The Use of Conversational Repairs by African American Preschoolers

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the types and frequency of conversational repairs used by African American (AA) children in relationship to their geographic locations and levels of performance on commonly used speech-language measures. The strategies used to initiate repairs and respond to repair requests were identified in audiovisual records of spontaneous speech sampled from 120 Head Start students in Michigan (n = 69) and Louisiana (n = 51) at 3 years of age. The 30-40-min samples were elicited with common stimuli and activities while the children interacted with an adult examiner. All participants initiated repairs and responded to examiner requests for conversational repairs. Some repair strategies were observed more often than others. The frequency, but not the types, of some of the strategies used varied significantly with participant location and level of speech-language performance. AA children used the same types of conversational repair strategies that have been observed among young speakers of Standard English varieties. Use of conversational repairs should be included among the pragmatic behaviors expected for 3-year-old AA children.