A Study Of Conversational Repair In Intimate Talk With Li Jing

Being one of the most important components of Conversational Analysis,conversational repair was proposed by Schegloff,Jefferson and Sacks(1977)and has aroused great interests of scholars both at home and abroad since its introduction.It usually occurs when there is something wrong impeding the smooth going of the current communication.And it is an effective way of eliminating various troubles in the process of communication to keep the conversation going on smoothly.Though fruitful results have been achieved in the researches of conversational repair,further studies are still needed to probe into the conversational repair phenomenon especially in various contexts.On the basis of previous studies on conversational repair,this thesis made an empirical investigation into the conversational repair types,conversational repair strategies and communicative effects achieved by conducting conversational repair in a representative Chinese entertainment TV talk show Intimate Talk with Li Jing by adopting a conversational analysis approach.This study is carried out under the guidance of Schegloff et al.'s theoretical framework of conversational repair,combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods.And through a systematic and detailed analysis of the data,three major findings are obtained.Firstly,it is found that there are altogether 382 conversational repair cases,including 250 self-repair cases and 132 other-repair cases in the randomly selected 20 episodes of Intimate Talk with Li Jing.The four major types of conversational repair existing in Intimate Talk with Li Jing are self-initiated self-repair,other-initiated self-repair,self-initiated other-repair and other-initiated other-repair,among which self-initiated self-repair ranks the first by accounting for the largest percentage of the total.It is also concluded that there is a preference for self-repairs and self-initiation in this study.Though this result resembles Schegloff et al.'s findings in 1977,there are still some minor differences.Only a small number of other-repairs occur in Schegloff et al.'s study while other-repairs take up an important part in the present study.Secondly,in terms of conversational repair strategies,eight self-repair strategies and seven other-repair strategies are identified.As for self-repairs,the repetition and reformulation strategies are the two most frequently adopted strategies by speakers with the combined percentage of about 50% of the total.And the appositive strategy is the least frequently adopted self-repair strategy.With regard to other repairs,the completion strategy is the most favorite while the replacement strategy the least.It is also found that both similarities and differences exist in the adoption of repair strategies between self-repairs and other-repairs.Thirdly,communicative effects of conducting conversational repair are summarized from the aspects of information conveying,entertainment and interpersonal communication.It is found that conversational repair can contribute to the accuracy,appropriateness,fluency,completeness of information,and it can help avoid misunderstanding and expand syntactic possibilities in the process of conveying information.Besides,sometimes conversational repair is conducted in order to arouse the humor effect and enhance interaction in communication.Finally,conversational repair plays an important role in saving the speakers' face and it is an essential way of facilitating the efficient communication between speakers in the TV talk show.The research results of the present study may deepen the depth and broaden the scope of the study on conversational repair.It is hoped that this study can shed some lights on further studies of conversational repair in different contexts from various perspectives.