A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS OF OTHER-COMPLETED REPAIR IN SYNCHRONOUS COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

by

Phalangchok Wanphet

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in English

at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2011

UMI Number 3462804

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A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS OF OTHER-COMPLETED REPAIR IN SYNCHRONOUS COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

by Phalangchok Wanphet

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in English

at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2011

Graduate School Approval

6IU III

ABSTRACT

A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS OF OTHER-COMPLETED REPAIR IN SYNCHRONOUS COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

by

Phalangchok Wanphet

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2011 Under the Supervision of Patricia Mayes, Ph D

This dissertation, based on a Conversation Analytic (CA) perspective, investigates (1) how participants who do not understand what someone just said in online chats initiate and complete repair and (11) the characteristics and functions of othercompletion in synchronous online communication This study is based on the following premise First, troubles in understanding a message someone just produced in social interaction are ubiquitous Secondly, when participants take the next turn to produce their message, they reveal their analysis and understandings of the ongoing interaction Third, social interaction is designed for effortless understanding and for managing such problems Fourth, other-completion is a socially disaffihative action
in

After the close analysis of mundane synchronous electronic interaction, I divided other-completion in synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC), based on the locations of repair-initiation and -completion, into six variations, namely, self-mitiation and distanced other-completion, other-initiation and distanced other-completion, other-repair performed in one e-turn, other-repair performed over two consecutive e-turns, immediate other-completion, and simultaneous other-completion The findings can be twofold First, other-completion occurs more frequently and pervasively in web chats than in face-to-face encounters Second, the ways other-completion is performed in synchronous CMC reflect both transactional and interactional views of language use The transactional view of other-completion in synchronous CMC echoes the fact that mutual understandings are ultimate goal in social interaction The interactional view suggests that not threatening participants' face is a major goal in maintaining social bonds during such electronic social interaction This is witnessed when other-completion is distanced from repair-initiation, allowing an opportunity for self-completion Related to the interactional view, this study connects the face as a socio-psychological concept to the physical presence of participants When they interact online, their social cues and the aspects of face are filtered out, resulting in frequent occurrence of other-completion, a socially disaffihative actions, which is rare in face-to-face talk

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Major Professor
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 Copyright by Phalangchok Wanphet, 2011 All Rights Reserved

In Memory of Pra Kru Nibhasa Panyakhuna and My Grandparents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 Introduction Background information Where talk takes place How people communicate electronically How participants engage in synchronous CMC What synchronous CMC messages look like Preference for self-completed repair and face considerations Scope of the study Purpose of the study Significance of the study Summary

1 2 3 5 6 7 11 12 15 17 17

CHAPTER 2 Literature Review Repair A conversation analytic perspective Defining repair Intersubjectivity A display of mutual understanding in talk Participants' roles in repair Some sources of misunderstanding Organization of conversational interaction Turn-taking organization Turns and turn-constructional units vn

19 21 21 24 27 29 35 35 36

Transition relevance place Turn allocation component Sequence organization Adjacency pairs Insertion sequences Electronic environment as communicative context Internet Technologies for communication Computer-mediated communication Technically, is synchromcity a criterion7 The medium of online chat is it speech or text7 Unclassified features of online chats Language in synchronous CMC Structural and interactional features of synchronous CMC Turn-taking system and sequences Social interactional activities Flaming Emoticons Summary

39 40 42 43 45 48 48 49 51 53 63 65 67 67 70 72 77 80

CHAPTER 3 Data and Methodology Data, participants, and language of the synchronous CMC Data Participants vm

82 83 83 85

Language of the web chats Electronic recordings and data collection Unit of Analysis Data Analysis Summary

86 86 88 90 95

CHAPTER 4 Variations of Other-Completed Repair in Synchronous CMC Self-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair Other-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair Other-repair completed in one e-turn Other-completed repair performed over two consecutive e-turns Immediate other-completed repair Summary

97 97 103 108 113 119 128

CHAPTER 5 Sequence Organization of Other-Completed Repair in Synchronous CMC Question 1 How other initiates and completes repair Types and positions of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC Simultaneously-completed repair Sequence organization of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC Question 2 Functions of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair 129 129 130 131 133 138

Preference organization of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC 139 Face and face-threatening acts
IX

142

Sequence organization of distanced other-completed repair

144

Sequence organization of other-completed repair in one and two e-turns 146 Sequence organization of immediate other-completed repair Turn-initial position Elsewhere other than turn-initial position in the same e-turn Accompanying conversational work Summary 150 151 152 157 160

CHAPTER 6 Discussion and Conclusion Other-completed repair as a social action in synchronous CMC Other-completed repair Evidence of social disaffiliation Unmitigated or 'still-dispreferred' other-completed repair Other-completed repair Evidence of maintenance of social bonds Opportunity given for self-completed repair Other-initiated repair as a display of understanding of the TS Smiley as a reminder of face Other-completed repair Transactional and interactional functions Conclusion and future research

162 164 165 166 171 172 176 179 182 184

References Curriculum Vitae

189 205

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2 1 Possible sequencing in computer conversation Figure 3 1 The data collection process Figure 3 2 Sample of repair sequence in synchronous CMC Figure 5 1 Possible sequence of other-initiation Figure 5 2 Possible sequence of other-repair on the same e-turn Figure 5 3 Possible sequence oftheTS and other-initiation Figure 5 4 Possible sequence of repair-completion Figure 5 5 Possible sequence of self-initiated other-completion Figure 5 6 Possible sequence of repair-initiation and other-completion Figure 5 7 Possible sequence of other-completion and interpolated e-turns Figure 5 8 Possible sequence oftheTS and other-completion

68 88 90 134 134 134 135 135 135 135 136

xi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2 1 Features of spoken language and written language Table 2 2 Features of language in synchronous CMC Morphology and syntax

55 66

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CA CMC DCL EMP FTA's OC 01 SC SI TS

Conversation Analysis Computer-Mediated Communication Declarative Emphasis Face-Threatening Acts Other-Completed Repair (or Other-Completion) Other-Initiated Repair (or Other-Initiation) Self-Completed Repair (or Self-Completion) Self-Initiated Repair (or Self-Initiation) Trouble Source

Xlll

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would never have brought this dissertation to completion without constant help, support, and encouragement from many people to whom I wish to express my appreciation The very first person I would like to thank is my dissertation advisor, Dr Patricia Mayes, who introduced Conversation Analysis (CA) to me at the beginning of my graduate studies She first steered me in the direction of this field that I have never regretted, and then patiently and intently directed this dissertation Most of my ideas about CA and research in talk-in-mteraction have developed over the years of conversations with her After I moved away from Milwaukee, WI, for work in New York City, and she advised me via email, she continued her thoroughness by sending me long and detailed emails with her comments on my written work I can say that I have had the pleasure and honor of being her student and working on this dissertation with her I am thankful for insightful and invaluable comments and advice on this work from my four readers Drs Kathleen Wheatley, Raquel Oxford, David Clark, and Edith Moravcsik I was very fortunate to have such a dedicated and supportive committee Special thanks go to Kathie and Raquel for their willingness to serve on my Academic Review committee in 2007 I am greatly indebted to them for their encouragement, patience, and the time they spent with me during the preparation of the Academic Review Both Kathie and Edith read this dissertation in a timely manner The next people who deserve my great gratitude are my parents (Mr Riang Wanphet and Mrs Bumrung Wanphet), who have always pointed out to me how xiv

important education is and have encouraged me and believed in me throughout my life I could call them no matter when during the completion of my graduate degrees Talking to them and hearing their voices encouraged me to get school work, including this dissertation, done I owe an enormous thanks to my brother (Mr Jatuchok Wanphet) for taking excellent care of our parents while I was gone This work is dedicated to three of them My thanks also go to my friends and colleagues in Chicago, New York, and Bangkok for their kindness, friendship, humor, and support during the last stage of my dissertation The last people I want to thank are my nephew and niece, whom I never met but indirectly inspired me to complete the dissertation as soon as possible so that I could make a trip home to visit them They have no idea how many times I looked at their pictures during the completion of this dissertation for inspiration and motivation

xv

1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Qualitative research in the social sciences, in general, investigates human behavior-related phenomena and is intended, mainly, to answer how- and whyquestions to explain such phenomena So does this study As will be shown later, this study will focus merely on a how-question, 1 e, how participants detect and repair a trouble in ongoing talk This dissertation aims to study talk, the human verbal behavior, especially when talk is used to fix prior talk One how-question, then, is how people use talk to repair prior talk, not in face-to-face, but in synchronous electronic encounters Before I proceed, it is important here to briefly define a few important terms though they are explored in greater length in Chapter 2 The first term, repair, is a technical term used in conversation analysis (hereafter CA) to refer to the practice of dealing with troubles in understanding, speaking, or hearing in prior talk This does not include all types of trouble or misunderstanding, but those found in what someone involved in the same talk has just said Another term, other-completed repair (also known as other-completion), needs to be defined here as it is the focus of the analysis Other-completed repair is a repair that is completed by a participant who does not own the trouble (henceforth other), regardless of who initiates a repair The practice of othercompleted repair is a socially disaffihative action because, m many cases, it functions as the preliminary to or harbinger of disagreement (Schegloff 2007,

