A Study of Repair Organization in Persian Television Interviews

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

University of Tehran

Abstract

       Repair is a common phenomenon in everyday speech of all languages including Persian. Repair is an utterance uttered by the speaker himself or the listener to substitute a previously uttered speech in conversation. Repair organization is studied within conversation analysis which examines everyday talk in the form of audio and visual data. The present study aims at studying different types of repairs, their positions within the sequence of turns, the frequency of the occurrence of different types of repairs, and the accompanying lexical and non-lexical initiator techniques in 426 minutes of recorded Persian live television interviews. The findings of the study reveals that in general, the turns and the positions in which different types of repairs occur in Persian television interviews are the same as those described by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977) for American English everyday conversations. Moreover, in line with their observation for American English, it is realized that self- repair predominates over other-repair in the data and non-lexical initiators are more frequently used than lexical ones. Finally, with regard to the interactional function of repairs in conversation, the analysis of the data indicates that there are some factors outside the language that can affect the type and position of repairs in Persian television interviews. Some such factors include commitment to using Persian vocabulary, giving more information to viewers about the topic of the interview, and to shorten the conversation either because of the shortage of time or because of taking viewers' beliefs and susceptibilities into consideration.    

Keywords

References

کتابنامه
محرابی، ابوالقاسم (1388) ساختارنحوی خوداصلاحی در محاوره زبان فارسی. رساله دکتری، دانشگاه علامه طباطبائی: دانشکده ادبیات و زبان های خارجی.
Besinder, N. (1989) “Information withholding as a manipulative and collusive strategy in Nukulaelae gossip” Language in Society, 18: 315-341.
Drew, P. (1981) “Adults« corrections of children«s mistakes”, In J.M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (eds.), Adult-childConversation, 152-164.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, P. (1997). “Open class repair initiators in response to sequential source of troubles in conversation” Journal of pragmatics, 28: 133-148.
Egbert, M. (2004) “Other-initiated repair and membership categorization – some conversational events that trigger linguistic and regional membership categorization” Journal of Pragmatics. 36: 1467-1498.
Fromkin, V. A. (1968) “Speculations on performance models”, Journal of Linguistics, 4:47-68.
Fromkin, V. A. (1973)“The non-anomalous nature of the anomalous utterances”in Fromkin,V.A.(ed.) Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence. The Hague: Mouton.
Fromkin, V. A. (1980) Errors in Linguistic Performance: Slips of the Tongue,Ear, Pen, and  Hand. New York: Academic Press.
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Goodwin, C. (1987) “Forgetfulness as an interactive resource” Social Psychology Quarterly, 50: 2, 115-130.
Green, E. (1969) “Phonological and Grammatical aspects of jargon in an aphasic patient: a case study”, Language  and Speech, 12: 80-103.
Hockett, C. F. (1967) “Where the tongue slips, there slip I”, in: To Honor Roman Jakobson, 910-936. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
Jasperson, R. (1998) Repair after Cut-off.  Unpublished  PhD  Dissertation. University of Colorado. Boulder.
Jefferson, G. (1974) “Error Correction as an Interactional Resource” Language inSociety, 3: 2, 181- 199.
Jefferson, G. (2004) “Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction”. In: G. H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: studies from the first generation. 13-23.  Philadelphia, John Benjamins.
McHoul, A. W. (1990) “the organization of repair in classroom talk” Language in Society, 19: 3, 349-377.
Moerman, M. (1977) “The preference for self-correction in a Tai conversational corpus” Language. 53: 4, 872-882.
Sacks, H. Schegloff, E. A. Jefferson, G. (1974) “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation” Language, 50: 4, 696-735.
Schegloff, E. A. (1987) “Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversation's turn-taking organization”In Button, G. and Lee, J. R. E. (eds.) Talk and Social Organization.70-85, Clevedon:Multilingual Matters.
Schegloff, E. A. (1992) “Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of   intersubjectivity in conversation” American  Journal  of Sociology,97: 5, 1295-1345.
Schegloff, E. A. (1997) “Third turn repair” In Guy, G. R. Feagin, C. Schiffrin, D. and Baugh, J. (Eds.) Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in honor of William Labov,  Social Interactionand Discourse Structures. 31-40, Amsterdam : John Benjamins  Publishing  Company.
Schegloff, E. A. (2000) “Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation”   Language in society, 29: 1,1-63.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007) Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in conversationAnalysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff. E.A. and Sacks. H. (1973) “Opening up closings” Semiotica, 8: 4, 289- 327.
Schegloff, E. A. Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977) “The preference for self-repair in the organization of repair in conversation” Language 53: 2,  361-382.
Schiffrin, D. (2006) In Other Words: variation in reference and narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Wei, Z. (1998) Repair in Chinese Conversation. Unpublished Ph. D Dissertation. University of  Hong Kong.
Journal of Researches in Linguistics
Volume 3, Issue 4 - Serial Number 4
August 2011
Pages 101-114

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics