Self-repair strategies of English-German bilinguals in informal conversations: The role of language, gender, and linguistic proficiency

This thesis investigates self-repair strategies as one aspect of the conversational style of bilinguals on the basis of English and German conversational data. The investigation combines a quantitative analysis with a qualitative analysis situated within the framework of interactional sociolinguistics with its basic assumption that interlocutors rely on socially and culturally informed strategies, shared knowledge, contextualization cues, conversational involvement, and conversational inference to convey and interpret meaning in conversations and other social interactions (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 98). The sociolinguistic analysis of English and German conversations by the same bilingual speakers allows the researcher to distinguish between universal conversational strategies, individual conversational strategies, and those conversational strategies that are linked to the particular language of English or German. The main focus of this study is the description of self-repair strategies and variations in these strategies related to the language in use, to the speaker, and to the gender of the speaker and of the addressee.; The analysis of the data reveals that conversational style with respect to self-repair strategies changes depending on the language spoken and on the gender of the speaker and the gender of the interlocutor. Some individual strategies observed in self-repairs are not affected by these factors, but others are. Moreover, the investigation shows that the level of proficiency in the language spoken is an additional important variable in the production of self-repair strategies.; The study concludes with suggestions for the teaching of self-repair strategies in the second language classroom and for the development of teaching materials which may assist in successfully integrating fillers into the teaching of German or English as a second language and which thereby provide language learners with a useful tool for more fluent, proficient and pragmatically correct L2 communication. Finally, recommendations are made for future research on self-repair strategies and on the conversational style of bilingual speakers.