Repair of indexical references as an interactional resource

• In Event: Repairing Indexical Formulations: An Experiment in Big Team CA/LSI Research

Abstract

Repairs of indexicals are frequently designed to repair ambiguity that the indexical reference form may introduce: i.e., to disambiguate the referent. This paper focuses on self-initiated repairs of indexicals where the indexical reference is apparently not ambiguous. Prior research has demonstrated that the initiation of repair can accomplish a variety of tasks that go beyond addressing problems of hearing, speaking, or understanding (such as dealing with problems of alignment or affiliation). We have identified various tasks self-initiated repairs on indexicals may be used to accomplish beyond disambiguation, including the following:

1. Dealing with turn transition problems, sometimes preemptively. Repair initiated in the turn transition space may be used to recomplete the turn to pursue uptake from the recipient in contexts where uptake has been inadequate or absent, e.g.:

Are they ba:sed in North Brampton¿
(1.0)
Your midwives?

2. Supporting the action the speaker is accomplishing in the turn in which the indexical appears, by upgrading or augmenting it, e.g. by building a contrast between babies and adults in a counseling call with a worried mother:

C: But babie:s can co:pe with quite a lot of
uh low oxygen. At birth. [They]’re desi:gned=
R: [Yes.]
C: to cope with very little oxygen.=.hhh I mean
we ourse:lves would be dead at that point:.
R: Ye[ah,]
C: [As ] adults.

3. Displaying fittedness with the ongoing topic or action, while effecting a topic or action shift, e.g. after a string of shes in a complaint sequence about Mel, the speaker shifts the topic, while keeping Mel as protagonist, and effects this in part through repairing the indexical to the full-form reference:

But uhm hhh ↑Anyway did I tell you she’d been burgled.=Mel.

This report contributes to our understanding of some of the actions that indexical self-repair can be used to do, beyond simply repairing ambiguity.

Authors

• Jenny Mandelbaum, Rutgers University

• Sue Wilkinson, Loughborough Univ

• Galina Bolden, Rutgers University