one format over possible others. By comparing conversational structures across languages, this paper contributes to pragmatic typology: the typology of systems of language use and the principles that shape them.
Available online 20 June 2002. Abstract The analysis of three recordings in which jargon speakers interact, either among themselves or with speakers from other social spheres, seems to support the view of conversation as a dynamic process which is the result of the interaction of three different factors: power relationships, social distance and social space, and speakers' attitudes. This analysis may increase our knowledge of verbal interaction. First, we should approach each conversation as a unique and unrepeatable event. Furthermore, different conversational resources and maneuvers participate in the realization of various conversational processes involved in this interaction, such as the construction and interpretation of meaning, the presentation of a public self image, the management of information, the expression of relationships of power and solidarity, and the management of conversational space. Regarding each one of these processes, and the components of the speech event, the speakers adopt strategies of negotiation, imposition and cooperation. Delinquent jargon, which defines the peer group and permits the expression of alternative values, but which also protects information vital for subsistence, reveals, as if observed through a magnifying glass, the dynamic character of conversation and shows the role played by speakers' attitudes.
Language alternation and conversational repair in bilingual conversation
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2012
Researchers have consistently reported language alternation in repair sequences in bilingual conversation. However, up until now, no systematic account of the relationship between language alternation and conversational repair has been put forward. The aim of this article is to fill this gap. Two main questions are addressed: (a) where in the repair sequence can language alternation occur? And (b) what does language alternation do in repair sequences when it occurs? Two main theoretical ideas are drawn upon in addressing these research questions, namely the fact that “nothing is, in principle, excludable from the class ‘repairable’” (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977, p. 363) and the fact that language choice itself is a “significant aspect of talk organisation” (Gafaranga, 1999). Applying these ideas, the article shows that language alternation can occur at any point in the repair sequence. As for the functionality of language alternation, the article shows that, among bilingual s...
Doing Repair in Native-Non-Native Talk: A Conversation Analytic Study of Thai-English Interaction
2015
Using conversation analysis (CA), the study examines the occurrences of conversational repair activity on grammatical trouble-sources and comprehension checks in interactions between three native speakers of English (NS) and three Thai non-native speakers (NNS) of English in a casual language setting outside the language classroom they were attending at York St John University. The Thai non-native speakers of English were selected among the beginning English learners at the university level and the three native speakers are also chosen based on their non-linguistic teaching background. The three pairs of NS/NNS interactions were audio-taped to explore 1) the main types of ungrammatical utterances produced by each Thai non-native speaker, 2) the dealing procedures of each native speaker with ungrammatical trouble-sources, and 3) the occurrence of repair patterns used by the native speakers for comprehension checks in NS/NSS interactions. The analysis disclosed that the repair activit...
A plan-based model of misunderstandings in cooperative dialogue
International Journal of Human-computer Studies / International Journal of Man-machine Studies, 1998
We describe a plan-based agent architecture that models misunderstandings in cooperative NL agent communication; it exploits a notion of coherence in dialogue based on the idea that the explicit and implicit goals which can be identi ed by interpreting a conversational turn can be related with the previous explicit / implicit goals of the interactants. Misunderstandings are hypothesized when the coherence of the interaction is lost (i.e. an unrelated utterance comes). The processes of analysis (and treatment) of a misunderstanding are modeled as rational behaviors caused by the acquisition of a supplementary goal, when an incoherent turn comes: the agent detecting the incoherence commits to restore the intersubjectivity in the dialogue; so, he restructures his own contextual interpretation, or he induces the partner to restructure his (according to who seems to have made the mistake). This commitment leads him to produce a repair turn, which initiates a subdialogue aimed at restoring the common interpretation ground. Since we model speech acts uniformly with respect to the other actions (the domain level actions), our model is general and covers misunderstandings occurring at the linguistic level as well as at the underlying domain activities of the interactants. has been recognized by and Weigand (1997) as a normal phenomenon in communication, to introduce into an harmonical model of dialogue.
Italian discourse markers and modal particles in contact
PREPRINT VERSION. In Fedriani, C. & Sansò, A. (eds.), Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles. New Perspectives, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 419-438, 2017
The paper addresses the issue of the fuzzy boundaries between modal particles (henceforth MPs) and discourse markers (DMs) in a specific language contact situation, namely the Ladin area in Trentino South-Tyrol (Italy). It is still debated whether MPs should be seen as a subtype of DMs or whether they both should be seen as belonging to the more encompassing class of pragmatic markers (cf. Degand, Cornille & Pietrandrea 2013). The aim of the research is to investigate the uncertain and undefined boundaries of these categories in bilingual speech, in order to find out whether bilingual speakers treat DMs and MPs as separated linguistic categories or as a unified one.