Abstract:

Conversational repair is a commonly studied aspect of both normal and disordered human interaction. It has the potential to reveal a great deal about how speakers deal with problems in naturally occurring talk-in-interaction. However, the extent to which repair has been defined, classified, and then compared to such phenomena as repetitions, slips of the tongue, pauses, and fillers has not always been altogether consistent. This paper discusses the use of the term repair in a variety of disciplines and proposes a taxonomy of repair types. It is suggested that this will facilitate the quantification of repair in corpora of disordered conversation, allowing for comparisons of frequency counts across speakers, disorders, and time points.

Author: Ben Rutter