Conversational Repair Research Articles

A conversation analytic study of gestures that engender repair in ESL conversational tutoring

This paper reports on results of a conversation analytic study of gestures used to initiate repair in ESL conversational tutoring sessions. These gestures function in similar ways to verbal “open class” ( Drew, 1997) repair initiators such as “huh?” They are unaccompanied by verbal initiations, i.e., the nonverbal behavior alone is understood to be initiating repair. One gesture consists of a sharp head turn or head tilt to the side, with continued eyegaze on the recipient, sometimes accompanied by a widening of the eyes. The other is a head poke forward, accompanied with a movement of the upper body forward toward the recipient. The gestures are used by both the native speaker (NS) tutor and the non-native speaker (NNS) tutee, and they are most often understood by the recipients to involve problems in understanding the prior talk. At least one of the gestures can also be used in a pedagogically specific way to prompt self-correction. The gestures are initiated in the turn transition space after the trouble source, and they are held through the following turn(s) of talk until the problem is resolved. This paper adds to our understanding of both conversational repair and the use of gesture in native/non-native talk.

Frequency of Use Leads to Automaticity of Production: Evidence from Repair in Conversation

In spontaneous speech, speakers sometimes replace a word they have just produced or started producing by another word. The present study reports that in these replacement repairs, low-frequency replaced words are more likely to be interrupted prior to completion than high-frequency words, providing support to the hypothesis that the production of high-frequency words is more automatic than the production of low-frequency words (Bybee, 2002; Logan, 1982). Frequency appears to have an effect on interruptibility even when word duration is statistically controlled. In addition, the frequency of the replaced word is positively correlated with the frequency of the word it is replaced by, supporting the hypothesis that high-frequency words are easier to access in production (Kittredge, Dell, Verkuilen, & Schwartz, 2008): the more frequent the target, the more frequent an inappropriate word needs to be to overcome the target and be uttered, only to be replaced.

Establishing mutual understanding in interaction: An analysis of conversational repair in psychiatric consultations

The therapeutic relationship is the greatest predictor of treatment outcome, yet its relationship to communication is largely unevaluated. This study explored how psychiatrists and people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia establish mutual understanding in naturalistic communication, and associations with the therapeutic relationship, patient satisfaction and symptoms. In conversation analysis, the concept of repair focuses on how participants in interaction create mutual understanding and address misunderstanding. A standardized protocol measuring the frequency of repair was applied to 15 outpatient consultations. Correlations between repair and the therapeutic relationship, patients' experience of the consultation and symptoms were explored. Patients made most effort to make their contribution understandable, whereas psychiatrists made most effort to repair misunderstandings. The more positively psychiatrists rated the relationship, the more effort they made to understand patients. Although psychiatrists' efforts were not associated with patients' overall view of the relationship, patients felt better emotionally, despite, feeling less understood. Psychiatrists used fewer repairs when patients were more symptomatic. Both parties prioritized understanding similar topics but psychiatrists focused more on medication and patients on voices. Quantifying repair offers a new way of analyzing how mutual understanding is established in interaction, and links communication processes with treatment outcomes.

Cognitive distortions as social practices: an examination of cognitive distortions in sex offender treatment from a discursive psychology perspective

This article presents a critique of the concept of cognitive distortion as it has been developed within the domain of sex-offender treatment programme theory and practice. Drawing upon a discursive psychology perspective, it is argued that cognitive distortions should not be considered as mental entities but as social practices. This argument is illustrated by closely examining how offenders’ accounts of their offences during sex offender treatment sessions were organized. Recordings and transcriptions of treatment group sessions were analysed for the occurrence of regular patterns of talk and interaction. This analysis focused on how minimization was achieved through well documented rhetorical and conversational devices (conversational repair, narrative contrast devices). An orientation to cognitive distortions as a resource was also illustrated through examining its use by group members to admonish a focus offender and through a narrative reflexivity device. These findings suggest that the notion of cognitive distortion and its role in treatment settings should be reconsidered. Furthermore, it is suggested that a discursive psychology perspective can also make a highly relevant contribution to the evaluation of treatment group processes and that further research is needed in order to examine in detail the way that treatment groups are socially organized.