Schegloff et al, 1977) This can be observed when other believes what the owner of the trouble (henceforth self) said is doubtful, unclear, problematic, unintelligible, or incorrect Then, other may replace what se//just said with what other believes is correct without giving self a chance to correct it The last term, face, is defined by Goffman (1967) as "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself (p 5) By nature, other-completed repair typically threatens the face of se//because, once performed, it may seem to se//that other does not take into account selfs face want To minimize the degree of facethreatening acts (hereafter FTA's) or to maintain social bonds between participants, other-completed repair should be specially performed and positioned How turns are designed to minimize the degree of face-threatening acts can be explicated by preference organization (this is discussed later in this chapter and Chapter 5) This first chapter provides general information and some technical and sociohnguistic background on which the literature review, Chapter 2, is built Included in this chapter are background information, the scope in which the research questions are outlined, and the purpose and significance of the dissertation The first section discusses the nature of talk, the most basic of social interaction, and introduces how it has changed in the digital age

Background Information This section aims to introduce the basic background which inspired and influences the focus of this study Its aim is also to provide technical and sociohnguistic background on how to become an online user and especially an

online chatter, though these skills and abilities are relatively easy to acquire nowadays The first subsection below discusses the widespread use of the internet and factors that make it a distinctive communicative setting for human social interaction This is followed by a sketch of web chat procedures and web chat programs The last subsection presents the appearance of online chat dialog

Where Talk Takes Place Talk-in-interaction, a generalized form of conversation, is characterized as the unmediated, natural, and common form of human communication (Goffman, 1976) Although talk is conveyed by phonic means, it is usually accompanied by extrahnguistic cues Another characteristic is that people talk in the physical presence of one another, that is, there is a speaker and a recipient, whose roles are subject to change Although the telephone helps people overcome this necessity for physical presence, two parties have to be available at the same time to converse Whether talk takes place face-to-face or on the phone, moment-by-moment participants design a particular contribution to talk-in-progress Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson's (1974) analysis of the turn-taking system can usefully characterize ongoing talk in these two settings Nowadays, conversation is no longer limited to face-to-face exchanges or on the phone It has been mediated by and operated on the internet to overcome time and space constraints and to involve more people Undoubtedly, the internet has become the largest and most expansive system for communication that permits people in distant parts of the world to communicate with one another (Kiesler,

Siegel, & McGuire, 1984, Yates, 1996) in real time or postponed time According to statistical data presented on the Internet Society website (2010), the usage growth of internet users from 2000-2010 was 444 8% in June 2010 From the same source, two billion people had access to the internet in 2010 This number has tended to sharply increase There are many reasons that explain why more people use the internet First, the costs of personal computers and internet services are inexpensive (Herring, 2004b) Second, computers and internet programs are more user-friendly and easier to operate and maintain than they were Third, computer and internet programs are equipped with more options and functions, e g, larger memory units, a web camera, a microphone, a speaker, etc, allowing users to express themselves, fully communicate, and socialize Fourth, many stores (e g, coffee shops, restaurants), organizations (e g, government buildings), institutes (e g, universities, public libraries) and other places (e g, hotels, train stations, airports) provide free internet services to the public In addition, advanced technology allows many electronic devices to collaboratively work with computers (Kalman & Rafaeli, 2007) Cellphones and Smartphones, for example, are electronically connected with an internet service, permitting their users to send and receive messages anywhere anytime This is made possible by electronic devices which are now portable and wireless The next subsection explains how people can communicate electronically on the internet, both the process and product of online communication

How People Communicate Electronically Online communication is defined as all kinds of human communication that is mediated by the internet Such human communication can be either synchronous (e g online chats), asynchronous (e g email or discussion boards), or a combination of both Synchronous communication may involve visual presentation as in Skype, whereby participants can talk to and see each other in real time However, in this study, only synchronous text-based communication is used as the data Characterized by visual anonymity, physical isolation, and selective selfpresentation (Chester & Gwynne, 1998), online communication has directly and indirectly come to play an important role in our lives One impact it has on our lives is in the ways we communicate with one another Hutchby (2001) argues that the nature of human communication and how "intersubjectivity" (Schegloff, 1992, p 1295) is established and maintained have been affected by technologies for communication (see Chapter 2 for a discussion of intersubjectivity) For this reason, it is worth investigating how mutual understandings are generated, maintained, hindered, and regenerated by such technologies Although there are several communicative media supported by technologies for communication, this study is focused exclusively on one type of synchronous computer-mediated communication (hereafter CMC), l e, text-based online chats Online chats require certain tools and specific action from participants, so that they can be engaged in this type of communication The subsections below provide technical background about synchronous CMC the process of synchronous CMC (l e, how participants get involved in online chats, how they typing, edit, complete,

6 and send a text, and who can observe the process of message production) as well as the product of synchronous CMC (1 e, what a text as a final product in online chats looks like)

How participants engage in synchronous CMC Synchronous CMC allows exchanges of written messages between an unlimited number of participants in real time (Kiesler et al, 1984) Those who have a computer with an internet connection can participate in a chat program To be able to enter into a chat room, a participant has to download a chat program Most of the time, chat programs are free of charge (e g, yahoo com, msn com, skype net, etc) Completely-downloaded chat programs automatically preinstall a chat messenger which functions as a management tool that allows its participants to, for instance, present their availability, check the availability of others, send video links, add a contact, edit the user's profile, and send an instant message To log in to a chat messenger, participants have to have an account which typically requires a user name, password, and, optionally, a profile, which are all created when they sign up for the account for the first time To chat with others in a web chat, participants can either do so with those who are already in their contacts, or search for new contacts Once both participants are co-present and available to chat, they can begin their chat A system connecting participants in a chat program is called a chat server Messages can be sent to a chat server at any time by participants On computer screens, in general, there is a space called a dialogue box, private box, or compose box in which participants type messages Next to a dialog

box, there is the SEND button participants can click on when they finish typing messages and want their messages to be read by others Before sending a message to a chat server (1 e, before pressing the SEND button), participants can edit or delete it in their private box Again, this process is not seen by other participants Once the participant presses the ENTER key, the message is sent off to a chat server After that, it is sent off again to all involved participants It is at this time that all participants involved in that channel can see what others typed After messages have been sent off to a chat server, they cannot be edited, corrected, or deleted by any participants including their owners The next subsection explores messages produced by participants in a chat room that are shown in a public dialog

What synchronous CMC messages look like Recall that the message is sent off to a chat server once the participant presses the ENTER key A chat server works as a center distributing messages to all participants involved in the same channel A chat server does not change the format of texts originally composed by participants, but adds user names of message senders at the beginning of the message Extract 1 shows a public dialog

Extract 1 Turns and dialog in synchronous CMC (Chat 2313-2009-4/70) Dave let me google it Dave haha Maia o k

Dave the Chinese name of the movie is A^ZM1 Maia I don't have Chinese front2 Maia I can't read it

