Verbal Interaction Structures and Repetition's Functions: A Comparison of Exchanges Between Adults and Severely Disabled Adolescents or Young Children

Abstract

This article describes a study in which conversation analysis was used to examine verbal interactions between caregivers and severely disabled adolescents or young children. It focused on the phenomenon of repetition, which seems to be the basis of the mutual-understanding process. We compared dialogue structures containing repetitions in the two corpora. To analyze the pragmatic functions of repetitions, we used the categorization scheme developed previously. The results showed that the structure of the transactions was directly linked to the repetition's function, which was the organizing principle of the transactions in most cases. However, in the disabled adolescent's corpus the function of multiple repetitions within the same transaction could not be interpreted using the traditional categorization scheme. We interpreted this new function as a more basic function that facilitates the emergence of mutual understanding during conversations between caregivers and severely disabled young people.