Literature Review范例

Literature Review

In this thesis, I will study the characteristics of the conversational mechanism of repair in Chinese conversational discourse. To that end, it is necessary to conduct a review of the relevant literature on conversational repair. I shall start with an elaboration of the notion of “repair”, going on to researches into the organization of conversational repair and conclude with the interdisciplinary and multi-linguistic application of “repair” research.

1. From Correction to Repair

As a relatively new field in conversation analysis (CA), the proper study of the conversational phenomenon of repair didn’t start until the publication of Schegloff et al’s seminal paper in 1977. Before that, there were only some sporadic discussions of the phenomenon under such generic headings as tongue slips (Laver 1973, see Schegloff 1977) and error correction (Jefferson 1975, see Schegloff 1977). As a still often-used term, “correction”, “commonly understood to refer to the replacement of an ‘error’ or ‘mistake’ by what is ‘correct’” (Schegloff 1977: 363), not only limits research to a minority of the natural occurrences of repair but also misleads researchers about the nature of the trouble-sources.

The shift of focus was led by Schegloff et al (1977), whose study was an empirically based effort to examine the organization of repair as a set of ordered, but not equal possibilities. The phenomenon of correction was therefore proven

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part of a much wider picture, i.e. repair and the scope of discussion was greatly expanded from the mere correcting of some “hearable [usually linguistic] errors” (1977: 363) to all possible “practices for dealing with problems or troubles in speaking, hearing, and understanding the talk in conversation” (2000: 207), a definition given by Schegloff himself some 20 years later. In deed, potential trouble-sources in conversation include not only correction of information, but also and more importantly replacement of inappropriate items or ambiguous anaphors, word search and clarification of the pragmatic function/understanding of a previous turn. These and many other occurrences may only be subsumed under the more general scope of repair. Incidentally, correction may not always be categorized under repair either, as is exemplified by the disagreement over the so-called “embedded correction” (Jefferson 1987) – basically a covert form of other-correction – which Schegloff (2000) ruled out as not constituting a kind of repair. Equally important as the expansion in the scope of research was the change in the view of the trouble-sources that directly occasion the repair. According to Schegloff et al (1977), trouble-sources are not self-evident but determined interactively by participants. In other words, all the segments in an utterance is, in theory, potential trouble-sources and often the existence of a trouble-source can only be evidenced by the actual mobilization of the practice of repair on the part of either the hearer or the speaker (and sometimes both). It is worth noting that just as the status of a trouble-source is an uncertainty to be interactively determined, the actual need and proper protocol of its repair is not any more certain. This dynamic and interactive view of repair has proven rewarding in terms of revealing not only its own mechanism but also other cognitive, social and psychological aspects of conversational discourse, as may be interestingly

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explained by such everyday wisdom: you don’t know something’s at work until it goes wrong.

2. The organization of repair

Many studies have been carried out with regard to the various dimensions of conversational repair itself, e.g. its classification, sites, forms and causes.

Schegloff et al (1977) classified four interactional types of repair according to the subject(s) of initiation/repair, namely self/other-initiated self/other repair. This classification has been adopted by many researchers later, making it easier to tackle conversational data. Yet Geluykens (1994: 56) suggests, rightly I think, that this classification is in need of refinement as it is not always possible to draw a sharp boundary between self and other initiation. He found a sort of other-prompted self-initiation, which underlines the interactive aspect of conversational discourse.

Along with the interactional four-type classification, Schegloff et al (1977) proposed the unequal distribution of the four types. To be more exact, self-repair is preferred to other-repair and self-initiation to other-initiation. It follows that the most favored type is self-initiated self-repair. Their claim was put forward with no statistical evidence so later researchers have discussed their empirical findings with reference to either or both of the two preferences. Many studies, including some based on data in languages other than English, are in support of the observation that self-repair is preferred, e.g. Geluykens (1994) and Ma (2007). Yet

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some remain doubtful as to the preference of self-initiation over other-initiation, e.g. Gaskell (1980), Schwartz (1980) and Gass & Varonis (1985) (see Wang 2007).

A strong objection to the preference of self-correction was put forward by Norrick (1991, see Jiang & Li 2003), whose data was collected from conversation in parent-child, teacher-student and NS-NNS contexts. After examining the organization of corrective exchanges in these contexts, he contended that the party abler to perform the correction – not necessarily the speaker – does it. Further, he dismissed the alleged preference as a sub-case which is only possible between adult native speakers, whose ability of repair is approximately equal. In other words, the absence of such preference is the norm while the preference is a special case. Interestingly, Schegloff et al (1977) has also observed that other-correction “seems to be not as infrequent” and “appears to be one vehicle for socialization” in those contexts where someone not-yet-competent in a certain domain – be it language facility or background information – is involved (381). However, they further argued that this exception to the infrequency of other-correction is only a transitional stage and will be superseded by the preference of self-correction eventually. Joining in the heated discussion are Jiang & Li (2003), who also questioned the validity of Schegloff’s claim about the preference for self-repair. They offered as proof the work of Norrick (1991) and Zhao (1996). The latter, on the basis of data obtained in academic seminars, of which other-repair takes up a remarkable proportion, suggested that the option of self- or other-repair should take into account of the context, including the content of conversation and the respective social status of the participants (Jiang & Li 2003: 42). In their own survey, Jiang & Li (2003) calculated the frequencies of repair in

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two categories and found the preference of self-repair only existent in the category that included clearing up misunderstandings, word search or self-editing while in the correction of real errors, other-repair enjoys a bigger percentage of 60%. Therefore they blamed the mystery of the preference on the overly broad definition of repair put forward by Schegloff et al.