In Extract 1, a message follows a user name of a person who composes it and whatever fonts participants used will not be changed by the chat server In a private box, participants can press the SEND button whenever they want, therefore, messages may not always be complete sentences or clauses (Schofeldt & Golato, 2003) In other words, one turn of an online chat can range from one symbol (e g, O,'}, o,'), to one or more words, phrases, clauses, or many complete sentences Sometimes, one turn unit may not represent one idea very well As a result, what is in one turn in an online chat is not the same as what is in one turn in ordinary spoken language as characterized by CA researchers (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) Murray (1988b) therefore introduces the term "e-message" (p 353) to mean a message produced during electronic communication In everyday talk, one turn roughly begins when a speaker begins to talk and ends when he sends the message That is, a speaker takes his turn or competes for the floor in order to produce a message This is different from how participants in online chats take turns An electronic turn therefore is not the same as a spoken turn unit in terms of the turn-taking system, not only because of the syntactic structure or the presentation of ideas, but also how participants take a turn While
All extracts illustrated in this dissertation present what the participants actually typed in their online chats Foreign characters will be shown in this study without being changed, but with or without the translation 2 1 have not corrected or made changes to any of their grammatical errors or typos
1

9 e-message generally refers to the features of messages produced online, it does not discuss how participants take turns and the order of turns Therefore, throughout this study, e-turn is used to refer to each time a participant starts typing a message until he presses the ENTER key The common denominator used to define e-turn, then, is pressing the ENTER key Extract 2 shows different lengths of e-turn

Extract 2: Turns and dialog in synchronous CMC (MK-Chat: 2009-28/45) Alice I feel sorry to see you alone in office hours @ Alice no one coming Paula So I can do other stuffs Alice Did you know what Jane's teacher just told us that there (4) (5) (1) (2) (3)

is no such thing as stuffs Alice stuff is already noun plural Paula I don't think there will be costomers since there is no assignment/HW. Alice Jane made mistake in her writing and the teacher showed is to us Paula OK I can't do other stuff(good to know ) Alice yes, I learn a lot from my kids Alice okay, l'll talk to you later, I'll finish my dinner I can't eat after midnight for the glucosa test so I have to fill up my tummy by now O

(6)

(7) (8) (9)

(10)

10 In Extract 2, some e-turns are less than one line long (see e-turns 1, 2, 3, 5,8, and 9), while some can be longer than one line long (e-turns 4, 6, and 10) It is possible to have two consecutive e-turns by the same participant (e-turns 1 and 2 by Alice, eturns 4 and 5 by Alice, or e-turns 9 and 10 by Alice) as well as a two-line long e-turn (e-turn 4 by Alice, e-turn 6 by Paula, or e-turn 7 by Alice) In the broader picture of a chat room, because of transmission rate and internet services, messages appearing on computer screens may not relate to the preceding or following messages These unrelated messages following one another make the content and patterns of the conversation rather incoherent and disorderly Because of the number of participants in a chat room who send messages at the same time, the flow of computer conversation goes very fast and the results are multidimensional, leading to various subtopics and conversations Moreover, each participant can talk about different topics with different participants All of these factors make online chats far different from typical ordinary conversations where pervasively only one participant talks at a time (Sacks et al, 1974), where there are fewer subtopics which are coherently ordered, and where turns themselves are chronologically ordered (Schegloff et al, 1977) Therefore, Murray (1991) coins the term "computer conversation" (p 35) to refer to a dialogue in online chat Before I proceed to the next section, there are a few points to be made here First, there is an increasing number of people who communicate on the internet Secondly, the internet as a new platform for social interaction requires devices (l e, software and hardware) and skills (e g, literacy skills, typing skills, and basic

11 computer skills) from participants Thirdly, what they communicate on the internet is mostly text-based with available communicative functions provided by the chat programs The next section introduces face considerations and relates it to othercompleted repair and to preference organization

Preference for Self-Completed Repair and Face Considerations In CA literature, there is a structural preference for self-completed repair (1 e, a repair that is completed by a participant who owns the trouble) over othercompleted repair because of the following reasons (Lerner, 1996b) First, opportunities for self-initiated repair (1 e, a repair that is initiated by a participant who owns the trouble) precede opportunities for other-initiated repair (1 e, a repair that is initiated by a participant who does not own the trouble) Second, both selfmitiated repair and other-initiated repair result interactionally in self-completed repair Other-completed repair is not only structurally biased as presented above, but also socially biased This does not mean that no participants are allowed to repair what others have just said during talk-in-interaction, but that othercompleted repair is customarily performed with extra work This extra work (e g, special marks or/and special positions) draws the distinction between actions that are preferred from those that are dispreferred Such distinction can be explained by preference organization (Pomerantz, 1984), which not only explains how dispreferred actions are specially marked and positioned in conversations, but also reveals how the design of dispreferred actions is interrelated to participants' social

and psychological states (Holtgraves, 1992) when participating in talk Such social and psychological states come to be known as face-considerations which, Holtgraves contends, is "the major goal underlying preference organization" (p 148) That is, participants' face consideration affects how they design their turn in talk-inmteraction To conclude, the design of other-completed repair, a dispreferred action, can be investigated through the preference organization or "the set of practices through which persons manage courses of action that either promote or undermine social solidarity" (Heritage & Raymond, 2005, p 16), which is intimately connected to face This study looked at how participants in online chats positioned and marked othercompleted repair and how this is related to face-considerations Although the technical terms were introduced above, they will be again discussed in Chapter 2 This section has provided a general background for this study, while the next one presents the scope of the study

Scope of the Study As mentioned above, technology is designed to overcome geographical distance This advantage implies that technology can connect people from different parts of the world due to the aforementioned five factors (l e, cost, userfnendhness, built-in devices, accessibility, and compatible electronic devices) The internet indeed is a space where people from different backgrounds not only learn but also socialize The electronically-mediated space known as the internet, where human beings communicate is usually referred to as a global village (McLuhan,

13 1962), virtual community (Rheingold, 1993), or cyberspace (Gibson, 1982) This phenomenon reflects the context of globalization where people are connected by communication technologies One interactional phenomenon this research studies is how such online chatters repair the immediately preceding talk Given that many people from different backgrounds are using English, the opportunity for miscommumcation is great, as is the opportunity to study miscommumcation It is likely that the causes of repair in synchronous CMC differ from those of repair in everyday interaction On the one hand, chat participants may need to repair their utterances more for the following reasons non-verbal communication (e g, facial expressions and gestures) and paralanguage (e g, pitch, volume, rhythm, or intonation) are missing, e-turns in synchronous CMC may not be sequentially ordered, and there may be subtopics embedded in each topic On the other hand, chat participants may need to repair their utterances less because they can review previously typed text to retrieve the information and to deal with the causes of misunderstandings Still, when chats involve non-native speakers, it is likely that repairs will involve more negotiation of meaning, that consists of requests for explanation of language and content This dissertation investigates miscommumcation between native speakers and non-native speakers of English that happens to occur online and how both groups handle it The analysis of repair in online chats will reveal the causes of misunderstandings and miscommumcation and reveal how these are dealt with by online participants From the beginning, CA researchers have focused on everyday communication, that is, how people talk, and the language they use in order to

14 communicate (either verbally, non-verbally, or a combination of both) The four main features that have been of interest to CA researchers include turn-taking systems, sequences, repairs, and preference organization (Liddicoat, 2007) Since internet technologies were invented in the 1980s, alternative ways of communicating have been developing (e g, email communication, web discussion boards, text-based chats), but to my knowledge, there are few studies so far that examine repair in online chats The first one, by Schofeldt and Golato (2003), investigated whether the four positions of repair (see Chapter 2 for the definition of each position) appear in web chat In their study, the language of interaction was German, not English, and their participants used German as a mother tongue The study, by Shekary and Tahnnan (2006), explored the negotiation of meaning and noticing in text-based online chats among ESL learners Their study did not examine all repair practices, but only those resulting in negotiation of meaning and then noticing To locate negotiation of meaning which is one activity of repair, the two researchers followed a CA method However, they planned the experiment to collect data and intervened in the participants' interaction The third study, by Golato and Talegham-Nikazm (2006), studied how participants made requests, a negative face-threatening action in German online chats They found that their participants used a written pause to defer their requests, and used pre-requests and questions to elicit an offer Their study indicated that participants design their action in order to save other participants' face and that face can be a phenomenon that can be explored in web chats