Mutual understanding mechanism in verbal exchanges between carers and multiply-disabled young people

The present article describes a study in which conversation analysis was used to investigate the verbal interactions between carers and profoundly multiply disabled young people. We examine the cognitive processes that come into play in conversations, and describe and analyze the interactional effects of pathologies on the cognitive processes involved in comprehension. We identify the rationality and reasoning processes to which the disabled person is susceptible, that is to say, that person’s cognitive efficiency, and the communication strategies employed by the “normal” interlocutor. The corpus, which was gathered at a specialist institute in France, consists of video recordings of interactions between a multiply disabled young person and one or more carers. In total, thirteen conversations involving six different young people were recorded. Analysis of the characteristics of the conversational exchanges revealed that conversational exchanges are based on two very precise modes of interaction that foster the mutual understanding process. Learning outcomes: These two modes of interaction represent exchange structures that favor the emergence of mutual understanding and that reveal the multiply disabled person’s cognitive efficiency in the conversation. We highlight the role of repetition as a conversation repair and we discuss the relationship between the carer and the disabled person.

The development of other-related conversational skills: A case study of conversational repair during the early years

The analysis of conversational repair provides one route into understanding how young children learn the skills required for participating in talk. One key aspect of repair is the ability to respond appropriately to other participants. Employing a longitudinal case study approach, this article examines in detail the conversational repair skills of one child during the period where she is acquiring core conversational abilities and competencies (from 1;0 to 3;10). Focusing on the development of other-related conversational repair skills, 163 instances of other-related repair were examined and analysed. Extracts highlight the skills the child employed in self-repairs in response to others, as well as when repairing or correcting other people's conversation. The findings indicate that during the early years other-initiated self-repair is a more common occurrence than repairing others' talk. The findings provide insights into the significance of conversational repair for language development during the preschool years.

Visual repairables: analysing the work of repair in human–computer interaction

This article reports some (video-recorded) instances of `visual culture' in action, namely the use of a new software tool designed for the visualization of scenes from Shakespeare's Macbeth in a classroom context. By considering whether or how far conversation analysis (CA) can be extended from natural conversation to cases of collaborative work in front of a computer, the article addresses the methodological question of how to study instances of visual communication. We take as an exemplar the phenomenon of remedial action and discuss how Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks's (1977) canonical study of repair in ordinary conversation can be used to highlight aspects of `visual repair' (the identification and remedying of items on the screen). Our attempts to apply the original CA model of repair of ordinary conversation highlight the differences of this setting, which constitutes an example of collaborative work.

Staying on the same wavelength: Talking about talking in paediatric speech and language therapy sessions

Participants in speech and language therapy sessions engage in talk about talking to accomplish different social actions: identifying and explaining linguistic concepts; correcting language use; and repairing misunderstanding. Different traditions in interaction research have examined the practices of topic management, correction, and repair in instructional and mundane conversation, but the need to disentangle the common thread of ‘language’ that runs through these practices in speech and language therapy interaction has not been recognized. This paper examines three short extracts from transcripts of clinical interaction involving school‐aged children with language disorders in order to see how they manage communication about metalinguistic topics, in face of the significant difficulties that can arise in the interaction. The analysis builds on the method, techniques, and discoveries made by research in conversation analysis, and, using Clark's theory of language use, proposes an explanatory model of how therapists and children manage their talk about talking.

Social Communication: A Framework for Assessment and Intervention

Social Communication: A Framework for Assessment and Intervention

The Use of Conversational Repairs by African American Preschoolers

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.

Executive dysfunction as an explanatory basis for conversation symptoms of aphasia: A pilot study

