A Research On Conversational Repair In English TV Talk Shows

In the1970s, scholars of pragmatics and discourse analysis obtained preliminaryachievements in the research of conversational structure. The study on conversationalrepair is just one component of conversation analysis (CA). Repair refers to thetechniques of excluding various obstacles in the process of communication so as tokeep the conversation going on smoothly (Schegloff et al.,1977).In1977, Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks jointly published the article ThePreference for Self-correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation, inwhich they put forward the mode and method of conversational repair. During thenext thirty years, the study on conversational repair has gained widespread attentionand significant development, and it gradually becomes the research topic of manydisciplines such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition,etc. Schegloff et al.(1977) propose that a repair process consists of three segments,namely, the trouble source, the initiation of repair and the completion of repair.Furthermore, repair can be classified into four types based on which side ofparticipants initiate or execute the repair, that is, self-initiated self-repair,other-initiated self-repair, self-initiated other-repair and other-initiated other-repair.Besides, by analyzing large amount of data, Schegloff et al.(1977) conclude that thereexists a preference for self-initiated self-repair in people’s conversation. Based on thetheories of Schegloff et al., a great many foreign scholars such as Kasper (1985),Goodwin (1992), etc. have devoted themselves to the exploration into the formationand function of repair system. In China, the research on repair did not receive dueattention until the end of20thcentury, and it is still in its infancy. RepresentativeChinese scholars in this field include Li Yue’e (1996), Ma Wen (2002) and so on. Areview of literature both at home and abroad reveals that previous studies onconversational repair are mostly confined to pure linguistic forms, with little referenceto repair phenomena occurring in specific contexts such as interview programs,language-teaching classrooms, etc. The researches are conducted from relativelysingle perspective, and are not systematic or comprehensive enough. The television (TV) talk show is one form of TV interview programs, in whichconversation is an essential means for the participants to express feelings, presentideas and communicate with each other. Traditional researches on interviewdiscourses are commonly conducted form the perspective of rhetoric or media studies,emphasizing the analysis of structural turns. Whereas, researches on how speakers orlisteners initiate repair for misuse or misunderstanding of certain linguistic forms inthe interviewing process are far from enough, or even ignored. Wei Xingshun and GaoYali (2010) point out that interview discourse is a special form of discourse—not onlydose it take the features of daily conversation in terms of rules for turns and narrativestructure, but also it is restricted by the special context of interviews, making theutterances characterized by improvisation and unpredictability. Accordingly, in thediscourse of interview programs, repair phenomena frequently occur. Furtherinvestigations are required to probe into the features and functions of repairmechanism operating in interview programs.“The Oprah Winfrey Show” enjoys the highest audience rating among talk showprograms in American history. This thesis attempts to interpret the conversationbetween the host and different guests in this program. Taking CA as the researchmethod, the author conducts recording, transcription and processing on the basic datato obtain substantial statistics for the research.The results reveal that all the conventional four types of repair can be detected inthe data. Although the distribution of each type of repair in the present data is notexactly the same as that in Schegloff et al.’s research, their overall tendency isconsistent, that is, there does exist a preference for self-initiated self-repair. In termsof positions of repair initiation, self-initiated self-repairs possibly appear in threepositions:(1) the trouble-source turn;(2) the transition space between thetrouble-source turn and the next turn;(3) the second turn in relation to thetrouble-source turn. Self-initiated other-repairs occur only in one position, namely, thetransition space between the trouble-source turn and the next turn. Other-initiationsinvariably take place in the second turn. As to the initiating techniques for repair, there are non-lexical perturbations, lexical perturbations and inseparable initiators.Different types of repair adopt relatively fixed techniques, and display distinctfeatures.Based on sufficient statistics, the present thesis specifically explores such aspectsas types of repair, positions of repair initiation and initiating techniques in theprogram “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, aiming to reveal the structural features andoperating mechanism of conversational repair in English TV talk shows, and providesome beneficial enlightenment for interview programs as well as other fields such assecond language teaching.