15 Purpose of the Study A number of scholars, including Baron (2003), Crystal (2001), and Walther (2004), emphasize that technology promotes more effective human interaction, creates new language features, and influences ways in which humans communicate Therefore, it is essential to examine and explain human interaction as it occurs online As mentioned, before communication technology came to play a role in communication, research in CA focused exclusively on ordinary communication, and in particular conversation or mundane talk (Schegloff, 1991,1996) Later, CA researchers (Goodwin, 1981,1984, Schegloff, 1984) began studying non-verbal communication For example, how participants simultaneously used eye gaze to manage turn-taking and to catch attention, used gestures to indicate the transition of a story being told, and evaluated listeners in relation to the content being focused More recently, the interests of some CA researchers have shifted to synchronous and asynchronous online communication Like other scholars who study communication or linguistics, CA researchers have suggested that computer technology has changed the nature of human interactions and relationships (Garcia & Jacobs, 1999), sociability (Hutchby, 2001), and social identity (Kiesler et al, 1984) As mentioned, it is the purpose of this study to investigate the social nature of human communication in the form of repair in a technology-mediated environment The research questions of this study are as follows 1 How do participants who do not own the trouble in online chats initiate and complete repair7

This research question examines how the participants who are the recipients manage misunderstandings and miscommumcation The process of dealing with a trouble source found in ordinary conversation may be different from that found in synchronous CMC because the medium of communication is different, in particular, there are no verbal (aural) or non-verbal (visual) cues What is available is the text through which they can communicate and turns they take to type, which they do not have to compete for Like ordinary talk, online chatters have to deal with misunderstandings and miscommumcation in order to keep the conversation flowing, though pace in online chats seems a lot faster than face-to-face talks 2 What are the characteristics and functions of other-completed repair in synchronous online communication7 Like repair found in face-to-face talk, repair found in online contexts involving non-native speakers may be caused by limitations in second language proficiency that hinders the progress of the conversation One possible strategy for dealing with this trouble is to request an explanation on language, for example, word meanings and grammatical structures Repairs can also be caused by unshared background knowledge and experience of participants (Gass, 1997) Other factors include gender, culture, and familiarity with each other More generally, the mechanisms of online chats can lead to repairs because online messages are not in sequential order and many participants can type several messages at the same time This research question is aimed at finding the location of the cause of repair and the functions of other-completed repair

17 Significance of the Study There are two advantages of this study First, it demonstrates how language can be used in human social interaction which is now delivered electronically Crystal (2001) maintains that, with different communicative media, new language features evolve and are continually being interpreted by users who are more conscious of meaning than form Second, the research demonstrates how technology, such as the internet system, supports and at the same time limits human social interaction In communication, all communicators want to be understood by and understand others As a result, they develop strategies to deal with such limitations of technology because, as Walther (1996) points out, computer programs were first especially designed for information storage and data analysis purposes, not communication purposes

Summary In this introduction, the practice of repair was briefly defined to it make it easier to explore the process and its boundaries This chapter also introduced a new unique setting in which human communication is taking place, that is, the internet The specific type of communication that will be examined, synchronous online chats, was also introduced These points will be examined in detail in Chapter 2 The last section outlined two research questions this study aims to answer This section provided a general idea of the research procedures and tools that were used These issues will be dealt with in more detail in Chapter 3

The next chapter presents theoretical background on repair, sources of misunderstandings, conversational organization, and electronic environment, while Chapter 3 outlines research methods which consist of data collection and data analysis Extracts from online chats are given in Chapter 3 to demonstrate how an emic perspective will be implemented in the analysis Also, Chapter 3 introduces the online participants and language of the web chats Chapter 4 presents five variations of other-completed repair found in synchronous CMC, according to the locations of repair-initiation and othercompleted repair In addition to adding one variation of other-completed repair to the list, Chapter 5 discusses the sequential location of each variation These variations of other-completed repair lead to the discussion in Chapter 6 Chapter 6 also answers the two research questions, concludes the study, and suggests further research

19
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This dissertation aims to examine how other navigates and fixes misunderstandings and miscommumcation during interactional online chats where English is used as a language for communication While the background information about this topic was provided in the previous chapter, this chapter is intended to review the literature on repair from a conversation analytic perspective, on organization of conversational interaction, on other-completed repair and preference organization, and on computer-mediated communication Before reviewing this topic, it is important to devote a few paragraphs below to presenting the development of CA, and how repair and computer-mediated human interaction are related in the field of CA Face-to-face interaction is the default format of everyday situations of human communication (Goodwin, 1981,1984, Goodwin & Heritage, 1990, Heritage, 1985, 1989,1991,1995, Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008, Schegloff, 1991,1992), where two participants must be physically co-present in order to participate in conversational interaction, while verbal cues which are audible and gestural cues which are visible to participants facilitate communication It was talk on the telephone that pioneering CA researchers first used to examine human verbal interaction (see Sacks, 1992, Schegloff, 1968, Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), before paying close attention to face-to-face talk However, it was face-to-face talk to which CA researchers turned because it reveals fundamental

20

communicative practices (e g, utterances, gesture, eye gaze, head direction, etc) and offers a domain in which they can investigate the structural organization of human sociality (Drew & Heritage, 2006, Goodwin, 1980,1982,1984, Heritage, 1985,1989, 1991,1995, Schegloff, 1984,1991,1992, Schegloff et al, 1977) In other words, CA was developed to examine the sequential ordering of utterances in order to find out about the properties of normative, micro-level social order With the advent of technologies for communication, human communication has been operated through, around, and with the computer network since the 1990s (Hutchby, 2001) This new electronic environment has provided not only CA researchers but also communication researchers, linguists, sociologists, and social psychologists with a new variable that broadens their research paradigms For CA researchers, a computer-mediated environment is a completely new strategic setting in which human interaction is found and, therefore, where they can examine mundane human interaction This dissertation is inspired by a claim made by CA researchers and sociohnguists that misunderstandings and thus repair are ubiquitous in all kinds of human interaction (Schegloff, 1991,1992, Schegloff et al, 1977, Tannen, 1984,1986), computer-mediated human interaction is no exception This chapter is divided into three main sections The first one introduces repair, intersubjectivity, participants' roles in repair, and potential sources of misunderstandings, while the second section reviews the organization of conversational interaction The last section explores the electronic environment which provides the medium and context in which human social action occurs

Repair: A Conversation Analytic Perspective Talk-in-interaction is considered a joint and cooperative undertaking (Clark, 1996, Gumperz, 1984, Schegloff, 1991, Wardhaugh, 1985), whether or not it is smooth, enjoyable, or successful It occurs in a wide range of activities, such as encounters among acquaintances, discussions, or meetings All of these and many other verbal activities cannot be successful if the participants cannot grasp what is being said or cannot grasp the significance of what is being said However, when they cannot do so, talk-in-interaction provides them with the sequential organization of interaction to detect and afterwards fix problematic talk (Drew & Heritage, 2006, Schegloff, 1991,1992, 2000) The practice of detecting and then fixing problematic talk, known as repair, can be considered a joint and cooperative undertaking not only because it is one activity of talk but also because it requires participants to cooperatively defer whatever else was due next in order to deal with the problematic talk that impedes their shared understanding of the ongoing interactional work (Schegloff, 2000) This section is divided into four subsections designed to explore the practice of repair

Defining Repair In this study, repair is used as a technical term, following the work of CA researchers who define it as the treatment of troubles, miscommunications, or misunderstandings occurring in talk-in-interaction (Schegloff et al, 1977, Schegloff, Koshik, Jacoby, & Olsher, 2002) Similarly, repair is referred to as a constellation of practices through which participants resolve breakdowns in the production and