Background: Lack of communicative success for people with aphasia is no longer seen as purely a linguistic deficit. Instead, the integrity of the executive functions (EF) is thought to be at least partly responsible for successful communication, particularly during conversation. In order to inform clinicians regarding both conversation and EF, a merging of two paradigms—conversational and neuropsychological approaches—is proposed. This paper was presented at the Clinical Aphasiology Conference, Ghent, Belgium, May 2006. Aims: First, we explore the relevance of both neuropsychological and conversational approaches to the assessment of aphasia. Second, we present the executive battery that was designed and administered to a single participant (MS) to assess various aspects of EF. The results of a Conversation Analysis (CA) undertaken on an excerpt of MS's conversation are given. Results of the EF analysis are presented with the CA in order to highlight proposed relationships that may impact on conversational strengths and difficulties. Methods and Procedures: The executive battery was designed to assess the following constructs: attention, verbal and nonverbal working memory, memory, planning, generation, and concept formation. The participant was video‐recorded in conversation with a familiar interlocutor. Transcriptions were derived and subjected to Conversation Analysis. A discussion of conversational features is presented in conjunction with results from the executive battery. Outcomes and Results: Several areas including simple sustained attention, interference control, memory, and planning appeared to be preserved. This profile occurred together with the ability to maintain concentration and track meaning during interactions with one interlocutor. Memory for previously stated information was preserved as well as the ability to think and plan ahead. These strengths also co‐occurred with intact turn taking and topic management. However MS's performance also indicated difficulty with shifting attention, verbal and nonverbal working memory, generation, and concept formation. The latter two especially appeared to be mediated by the effects of perseveration, which resulted from a reduced ability to shift focus. In terms of conversation, MS reported difficulty in multi‐party settings. In addition, conversational repair was affected by poor generation and selection of strategies as well as an inability to shift away from current ineffectual forms of expression to more effective, flexible, and potentially successful forms of communication. Conclusions: The notion of merging two distinct and historically separate paradigms presents unique and valuable opportunities for creative and effective treatment of individuals with aphasia who have reached plateaus or who, as in this case, present with relatively intact linguistic skills on formal testing but experience daily frustration during conversation.

The Effect of Disruptions During Counseling on Recall of Genetic Risk Information: The Case of Cystic Fibrosis

Genetic counseling is a communication process with two main functions: information provision and supportive counseling. The information transmission function may be compromised by disruptions that occur during counseling. At least two mediators are possible: (a) disruptions may interfere with memory by creating distractions and divided attention during encoding or (b) disruptions may degrade the flow of interaction which requires that participants engage in conversation repair rather than the task at hand. This study examined both alternatives in a group of parents (N=20 families, 40 individual parents) whose infant had received a newborn screening for cystic fibrosis (CF). Upon arrival at the hospital, each parent completed a questionnaire designed to assess his or her knowledge of CF. Their interaction with the genetic counselor was videotaped and coded for the presence of disruptions. Six weeks after the counseling, parents again completed the knowledge measure. The data showed a direct negative effect for disruptions during counseling on memory for CF-related risk information six weeks later. Disruptions also produced the anticipated effect on conversation, but counter to expectations, interruptions of conversation flow was positively associated with knowledge at time 2.

Targeted engineering of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome following Mos1-triggered chromosomal breaks

The Drosophila element Mos1 is a class II transposon, which moves by a 'cut-and-paste' mechanism and can be experimentally mobilized in the Caenorhabditis elegans germ line. Here, we triggered the excision of identified Mos1 insertions to create chromosomal breaks at given sites and further manipulate the broken loci. Double-strand break (DSB) repair could be achieved by gene conversion using a transgene containing sequences homologous to the broken chromosomal region as a repair template. Consequently, mutations engineered in the transgene could be copied to a specific locus at high frequency. This pathway was further characterized to develop an efficient tool--called MosTIC--to manipulate the C. elegans genome. Analysis of DSB repair during MosTIC experiments demonstrated that DSBs could also be sealed by end-joining in the germ line, independently from the evolutionarily conserved Ku80 and ligase IV factors. In conjunction with a publicly available Mos1 insertion library currently being generated, MosTIC will provide a general tool to customize the C. elegans genome.

Managing Trouble Responsibility and Relationships During Conversational Repair

Using conversation analysis, this article focuses on other-initiation of repair (e.g., What?, I'm sorry?) of trouble speaking, hearing, and understanding. This article shows that the act of managing relationships is an essential feature of other-initiation of repair, and that different practices of repair-initiation can constitute different relational events that have different behavioral outcomes. Specifically, this article: (1) argues that context-free structures of interaction bias practices of repair such that other-initiated repair is vulnerable to communicating a stance that responsibility for trouble belongs to the speaker of the talk that inspired the repair-initiation; (2) discusses the implications of trouble responsibility for interpersonal disalignment and the organization of subsequent interaction; and (3) focuses on open-class (Drew, 1997) practices of repair initiation and argues that the apology-based format (I'm sorry? or Sorry?) communicates a stance that trouble responsibility belongs to repair-initiators, rather than to their addressees.