Besides the interactional four-type classification, repair has been classified by other ways. In terms of the kind of trouble-spot being repaired, Levelt (19, see Geluykens

1994:20)

distinguishes

between

E[rror]-repair

and

A[ppropriateness]-repair. Considering the temporal aspect of repair, there are immediate repairs and delayed repairs (Geluykens 1994: 22).

There has also been in-depth discussion on the sites, or what is called the sequential environment for repair initiation and reparans (the repairing segment). A usual way of referring to the position of repair initiation is by reference to the turn where the trouble-source occurs. Schegloff et al (1977) found self-initiation mainly in three positions, namely the same turn as the trouble-source, the same turn’s transition place and the third-turn to the trouble-source turn; other-initiation, on the other hand, was found mainly in the next turn (to the trouble-source turn). Levinson (1983, see Geluykens 1994) identified four similar opportunities, which are ordered with decreasing preference and most often used by either self- or other-initiation.

In particular, Schegloff (2000) elaborated the locus of other-initiation (OI) that occurs in positions other than the turn following the trouble-source turn. He

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suggested several interactional constraints that may be accountable for these somewhat deviant OIs, constraints related to the organization of repair, of turns or of turn-taking. In addition, he observed occasional delays in OIs which implies the speaker’s intention of “setting aside the understanding problem” (233) or assessing it later. This observation was of great relevance to the study of Wong, who examined a form of “delayed next turn repair initiation” in N-NN English conversation and proposed that it might be accounted by the differences between native and non-native participants in their ways of social interaction – more specifically, in the use of certain tokens and sequential organization in conversation.

From the comparison between Schegloff (2000) and Wong (2000), it seems that the instantaneity and complexity of conversation spell danger for hasty generalization and due attention should be paid to minute differentiation. A case in point may be found in Schegloff (1997)’s distinction between “third turn repair” and “third position repair”, both of which occupies as a rule the turn subsequent to the turn following the trouble-source turn, hence “third”. Yet a closer look with a focus on sequential relevance will clear up the confusion of the two. While “third position repair” is usually self-repair in response to other-initiation in the second turn, “third turn repair” is a kind of self-initiated self-repair separated from the trouble-source turn only by a not full-fledged turn of acknowledgement or irrelevant interpolation.

Another dimension of conversational repair, i.e. its forms, has also received considerable academic attention. Firstly, on the various forms of initiation,

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Schegloff (1979) distinguished between lexical and non-lexical initiation; Kuang (2001) specified five forms of repair initiation with decreasing extent of repetition of the trouble-source turn; Drew (1997) developed a sequential analysis of the use of ‘open’ initiators (such as “pardon?”, “sorry?” and “what?”), in which specific forms of initiation are correlated with specific types of trouble sources.

Secondly, the forms of the reparans (the repairing utterance) prove a complex issue, as researchers have found an undeniable relation between repair and syntax. For one thing, the four forms taken by same-turn reparans – recycling, replacing, inserting and restarting (Schegloff 1979) may change the syntactic structure of the trouble-source turn. As it is, repair “can [drastically] change the syntactic form by subsuming, under another ‘frame’ sentence, the whole sentence being said or starting to be said” (Schegloff 1979: 280). This interaction between repair and syntax is partly responsible for the confusion of repair with other constructions, e.g. dislocations. In this interesting aspect, Geluykens (1994) explored intensively the mechanism of right dislocation (RD), which often overlaps with anaphoric repair because of their similarity in syntactic characteristics, semantic relations and functions. Ma (2006) categorized RDs with repairing function in Chinese discourse (including a drama script) into the four interactional types of repair. It is not easy to judge whether a RD is functioning as a repair and it is of great help to take into account the prosodic features, as Geluykens wisely and meticulously did.

As a kind of repair which has received the widest attention, anaphoric repairs are mobilized by the following general causes, trouble-sources being their specific causes. These general causes may be: (1) the online nature of naturally occurring

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conversation (Biber et al, see Ma 2007); (2) the “discrepancy between the speaker’s assessment and the hearer’s actual state of knowledge” (Huang 1994: 213; also cf. Sacks & Schegloff ); (3) failure to satisfy concurrently two pragmatic principles, which are the Q[uantity]- and I[nformativeness]-principles according to Huang (1994) but which are the E[conomy]- and C[larity]-principles according to Geluykens (1994). It seems that the three causes are closely related rather conflicting. For one thing, a balanced satisfaction of two pragmatic principles requires above all the speaker’s correct assessment of the hearer’s actual state of knowledge. Moreover, these causes have general implications for the causes of other kinds of repair.