22

intelligibility of talk (Drew & Heritage, 2006) The problems calling for repair may be caused by difficulties in speaking, listening, or understanding the talk in conversation (Schegloff, 1987,1991,1992,1997, 2000, Schegloff etal, 1977) That repair is defined as practices dealing with difficulty in understanding talk does not mean that it includes within its scope all practices addressing problems of understanding, but rather "only the narrower domain of understanding what someone has just said" (Schegloff, 2000, p 207) In other words, a repair is "a general mechanism used to modify the talk after its production" (Kurhila, 2001, p 1084) That is, repair does not stand by itself, it necessarily follows what it is intended to repair A cause resulting in repair is referred to as a "trouble source" (henceforth TS) or "repairable" (Schegloff et al, 1977, p 363) It should be noted that repair sometimes can be located where there is no error, mistake, or fault, as in the case of a word search, the opposite is also true That is, audible errors, mistakes, or faults sometimes do not lead to repair Several scholars in pragmatics, sociohnguistics, and communication studies have claimed that misunderstandings are ubiquitous (Adenzato & Bucciarelh, 2008, Dascal 1999, Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2002, Mauranen, 2006) This is also true for a repairable, as claimed by Schegloff et al (1977), "nothing is, in principle, excludable from the class repairable" (p 363) All utterances can be trouble sources and thus repairable Moreover, utterances used to repair miscommumcation and misunderstandings can be trouble sources themselves needing to be repaired Considering the process of repair in relation to the talk-m-progress, Schegloff (2000) claims that the organization of repair is an organization of action that can

replace or defer whatever else will be due next The problem detected by participants needs to be solved before the ongoing talk can resume This is observed in face-to-face talk as demonstrated in Example 1

Example 1: Repair as an action (Schegloff et al., 1977, p. 367) TS B A B A B A Oh Sibbie's sistuh hadda ba by bo way Who7 Sibbie's sister Oh really7 Myeah, That's nice (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

In Example 1, repair interrupts the flow of ongoing conversation to, instead, do the business of repair as in turns 2 and 3 These two turns were inserted into the ongoing talk to deal with the problem in hearing It can be noticed that, after repair operates, there is a mark of possible split between the immediately preceding talk and the rest of the conversation (l e, between e-turns 1 and 4) According to Schegloff (2000), repair is the only action type that has this property A turn a participant produces as a contribution to the ongoing talk can function as a regular part of the ongoing talk or as an indicator that a misunderstanding is occurring The latter is inserted into ongoing talk to discontinue it, so that troubles in prior talk are dealt with, mutual understandings reestablished, and the talk resumed The next subsection explores how mutual

24

understandings in the talk-in-progress are maintained and reestablished as talk emerges

Intersubjectivity: A Display of Mutual Understanding in Talk This section relates the practice of repair, introduced in the last section, to the sequential organization of turn-taking, and then demonstrates how such a turntaking system leads to the presentation and establishment of shared understandings in social actions It is necessary to start off this section with ethnomethodology, a term first introduced by Garfinkel in 1967 It is defined as the study of "the body of common-sense knowledge and the range of procedures and considerations by means of which the ordinary members of society make sense of, find their way about in, and act on the circumstances in which they find themselves" (Heritage, 1991, p 4) In other words, ethnomethodology reflects the contingent and socially constructed nature of both action and understanding of action and the role of shared methods in the production, recognition, and shared understanding of joint activities The methods of practical reasoning and sense-making which, Garfinkel believed, underlay social life were explicated by breaching experiments in ethnomethodological studies These experiments were designed to intentionally disrupt the taken-for-granted routines of ordinary social life in order to observe how members dealt with their sudden lack of certainty As it turned out, the breaching experiments failed to demonstrate how mutual understandings are constructed and maintained in the course of mundane interaction (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008)

25 Because methodologically, CA seeks to uncover the practices, patterns, and generally the methods through which participants perform and interpret social action, what CA can contribute to ethnomethodology is analytic access to the situated achievement of intersubjectivity "shared or mutual knowledge and understanding among social actors" (Heritage, 1991, p 23) or "the maintenance of common, shared and even collective understandings between social actors" (Drew & Heritage, 2006, p 5) Intersubjectivity explains how mutual understandings can be achieved moment by moment or turn by turn as the talk proceeds In these coherent moves, participants display to one another their analysis and understanding of one another's conduct and of the field of action, principally through sequence organization of turn-taking According to Goodwin and Heritage (1990), through the sequence of turn-taking, "action and interpretation are inextricably intertwined" (p 288) These mutual understandings emphasize the fact that talk-in-interaction is a strategic setting that allows participants to perceive the world as the same world and, therefore, CA researchers to study "social sharedness" (Schegloff, 1991, p 150) Since the beginning of CA, then, the sequential organization of turn-taking has been the primary focus because it displays how participants' sense-making and understanding are established and organized by them during social activities (Heritage, 2008) for the following reasons First, by constructing a current action or turn, speakers normally project and require normatively the relevance of the next or a range of possible next actions to be done by a subsequent speaker (Heritage, 2008, Schegloff, 1991) This is illustrated in the investigation of sequence organization,

where the conditional relevance of subsequent turns is expected Put differently, the first speaker's turn makes it conditionally relevant for the next speaker to respond appropriately in the next turn Second, in producing a current turn, speakers customarily address themselves to the preceding talk and, most commonly, the immediately preceding talk (Heritage, 2008, Schegloff, 1991) Third, by the production of the next actions, speakers show an understanding of a prior action or turn (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990, Heritage, 2008, Schegloff, 1991) It is through this activity that owners of the immediately preceding action check if their action is correctly interpreted by others However, in talk-in-progress, speakers of a prior turn may find the understanding of current speakers problematic in terms of understanding These misunderstandings always occur and as stressed by Schegloff (1991), "intersubjectivity is not always untroubled" (p 157), therefore, the sequential organization of ordinary conversation provides participants with the resources for recognizing the breakdown of talk in progress and repairing it This point is further stressed by Drew and Heritage (2006) "any form of systemic organization has as a basic engineering problem the matter of how to fix problems when the system encounters difficulties or breaks down" (p 15) For this very purpose, turns can function as repair I have presented the practice of repair produced by two participants, one who owns the misunderstood talk and the other one who locates trouble in understanding However, repair may involve only one participant who initiates and completes a repair The next subsection introduces participants' participatory roles

in repair and how their action and involvement shape the direction and sequence of repair

Participants' Roles in Repair Repair is an organization of action that deals with trouble in the preceding talk It is inserted into ongoing talk in order to reestablish the mutual understandings among participants before the ongoing talk can resume This means that the practice of repair has a boundary, it has both a beginning and an end Schegloff (2000) locates the practice of repair which starts from repair-initiation and ends either with solution or abandonment of the problem The literature on everyday conversation distinguishes between who indicates a problem and who actually executes the repair The distinction is made between self and other Therefore, self-initiated repair is a repair detected by the owner of the TS, while other-initiated repair is a repair done by the recipient who identifies the TS In the same fashion, self-completed repair is a repair completed by the owner of a repairable, while other-completed repair is resolved by the recipient When self both initiates and completes a repair, this is referred to as self-repair Othercompleted repair, in the same vein, means other does both repair-initiation and repair-completion So there are four types of repair based on who initiates and completes repair self-initiated self-completion (1 e, self-repair), self-initiated othercompletion, other-initiated self-completion, and other-initiated other-completion (1 e, other-repair) Example 1, repeated below, illustrates three components of repair, namely, the trouble source, repair-initiation, and repair-completion

Example 1: Repair as an action (Schegloff et al., 1977, p. 367) TS 01 SC B A B A B A Oh Sibbie's sistuh hadda ba by bo way Who7 Sibbie's sister Oh really7 Myeah, That's nice (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

In Example 1, the TS, Sibbie's sistuh, is located in turn 1 B, other, does not hear the word, Sibbie's sistuh, so B initiates a repair (I e, other-initiated repair) by asking Who7 in turn 2 Who7 is understood by A as a request for repetition, which A does repeat with the word Sibbie's sister (I e, self-completed repair) in turn 3 In this example, there is other-initiated self-completion We have seen that several participants can be involved in the practice of repair, however, it can also involve only one person, as illustrated in Example 2

Example 2: Self-initiated self-completion (Schegloff et al., 1977, p. 366). L TS 01 L L An' 'en bud all of the doors'n things were taped up= =1 mean y'know they put up y'know that kinda paper'r stuff, the brown paper

Example 2 shows that L has trouble in searching for a word when due, though a bit later he finds the word (l e, the brown paper) So L initiates and completes repair

29 Participants' participatory roles affect the shape and direction of repair, all is done to ensure that sources of misunderstanding in talk-in-interaction are properly resolved As stated earlier, one property of repair is that it follows or replaces what comes before it, that is, a potential source of misunderstanding Below is a discussion of some sources of misunderstanding, a phenomenon that repair is subsequently developed to manage

