Repair Structures in Web-based Conversation

Proceedings of PACLIC 19, the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Language, Information and Computation Repair Structures in Web-based Conversation Ruowei Yang School of Education and Languages The Open University of Hong Kong 30 Good Shepherd Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong rwyang@ouhk.edu.hk Abstract The paper attempts to demonstrate how Conversation Analysis (CA) can help us pragmatically to explore the repair organization of human talk-in-interaction via the Web, and reports on a case study of conversational repair structures for Chinese academic discussion through Web. The data collection was based on naturally occurring written interaction on Web-based discussion boards from teacher education courses. Over 4,000 postings containing nearly half million Chinese characters were captured and analysed to assist in understanding how conversational repair sequences possibly structured, in the Web-based discussion setting. Findings suggested that while description of repair structure introduced by Schegloff et al. (1977) is still a fundamental framework applicable to the repair in Web-based conversation, some different features of repair structure from which has been described for ordinary conversation exist. Detailed examination showed that successful repair in Web-based conversation can take the same four possible structures as in ordinary conversation, and efforts at repair sometimes can fail in possible structure of issuing from either self-initiation or other-initiation. Six special features on repair organization in Web-based conversation have been identified. The research provided fresh data differently from CA traditional source of data for analysis of how repair is sequentially organized in conversation taking place in Web. 1. Introduction The language used in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is similar in nature to both spoken and written language (e.g. DuBartell, 1995; Yates, 1996, Crystal, 2001). Some writers have even called such language use ‘written speech’ (Elmer-Dewitt, 1994) or ‘writing talking’ (Davis and Brewer, 1997). Because conversation through Webs as one kind of CMC has created huge amounts of text in modern society, and has attracted great attention and interest, Web-based conversation may be viewed from the perspective of Conversation Analysis (CA), which involves the systematic analysis of the kinds of talk produced in everyday naturally-occurring situations of social interaction. Thus this study is motivated to try to employ CA theories and methodology when dealing with the data from the Web, and explore repair operation in its structure in Web-based conversation. 2. Repair — Schegloff et al.’s (1977) framework The term ‘repair’ is first introduced by Schegloff et al. in an article in 1977, which is regarded as classics in the field of CA. In the article (p. 361), they address issues related to recurring problems in speaking, hearing and understanding, and examine how speakers correct mistakes or errors occurring in conversation. In order for the analysis to have more general applicability, they introduced the term ‘repair’, which covers a wide range of ‘repairable’, not only the correction of mistakes and errors, but also imagined mistakes, misunderstanding, mishearing or non-hearing, self-editing to make the expression more exact and precise. The ‘self-righting mechanism’ (Schegloff et al. 1977, p.381) of repair allows talk-in-interaction to keep itself going in the …

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