3. Towards a broader scope

Though the majority of empirical materials for the study of repair are drawn from English conversation, works have been done on talk-in-interaction in a broader range of languages and communities. These efforts have proven fruitful to some extent. A comparative study by Rieger (2003) found that the structural difference between English and German may have resulted in the different preferences of the form of repetition as self-repair strategies among English and German native speakers. Similarly, Fox et al (see Shen 2005: 39-40) proposed that the difference in the forms of repair in Japanese and English is partly caused by the difference in the syntax of the two languages. Ma (2007) examined repair strategies employed by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and found a similar skewed distribution of the four interactional types among both literate and illiterate groups. Other studies on repair in Mandarin Chinese include a brief

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discussion of anaphoric repair by Huang (2000) and an inspiring survey of the classification, positioning and forms of repair and repair initiation by Jiang (2001) and a detailed examination of the forms of repair aimed at problems of production or understanding by Luo (2004). Moerman (1977, see Geluykens 1994: 20)’s findings in a Thai conversational corpus also reinforced the claim of the preference for self-initiated self-repair.

Meanwhile, long-due attention has been paid to the organization of repair in non-native discourse communities. The interest in repair strategies of non-native English speakers in English conversation has been given a boost by the need to explore “the potential value of CA for the study of SLA through interaction” (Wong 244). Quantitative surveys were carried out by Wang (2007) and Chen & Pu (2007) among non-native English speakers in China. In both surveys, non-native speakers were found to favor the repair of errors in linguistic forms rather than improper expressions or inadequate information. The three researchers thus suggested that language teachers should place greater emphasis on communicative competence. Kasper’s investigation in the ESL classroom is also an effort in this direction (see Shen 40). Hence it seems a justified effort for language learning and teaching to take a much closer look at non-native talk – how it may go wrong and then be repaired.

As conversation is a most common practice of interpersonal interaction and social communication, the organization of repair in conversation has also sparked interest in interdisciplinary research.

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Schegloff rightly pointed out that “at the organization of repair – thought not exclusively here – linguistics and sociology meet.” (Schegloff 1977: 381). Faerch& Kasper (see Yao 2005) proposed that problematic utterance is a face-threatening act and accordingly, self-repair is a face-saving act. Similarly, Wong (2000) interpreted the non-native speaker’s ambiguous response (e.g. “oh”) to the native speaker as a “face-saving acknowledgment token” (263), which does not signal an adequate understanding of the preceding turn and which is often followed by other-initiation from the non-native speaker. Here, a sense of “nonnative-ness” seems to be at work. Surprisingly, even among native speakers themselves, the sense of “nonnative-ness” may also arise and membership categorizing may be under way. By analyzing German conversation, Egbert (2004) showed just exactly how “coparticipants engage in linguistic and regional membership categorizing in other-initiated repair sequences” (28). Both Wong and Egbert has shown the potential for CA methodology to be applied to research in intercultural and intra-cultural communications.

Researchers in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics have also been interested in the classification of self-repair and the perception of repair through sound signals and syntactic analysis (cf. Yao 2005 and Shen 2005).

References

Drew, P. (1997). ‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of troubles in conversation [J]. Journal of Pragmatics 28: 69-101.

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Egbert, M. (2004). Other-initiated repair and membership categorization – some conversational events that trigger linguistic and regional membership categorization [J]. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1467-1498.

Geluykens, R. (1994). The pragmatics of discourse anaphora in English: evidence from conversational repair [M]. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Huang, Yan. (1994). The syntax and pragmatics of anaphora: A study with special reference to Chinese [M]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jefferson, G. (1987). Exposed and embedded corrections [A]. In G. Button and J.R.E.Lee(eds.): Talk and Social Organization [C]. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Ltd. 86-100. Retrieved 25 June 2007, from the World Wide Web.

Rieger, C.L. (2003). Repetitions as self-repair strategies in English and German conversations [J]. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 47-69.

Sacks, H. and E. A. Schegloff, (1979). Two Preferences in the Organization of Reference to Persons in Conversation and Their Interaction [A]. In G. Psathas (eds.):

Everyday Language Studies in Ethnomethodology [C]. New York: Irvington

Publishers, 15-21.

Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax for conversation [A]. In

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D. Sudnow (eds.): Discourse and Syntax [C]. New York: Academic Press, 261-286.

Schegloff, E.A. (1997). Third Turn Repair [A]. In Guy, G.R., C. Feagin & J. Baugh (eds.): Towards a Social Science of Language 2 [C]. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 31-40.

Schegloff, E. A. (2000). When ‘Others’ Initiate Repair [J]. Applied Linguistics 21: 205-243.

Schegloff, E.A., G. Jefferson & H. Sacks, (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation [J]. Language 53: 361-382.

Wong, J. (2000). Delayed next turn repair initiation in native/non-native speaker English conversation [J]. Applied Linguistics 21: 244-67.

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