Potential Sources of Misunderstanding In any communication, participants always manage to get meaning through as effectively and early as possible (Schegloff, 1979) This is made possible because, Schegloff (1987) argues, "talk in interaction is built for understanding and on the whole effortless understanding" (p 202) This section aims to introduce some potential sources of misunderstandings that call for repair Notwithstanding, it is found that misunderstandings are present and ubiquitous due to the fact that, among others, not everything can be explicitly said (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2002, Heritage, 1991, Tannen, 1983,1986), that the same things can be differently interpreted (Blum-Kulka & Weisman, 1987), and that language systems are ambiguous (Channell, 1994, Cutting, 2007, Jucker, Smith, & Ludge, 2003) However, methodologically, in CA, the sources of misunderstandings are identified differently Emically speaking, the sources of misunderstandings are only considered trouble sources when they lead to repair performed by participants in the talk and, more importantly, when they are recognized by the participants in the course of interaction

Based on the conversation analytic perspective on context, Schegloff (1987) studies problematic talk that results in misunderstanding and divides the causes of misunderstanding into two groups The first group, "problematic reference" (p 204), refers to a recipient's utterance responding to a speaker, which displays to the speaker an acceptable understanding of what that prior utterance was doing but reveals misunderstanding of some reference in that turn Factors involved in this type of misunderstanding are, for instance, ambiguous pro-forms, an interpretive error, and a fully explicit reference Example 3 illustrates problematic reference

Example 3: Problematic reference (Schegloff, 1987, p. 204) TS 01 SC A Z A Z Which one s are closed, an which ones are open Most of em This, this, / / this, this ((pointing)) I'on't mean on the shelters, I mean on the roads Oh (1) (2) (3) (4)

Z treated turn 1 as a request for information and A intends it to be interpreted this way, but ones, mentioned twice in turn 1, is problematic as Z misinterprets what it refers to Clearly, what Z understands is different from what A wants to communicate, therefore, A takes the third turn to initiate and complete the repair The second source of misunderstandings, "problematic sequential implicativeness" (Schegloff, 1987, p 204), refers to a conversational trouble caused by the sequential import of the utterance or turn as a whole This reflects the relationship between a speaker's utterance, turn, or turn component which the

31 speaker intends to have different effects on the recipient or in which a recipient takes it in an opposite or different way Problematic sequential implicativeness is categorized into four types The first type, "serious versus nonsenous distinction" (Schegloff, 1987, p 206), refers to when utterances treated as serious by the recipient may be claimed to have been produced as nonsenous by speakers This is shown in Example 4.

Example 4: Serious vs. nonserious distinction (Schegloff, 1987, p. 207) TS A I wan'dahknowifyihgota-uh m whutchimicalht A -pah(hh)king th's mornin' hh OC B A SI B A A pa rking place, Mm hm, Wher e t' Oh just anyp(h)la(h)ce71 wz jus' kidding yuh

The second type, "favored action interpretations" (Schegloff, 1987, p 208), occurs when a turn produced to do one action is taken by other to be doing a different action, where one action appears to be favored This is demonstrated below

Example 5: Favored action interpretations (Schegloff, 1987, p. 208-9) TS B A B Well honey7 I'll prob'ly see yuh one a'these day s, Oh God yeah Uhh huh' (1) (2) (3)

32

We01 SC A B B't I cI jis couldn' git downpthere Oh Oh I know

(4) (5)

I'm not askin yuh tuh come dow A Jesus I mean I jis I didn' have five minutes yesterday

(6) (7)

Example 5 shows that turns 5 and 7 were used by A as she thought that B had made a complaint that they could not get together (turn 1) In turn 6, B then denied that she was complaining and, therefore, used line 6 as a repair-completion Third, the constructive versus composite distinction (Schegloff, 1987, p 210) in the understanding of utterances occurs when what se//intends to be constructively understood by other is instead compositely understood This is exemplified in Example 6

Example 6: Constructive vs. composite distinction (Schegloff, 1987, p. 211) B but-hh lately71 have fears a'dnving over a bridge ((silence)) B A nd uh seems I uh -1 just can't tuh (sit) - if I hevuh haftuh cross a bridge I jus',don't (go an' make-uh-do the) trip at all TS A Whaddyuh afraid of (2) (3) (1)

01 OC

B A

I dun'kno w, see uh Well I mean waitam'n What kind of fear is it 'R you afraid yer gunnuh drive off the e dge7'R you afraid thet yer gunnuh hit while yer on it7 What

(4)

(5) (6)

Offtheedge'rsumthin

Example 6 is from a phone call to a talk show The TS is located in turn 3 The question Whaddyuh afraid of can be understood either, constructively, as a request for information or, compositely, as something between a reassurance and a jeer The response / don't know, then, shows B to be addressed to the latter hearing of prior turn, whereas A meant the former A then initiated repair in turn 5 redoing what was meant in the first place Turn 5 reveals that Whaddyuh afraid of'was intended as a request for information Fourth, the practice of "the joke first" (Schegloff, 1987, p 212) can be a source of misunderstanding That is, joke firsts are produced as intentional misunderstandings of the prior talk which has set the terms for the joking speaker's talk The practice of a joke first occurs when a participant provides a joke first before providing a serious response next A joke first makes the next serious turn conditionally relevant This is shown in Example 7

Example 7: Joke first (Schegloff, 1987, p. 213) TS J You study the Tiwi7 (1)

01 SC

R J

Tea Wee (leafs) Tell people (fortune) No, the Tiwi(0 2) the Tiwi of North Australia

(2)

(3) (4)

I have heard of them

So far, I have introduced the practice of repair, intersubjectivity, repair positions, and some sources of misunderstandings in this section There are three observations to be introduced here First, repair as previously argued is not regular ongoing talk in that it is inserted into ongoing talk and it defers what is due next In essence, it is a separate organized action Secondly, a repair practice that involves only self, as in same-turn repair and transition-space repair, does not reflect how participants reestablish mutual understandings during everyday talk-in-interaction In contrast, a repair practice that involves two or more participants represents a reestabhshment of joint understandings (or intersubjectivity) when each takes a turn after the conversational system encounters difficulties and breaks down Thirdly, some sources of misunderstanding were touched upon Misunderstandings and the practice of repair can be potential and, according to a conversation analytic method, are only realized when they are talked into being in context It is then that decisions about what these are become apparent That is, only participants in an ongoing conversation are able to recognize misunderstandings or sources of misunderstandings as such, this emphasizes the participants' perspective

In order to help understand the sequence organization of interaction in which repair is found and in order to make discussion of my data clearer, the next section presents some fundamentals of sequence organization namely, turn-taking, adjacency pairs, and insertion sequences

Organization of Conversational Interaction So far, I have presented how a turn functions as repair once troubles in speaking, hearing, and understanding are located and how participants are involved in the practice of repair simply by being the next speaker or, in other words, taking the next turn Speaking-next reveals the mutual understanding that speakers have so far interactionally built Indeed, a repair is performed in a sequence of turns, illustrated in three types of organization below

Turn-Taking Organization Speaker change is characteristic of talk-in-interaction (Sacks et al, 1974) It can be observed when there are two turns one belongs to the current speaker and the next one to the next speaker The rule may be as simple as once the first speaker ends his turn, the next one begins a new turn However, it is more complicated and systematic than it seems, not only because, as Schegloff (2006) argues, it deals with "who should talk or move or act next and when should they do so" (p 61), but also because all participants must achieve this or the talk cannot continue Before I discuss the turn-taking system, it is essential to understand what a turn is and how it is constructed This is discussed next

36 Turns and turn-constructional units. Turns, according to Sacks et al (1974), consist of stretches of language which are formed as a unit This unit is named the turn-constructional unit (henceforth TCU), which includes "sentential, clausal, phrasal, and lexical constructions" (p 702) One turn can consist of one or more small TCU's Examples 8-10 illustrate turn-constructional components which have different linguistic forms

Example 8: Single-word turns (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 702) Desk What is your last name Loraine Caller Dinnis - > Desk What7 Caller Dinnis

Example 9: Single-clause turns (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 703) A B A B A B A B Where the sidewalk is 7 Yeah, Whuntends, Goes all a'way up there 7 They c'm up tuh the re, Yeah Uh you been down here before havenche Yeh

