A Comparison of the Application of Different Types of Repair in the Speech of Persian-Speaking Men & Women in Live TV Shows

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum ¹
• Maliheh Hajian Nezhad, ²

¹ Associate Professor, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

² M.A. in Linguistics, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

10.22067/jlkd.2022.75529.1089

Abstract

Speech repair, also called conversational repair, as one of the most important instruments for the maintenance of the conversation and preventing communication breach, can be an effective factor in daily conversations and relations. Here, gender, as a sociolinguistic factor, can cause differences in the frequency and manner of using this instrument by speakers. The present study compares Persian-Speaking men and women in using repair in their conversations, as well as the distribution of different types and strategies of repairs. Schegloff’s classification of repair types (1977) and Fox & Jasperson’s (1995) classification of repair strategies were used. The results indicate that, in general, women tend to use significantly more repairs than men do. Although both groups showed a similar pattern of ranking in the frequency of repair types and in both of them self-initiated self-repair had the highest frequency and self-initiated other-repair the lowest frequency, in the meantime, two types of repairs in women had frequencies twice those in men. Moreover, the analysis of the data by means of Fox & Jasperson’s sevenfold classification of repair strategies showed that in both men and women’s speech, “recycle word” was the most frequently used strategy and “aborting syntactic stream and starting new structure” was the least frequently used one while in both strategies, the percentage of use as higher in women’s speech compared to that of men.

Keywords

• Conversation
• Repair
• Schegloff’s Classification of Repair Types
• Fox & Jasperson’s Classification of Repair Strategies
• Gender

---

Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights. This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

References

1. مقدم­کیا، رضا و پانته­آحیدرپور (1390). بررسی ترمیم­های گفتار در زبان فارسی. مجله­ی پژوهش­های زبان­شناسی، سال3، شماره 1، 101-114.
2. امینی، ح. ع.، نعمتی، م. و شریفی، ش. (1393). انواع ترمیم­ها و جایگاه آنها در توالی نوبت­ها در گفتگوهای روزمره زبان فارسی، فصلنامه پژوهش زبان و ادبیات فارسی. 32، صص. 167-183.
3. Atkinson, J. M., & Drew, P. (1979). Order in Court: The Organization of Verbal Interaction in Judicial London: Macmillan.
4. Baron, D. (1986). Grammar and Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press.
5. Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Brown, P. (1993). Gender, Politeness, and Confrontation in Tenejapa. In Deborah Tannen (Eds.) Gender and Conversational Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
7. Cameron, D. (1985). Feminism and Linguistic Theory. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
8. Chambers, J.K. and Trudgill, Peter (1980) Dialectology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
9. Cho, E. H. & Larke, P. (2010). Repair Strategies Usage of Primary Elementary ESL Students: Implication for ESL Teachers. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 14 (3), 1-18.
10. Clark, H. H. (1996). Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11. Clark, H. H. & Schaefer E. F., (1987). Collaborating on contributions to conversations, Language and Cognitive Processes, Vol. 2, No. I, pp. 19-41.
12. Crystal, D. (1987). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
13. Drass, K. (1986). The effect of gender identity on conversation. Social Psychology Quarterly 49 (4), 294-301.
14. Drew, P. (1992). Contested Evidence in A Courtroom Cross-Examination: The Case of a Trial for Rape. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings (pp. 470-520). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15. Fishman, P. M. (1983). Interaction: The Work Women Do, Revised version in B. Thorne, C. Kramarae, & N. Henley, (Eds.), Language, Gender and Society, (pp. 89-101). Cambridge, England: Newbury House.
16. Fox, B. & Jasperson, R. (1995). A Syntactic Exploration of Repair in English Conversation. In: Philip W. Davis (Ed) Alternative Linguistics: Descriptive and Theoretical Modes. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamin’s.
17. Ismaliyah, N. (2015). Conversation Analysis of Turn Taking Mechanism in Piers Morgan Tonight Talk Show. Thesis in English Letters, State Islamic University of Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta.
18. James, D and Drakich, J. (1993). Understanding gender differences in amount of talk. In D. Tannen (ed.) (1993) Gender and Conversational Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 281-312.
19. Jefferson, G. (1974). Error Correction as an Interactional Resource. Language in Society, 3 (2), 181-199.
20. McHoul, A. (1990). The Organization of Repair in Classroom Talk. Language in Society, 19, 349 – 377.
21. Meredith, J. & Stokoe, E. (2014). Repair: Comparing Facebook Chat with Spoken Interaction. Discourse & Communication, 8 (2), 180-207.
22. Mokeira, S. T. (2015). Effects of Conversation Repair Strategies on Counselling Discourse in Secondary Schools in Kakamega Central Sub-Country, Keniya. Thesis, Department of Linguistics, Maseno University.
23. Rabab’ah, G. (2013). Strategies of Repair in EFL Learner’s Oral Discourse. English Language Teaching, 6 (6), 123-131.
24. Rieger, C.L. (2003). Repetitions as Self-repair Strategies in English and German Conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (1), 47-69.
25. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A. & Jefferson, G. & (1974). A Simplest Systematics for The Organization of Turn Taking for Conversation. Language, 50 (4), 696-735.
26. Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after Next Turn; The Last Structurally Provided Defense of Intersubjectivity in Conversation. American Journal of Society, 98, 1295-1345.
27. Schegloff, E. A. Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977). The Preference for Self-Repair in the Organization of Repair in Conversation. Language, 53 (2), 361-382.
28. Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29. Schiffrin, D. (1998). Conversation Analysis, In Fredrick, J. (Ed), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30. Seedhouse, P. (2004). The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell
31. Sidnell, J. & Stivers, T. (2013). The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. UK: Wiley Blackwell.
32. Thorne, B. & Heneley, N. (1975). Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley. Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers.
33. Tiara, A. (2018). Repair Strategies in Online Chat: A Conversation Analysis (Unpublished bachelor’s thesis). Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia.
34. Tannen, D. (1992). You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. London: Virago Press Limited.
35. Uneo, J. (2008). Gender Differences in Japanese Conversation. Union College.
36. Zimmerman, D. and West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in Conversation. In Thorne, B. and Henley, N. (eds.) (1975) Language a Difference and Dominance. Rowley: Newbury House. 105-129.