Conversation repair and adult cochlear implantation: a qualitative case study

Conversation breakdown and repair has been suggested to be a common site of the disability arising from acquired hearing impairment in adults. This qualitative case study reports on certain consequences of the use of general versus specific conversation repair initiators for the resolution of repair sequences. The 47 repair sequences analysed in this paper arose in a single 20-minute free and unstructured conversation between an adult bilateral cochlear implantee and his wife, audio-recorded in a clinic setting. The repairs analysed in this paper were undertaken in response to either general (n = 18) or specific (n = 29) repair requests. No difference was found in the number of turns taken to resolve repairs in response to general or specific repair requests. Qualitative analysis demonstrated that uttering the repair initiator in the immediate vicinity of the miscommunicated portion of talk provided the primary cue to the conversation partner about the location and the content of what had been misunderstood. These preliminary findings imply a change to rehabilitation counselling offered to familiar communication partners. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Differential Usage of Alternative Pathways of Double-Strand Break Repair in Drosophila

Double-strand DNA breaks can be repaired by any of several alternative mechanisms that differ greatly in the nature of the final repaired products. We used a reporter construct, designated "Repair reporter 3" (Rr3), to measure the relative usage of these pathways in Drosophila germ cells. The method works by creating a double-strand break at a specific location such that expression of the red fluorescent protein, DsRed, in the next generation can be used to infer the frequency at which each pathway was used. A key feature of this approach is that most data come from phenotypic scoring, thus allowing large sample sizes and considerable precision in measurements. Specifically, we measured the proportion of breaks repaired by (1) conversion repair, (2) nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ), or (3) single-strand annealing (SSA). For conversion repair, the frequency of mitotic crossing over in the germ line indicates the relative prevalence of repair by double Holliday junction (DHJ) formation vs. the synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA) pathway. We used this method to show that breaks occurring early in germ-line development were much more frequently repaired via single-strand annealing and much less likely to be repaired by end joining compared with identical breaks occurring later in development. Conversion repair was relatively rare when breaks were made either very early or very late in development, but was much more frequent in between. Significantly, the changes in relative usage occurred in a compensatory fashion, such that an increase in one pathway was accompanied by decreases in others. This negative correlation is interpreted to mean that the pathways for double-strand break repair compete with each other to handle a given breakage event.

Conversation repair and adult cochlear implantation: a qualitative case study

Conversation breakdown and repair has been suggested to be a common site of the disability arising from acquired hearing impairment in adults. This qualitative case study reports on certain consequences of the use of general versus specific conversation repair initiators for the resolution of repair sequences. The 47 repair sequences analysed in this paper arose in a single 20-minute free and unstructured conversation between an adult bilateral cochlear implantee and his wife, audio-recorded in a clinic setting. The repairs analysed in this paper were undertaken in response to either general (n = 18) or specific (n = 29) repair requests. No difference was found in the number of turns taken to resolve repairs in response to general or specific repair requests. Qualitative analysis demonstrated that uttering the repair initiator in the immediate vicinity of the miscommunicated portion of talk provided the primary cue to the conversation partner about the location and the content of what had been misunderstood. These preliminary findings imply a change to rehabilitation counselling offered to familiar communication partners.

Tests of a Theory of Communicative Responsibility

Two studies are presented that provide the first empirical tests of a theory of communicative responsibility. The theory posits that individuals in communicative situations make systematic judgments of the extent to which each party is responsible for contributing to the process of creating understanding in a communicative event. These judgments affect the extent to which communicators engage in implicature and inference-making during the communicative event. The first study demonstrates that judgments of communicative responsibility affect communicative performance. Respondents’ judgments of their personal communicative responsibility in a direction-giving task were positively associated with the length of their directions. The second study showed that a communicator’s failure to behave in a communicatively responsible manner was associated with negative perceptions of the communicative behavior. Communicative responsibility theory would be useful in a number of areas of communication research, including natural language processing, relational communication, misunderstandings and conversational repair, communication competence, and deception.

Théorie de l’esprit et compétences pragmatiques chez des enfants présentant des troubles du langage: le cas du malentendu

Misunderstanding due to lexical ambiguity arising in a dialogue has been chosen as a favorable case of an auditor’s false belief about the communicative intention of the speaker. 18 children aged 6 to 9 presenting various language disorders and 28 children of similar ages frequenting ordinary school classes have been individually faced with a conversation about objects between two speakers (represented by two Playmobil®) who used the French noun glace in two different meanings («mirror» and «ice cream»); children were then asked to explain the utterances occurred (detection question) and to predict the next exchange (repair question). Results show that detection in terms of the speaker’s false belief as well as appropriate conversational repair of misunderstanding develops later in children with language disorders than in the control group, as predicted. However, 8-year old children perform similarly in both groups, especially for detection. Linguistic competences (on lexical, syntactic and pragmatic levels) differently involved in both tasks are invoked to explain the results. The role of the experimenter’s support due to the clinical method, and the ecological validity of the situation for a relevant approach of pragmatic aspects in the field of speech pathology are further issues of the research.