Example 10: Single-sentence turns (Sacks et al., 1974) Ken I still say though that -if you take uh a big fancy car out on the road and you're hotroddin' around, you're- you're bound to get- you're bound to get shafted

Although a turn can consist of a TCU which can be a sentential, clausal, phrasal, or lexical construction, it does not necessarily mean that all turns fit into these single linguistic categories (Liddicoat, 2007, Schegloff, 1996, Seedhouse, 2004) In Example 11 below, it can be seen that at (turn 3), though it is considered a lexical construction, stands alone In a linguistic sense, however, this word does not usually stand alone

Example 11: Stand-alone linguistic form (Schegloff, 1996, p. 76) Ther Whatkmdofworkdoyoudo 7 Mom Food service -Ther At7 Mom (A)/ (uh) post office cafeteria downtown main post office on Redwoood Ther Okay (4) (5) (1) (2) (3)

So far, it may have seemed that turn-constructional units can be constructed out of lexical, phrasal, clausal, or sentential unit This reflects the fact that several CA researchers emphasize the importance of syntactic structure in conversation

38

(Lerner, 1991, Sacks et al, 1974, Schegloff, 1979), but this example points out that this is not always the case What can be concluded at this point is that any utterance can be considered a TCU when it is recognized by participants in talk as a possibly complete turn Some CA scholars examine factors other than syntax in determining a possible complete turn-constructional unit Many believe that, in addition to a syntactic completion unit, the potential completion points for TCU's can be signaled by combinations of possible prosodic completion (Selting, 2000), pragmatic and intonational completion (Ford & Thompson, 1996), complete social actions (Sacks et al, 1974), or even non-verbal expressions (Goodwin, 1981, ten Have, 2007) To exactly define and examine TCU's in CA, to date, remains problematic and needs further exploration So far, in the examples above, it can be observed that a turn consists of one turn-constructional component However, turns can be found to consist of two or more turn-constructional component This is illustrated in Example 12

Example 12: Multi-TCUs turn (Liddicoat, 2007, p. 74) Harry so did- did you ask him if hew'd do the session next week "* Joy I tn ed He's sorta got a lot on't the moment

Harry hhhh well we'll just haftuh think of somethin' else 'f e can do it

In Example 12, the second turn consists of two possible TCU's / tri ed and He's sorta got a lot on 't the moment A turn that comprises two possible TCU's is of

interactional significance because the place between them creates a socially-shared place which can lead to the possible change of speakership As in this example, Harry may project to be the next speaker after Joy's / tri ed This socially-shared place in talk-in-progress will be examined again in the next section I have included in the discussion turns and possible TCUs', from a CA perspective which differentiate them from linguistic systems The possible completion of TCU's may be determined by lexical, phrasal, or clausal completion, which is grouped under syntax Other indicators include intonational completion, pragmatic completion, and social action completion The possible completion of TCU's can be seen when these elements are achieved, singly or in combination Emically speaking, it is a possible TCU when it is recognized by participants as possibly complete, and also as performing a social action (Liddicoat, 2007) The next subsection examines the space that follows possible TCU's, namely, transition relevance place

Transition relevance place Sacks et al (1974) argued that, although one person talks at a time, there is speaker change A speaker change permits participants to take a turn in order to have their "mentionables" talked about (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, p 300) Language and social action have developed units of talk and rules of turn allocation to ensure that participants achieve this goal While turns and TCU's were touched upon above, rules of turn allocation will be presented below It is essential to first explore the place in talk-in-interaction that allows speaker change

Speaker change is found to occur throughout talk-in-interaction However, the place where it is found is not random but interactionally systematic The place where there is a possible change of speaker is called a "transition relevance place" or TRP (Sacks et al, 1974, p 703) Once a TCU is brought to a possible end, there is a TRP, which means that, at a TRP, speaker change can, but need not, occur Speaker change is a normative process in which participants in a conversation employ one signal or a combination of the signals discussed above in order to successfully take the next turn However, there is often a coordination problem (Heritage, 2008), for instance, there are gaps and overlaps found in the moment in which there is speaker change This problem can occur more often in multi-party conversations However, talk has a mechanism that deals with who can talk, and who can talk next and when This mechanism is reviewed next

Turn allocation component. The mechanism that deals with turn contribution, as touched upon above, is known as the "turn allocation component" (Sacks et al, 1974, p 703) Sacks et al (1974) proposed that there are two ways in which a recipient can become the next speaker, and these are performed hierarchically First, the current speaker selects the next speaker This can be achieved in many different ways, for example, the use of eye gaze (Goodwin, 1981) or context (Lerner, 2003) Another device is the use of a question asked by the current speaker, which makes an answer a relevant next action, as shown in Example 13

41 Example 13: Question (Liddicoat, 2007, p. 64) Joy: how's things

Harry: Not ba:d Joy.

The next strategy is the use of an address term. It can be seen in Example 14that the first speaker also uses the pronoun you.

Example 14: Question (Liddicoat, 2007, p. 64) Joy: Have juh got the papers for the meeting ye' Carol

Carol: Yeah=they came in th's morning

The use of the pronoun you is not problematic when it is a two-party conversation; however, it is ambiguous when it is a multi-party conversation. To solve this problem, the current speaker may use context, turn design, physical location, and eye gaze (Lerner, 1996a, 2003). After a single strategy or a combination of the strategies is used, the next speaker is identified. The next speaker has the rights and obligations to take the next turn, and no one else does. If one who is not selected talks, his talk is considered an accountable action that needs an explanation. Secondly, if the talk so far has not employed the current-speaker-selects-next rule, the next speaker self-selects. Whoever starts talking first and no one else has the rights and is obliged to take the turn. The speaker who self-selects often starts talking after a brief silence following the turn-constructional component. There are times when there are no recipients selecting themselves to be the next speaker.

42

This is evident when the TRP is extended or when the current speaker uses contmuers (e g ,yeah, uh huh, etc) Thirdly, if these two rules- current-speakerselects-next and self-selection for next speakership- have not operated, the current speaker may, but need not, continue talking Once his turn has reached the next TRP or subsequent ones, these three rules reapply So far, I have presented how turns are produced as a unit which may consist of small TCU's Units of talk and rules of turn allocation are conversational mechanisms designed to allow participants to collaboratively produce their turn Turn-taking behavior is indeed a socially-constructed behavior, while rules designed to help participants take turns appropriately are considered normative and interactionally enacted by participants in talk-in-interaction Having discussed turns, turn construction, and turn completion, I will next demonstrate how turns are organized to form coordinated social actions

Sequence Organization I have noted that a turn by the first speaker makes speaker change a relevant next action The relationship between these two turns represents sequence organization, which is a primary focus of CA Sacks (1987) defines a sequence as "the parts which are occurring one after the other, or are in some before and after relationship, and have some organization as between them" (p 54) The relation between two consecutive turns within a sequence can be explained by what Schegloff and Sacks (1973) call "adjacency pairs" (p 295), which are presented next

Adjacency pairs. To help explain the sequential relationship between turns that are considered adjacency pairs, it is important to discuss the concept of conditional relevance, suggested by Sacks (1972) The term means "given the first [item], the second [item] is expectable, upon its occurrence it can be seen to be a second item to the first" (Schegloff, 1968, p 1083) Items here refer to "participants' expectations in regard to the sequential organization of turns in conversation" (Bussmann, 1999, p 229) Conditional relevance can be observed in sequence of turns, for instance, a turn can initiate a particular type of action to be produced by the next speaker Examples of conditional relevance includes greetings, such as hello which occasions another hello, as does hi, questions which require answers, invitations which involve either acceptances or rejections, and announcements which involve either congratulations or condolences, etc The sequential relationship between two turns is called a "sequence pair", "adjacency pair" (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, p 295), or "utterance pair" (Sacks 1987, p 56) Schegloff and Sacks (1973) conclude that the characteristics of adjacency pairs are as follows Firstly, the adjacency pair consists of sequences produced by two different participants Secondly, the sequence has two utterances, the first utterance produced by the first speaker, the other produced by the second speaker Thirdly, the first utterance, I e, first pair part, precedes the second utterance, I e, second pair part The first pair part is produced to initiate the next action, while the second pair part is designed to complete the action initiated in the first pair part After the first pair part is produced, its speaker customarily stops talking at the first