Conversation and Brain Damage (review)

Reviewed by: Conversation and brain damage ed. by Charles Goodwin Liang Chen Conversation and brain damage. Ed. by Charles Goodwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. x, 314. ISBN 0195129539. $65 (Hb). This volume deals with how people with brain damage communicate. The eleven chapters are arranged into four parts. Part 1: ‘General perspectives’. Charles Goodwin (3–20) presents an introduction of conversation analysis (CA) and of the rest of the book. Emanuel A. Schegloff (21–55) shows the discourse/pragmatic competence of split-brain patients through a detailed [End Page 526] analysis of video episodes of interaction between such patients and the therapist. CA research on conduct in interaction is claimed to produce promising results ‘at one of the more exciting growth points of human self-knowledge’ (47), if researchers treat people with communicative disorders as contributing participants of talk-in-interaction and integrate the study of ‘disordered talk’ with that of ‘ordinary talk by ordinary folks in ordinary (for them) settings’ (45). Part 2: ‘Making meaning together’. Ray Wilkinson, Suzanne Beeke, and Jane Maxim (59–89) examine how speakers with fluent aphasia construct turns at talk using linguistic resources (e.g. lexical items, word order, fronting of noun phrases) that they might have used premorbidly. Charles Goodwin (90–116) focuses on a severely aphasic patient’s extensive use of gesture in a single extended sequence. He shows how gesture can be used to ‘build socially meaningful action’ and questions the validity of ‘assessments of competence based purely on the ability to produce language’ (110). Anu Klippi (117–43) examines meaning construction in aphasic group interactions involving collaborative efforts of both the aphasic patients and the therapists. Participants are found to resort to different linguistic resources, gestures, and situational contexts to achieve mutual understanding. Part 3: ‘Repair’. Lisa Perkins (147–62) shows that in aphasic conversation quick repair is preferred and repair work is a socially sensitive event. The analysis of aphasic discourse ‘highlights the fundamentally collaborative nature of conversation’ and ‘provides the aphasia therapists with a tool to identify precisely how interlocutors are negotiating aphasia’ (160). Through an examination of collaborative construction of repair in conversations involving two Finnish speakers with Wernicke’s aphasia, Minna Laakso (163–88) finds that presence or lack of active coparticipation and shared knowledge directly affect the speed and success rate of repair. Jan Anward (189–210) presents a detailed comparison of two retellings of the same story by a Swedish woman with Wernicke’s aphasia. The second one is more successful than the first because the story becomes ‘tellable and meaningful in the current situation’ (208). Through an analysis of single and alternative guess sequences in aphasic conversation, Mary L. Oelschlaeger and Jack S. Damico (210–27) find that aphasic speakers and their conversational partners work together to resolve word searches. The collaborative coparticipation provides evidence for the social organization of aphasic conversations and for regarding communicative competence as interactional competence. It also reveals the need for a ‘more sociolinguistic perspective in aphasia treatment’ (223). Part 4: ‘Interaction and assessment’. Claus Heeschen and Emanuel A. Schegloff (231–82) call for a paradigm shift from a medical (cognitive-experimental) approach to a sociolinguistic (conversational-analytic) approach to aphasia. They argue that testing with aphasics and other neurologically affected subjects should involve ‘naturally occurring conduct—including (perhaps preeminently) conduct in interaction’ (269) and should consider what they can do as well as what they can not do. Gail Ramsberger and Lise Menn (283–303) also argue for a social perspective to the assessment of communicative success in aphasia. They show that CA techniques may provide ‘an objective, ecologically valid measure of therapeutic outcome’ (301). In sum, I agree with the editor that the papers in this volume might help to change ‘how people with aphasia are perceived and treated in society’, and thus go beyond their ‘theoretical contributions and therapeutic relevance’ (18). Liang Chen University of Louisiana, Lafayette Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America