TRP so the second speaker can begin the second pair part Fourth, both parts are placed adjacently to each other Very often, these two turns occur immediately together, 1 e, after the first one is ended, and briefly after the TCU, the second one is produced Some examples of adjacency pairs are shown below

Example 15: Question-answer (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, p. 301) A B A What's up Not much What's up with you7 Nothing

Example 16: Greeting (Liddicoat, 2007, p 107) Amy Hello Jean Hi

Example 17: Greeting and question-answer (Schegloff, 2007, p. 232) Phone rings Mar Ton Mar Ton Mar Hello7 Hi Marsha7 Ye ah How are you7 Fi ne (0 2) Mar Did Joey get home yet7

Ton

Well I wz wondering when 'e left

Example 18: Invitation-acceptance (Liddicoat, 2007, p 110) Amy w'd yuh like tuh come over t'morrow night Jane yea h =that'd be nice

Examples 15-18 indicate sequences of adjacency pairs Schegloff and Sacks (1973) emphasized that both the first and second parts of a sequence must be members of the same pair-type The completion of adjacency pairs largely depends on whether or not the second participant recognizes the first pair part as such and whether or not he responds to it, especially in the way that the first speaker considers relevant Two cues for understanding that the second participant can rely on when hearing the first pair part are syntactic structure and conventional formulas of the first pair part (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) One of the characteristics of sequences of adjacency pairs, as explained above, is that the first and second pair parts are physically and immediately placed adjacent to each other (e g, question followed by answer) However, under some circumstances, the second pair part does not immediately follow the first one This phenomenon is elaborated below

Insertion sequences. Adjacency pairs require that, after the first pair part is produced by the first speaker, the second pair part should be immediately produced, adjacent to the first

46 one, by the second speaker However, it has been found that these sequences are sometimes interrupted by other talk (Schegloff, 1972) That is, a new adjacency pair is inserted between the first pair part and second pair part of the previously produced adjacency pair The conditional relevance of the previously-produced adjacency pair is broken by the participants' involvement in another adjacency pair This can be seen below

Example 19: Insertion sequences (Schegloff, 1972, p. 78) Ql Q2 A2 Al A B A B Are you coming tonight 7 Can I bring a guest 7 Sure I'll be there

Example 20: Insertion sequences (Schegloff, 1972, p. 78) Ql Q2 A2 Al A B A B Have you seen Jim7 Was he in today 7 Yeah No, I didn't see him

It can be observed in Examples 19-20 that the first pair part of the first adjacency pair is separated from the second pair part of the same pair-type by a second adjacency pair This can be more complicated, as in Example 21

47

Example 21: Insertion sequences (Schegloff, 1972, p. 79) Ql Q2 Q3 Q4 A4 A3 A2 Al A B A B A B A B Are you coming tonight7 Can I bring a guest7 Male or female7 What difference does that make7 An issue of balance Female Sure I'll be there

Schegloff (1972) argued that this phenomenon is so distinctive that the absence of the second pair part and the replacement of the second pair part with something else unrecognizable as an answer does not lead to a repair-initiation, it also does not lead the first pair part of the new adjacency pair to be "accountable" and in need of explanation The reason for this is that whatever sequence is inserted between the original adjacency pairs, although it interrupts the ongoing talk, it does not cancel the relevance of the original second pair part Those insertion sequences are considered relevant to the first pair part and to the projected second pair part In brief, this section has introduced the sequential organization of conversational interaction, which was pioneered by CA researchers The purpose was not only to provide background information on how participants use talk as a course of action to accomplish social actions in talk-in-interaction, but also to help explain how participants interact to accomplish such actions online The next

section introduces the electronic environment in which human social interaction can be found, and reviews literature on online social interaction

Electronic Environment as a Communicative Context By default, humans communicate verbally and non-verbally because both sounds (1 e, voice) and images (1 e, body movement) can be perceived by other participants without using any devices With the internet, we can be physically separated by distance but can still communicate, textually (1 e, by typing texts) and visually (1 e, by reading text) Although the medium and channels have been altered by the internet, we can communicate and perform social activities This section explores the internet as a medium for social interaction, synchronous text-based communication on the internet, linguistic features of language on the internet, and human social interaction on the internet

Internet: Technologies for Communication The Internet, first known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network) in 1969 and renamed Internet in 1983, is a number of computers linked together into a communication network (Baron, 2003) It was initially intended for scientific communication in the United States and remained in use for the same purposes until the 1970s (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, & Robinson, 2001) It was not until the 1980s that ordinary people began to have access to computer networks The internet is the fastest growing new communication technology (Flaherty, Pearce, & Rubin, 1998) which provides different ways of communication

49 such as electronic mail (or email) and web chats Operating on networked computers, the chat programs that are currently in use can be dated back to 1988 when the first online chat programs, Internet Relay Chat or IRC, was written by a Finnish student to enable synchronous communication Differences between the chat program in the eighties and the ones currently in use are, among others, the use of emoticons (discussed below), allowance of a private channel and multiple channels, the number of characters in each e-turn, etc It should be remarked that the internet is not limited only to technologies for communication In fact, as inclusively defined by DiMaggio et al (2001), the internet is an "electronic network that links people and information through computers and other digital devices, allowing person-to-person communication and information retrieval" (p 307) Bellamy and Hanewicz (1999) and Santoro (1994) agree with this definition and propose that, according to its purposes, the internet is divided into human-human communication and informatics However, the former receives close attention from researchers from language-related disciplines because of its completely new and unique channels of human communication and because it deals with direct human-human personal and group communicative practices, and it is thus the focus of the next subsection

Computer-Mediated Communication Murray (1991) defines computer-mediated communication as "any humanhuman communication mediated via computer" (p 18) This definition underscores computers and networks as mediators of human communication Several authors

50 have added to the definition of CMC that it is mainly text-based natural language that is transmitted and/or received via a computer connection (Baron, 2003, Herring, 2001) These definitions recognize that CMC takes place on the internet, though CMC can operate on several new portable devices (this is discussed in the following section) I consider CMC as interpersonal human communication, mostly in the form of typed text, that is enhanced by a networked system In general, CMC is divided into asynchronous (I e, delayed-time) and synchronous (l e, real-time) communication (Kiesler et al, 1984), according to the level of interactiveness and the dependence on the presence of a co-participant for the communication to take place The former does not require participants to be online at the same time in order to communicate (e g, email, discussion boards), while the latter does (e g, chat) The time lag of the former tends to be greater than that of the latter Online chats, one activity of synchronous CMC, not only permit humanhuman communication to operate but also provide a new empirical arena for various research traditions in linguistics, communication, education, psychology, and sociology, due to the fact that they result in completely novel and unique social interaction in which language, communicative practices, learning, cogmtively- and socially-related behaviors, and communities emerge Indeed, a debatable question regarding synchronous CMC is no longer whether or not technologies of communication affect language, human behaviors, communication, and society (Baron, 2003, DiMaggio et al, 2001, Kiesler et al, 1984) but, rather, under what circumstances, in what ways, and to what extent they do so

(Herring, 2002,2004b, Walther, 2004) This section does not exhaustively discuss all of the effects of synchronous CMC but rather gives an overview of its characteristics

Technically, is synchromcity a criterion? Initially, CMC can be divided into synchronous and asynchronous modes according to the synchromcity of participation Yet, Kalman and Rafaeh (2007) disagree with the idea of dichotomizing CMC into asynchronous and synchronous modes and propose a continuum between highly asynchronous on the one end and highly synchronous on the other because of several factors discussed below Their analysis of manners in which participants actually utilize CMC presents three important findings First, during the course of communication, there are several activities that operate on the internet which ranges from highly asynchronous to highly synchronous For example, participants may first chat online, then use a discussion board, before exchanging several emails Participants may even use a first pair part of an adjacency pair in one mode, and the receiver might respond in a different mode (l e, second pair part) (Murray, 1988b) Second, there are intermediate levels of synchromcity found in each CMC activity Online chats, for example, can be highly synchronous when the two participants interactively converse Although email is recognized as asynchronous, it may be considered synchronous if the receiver is logged on when the email is sent and responds immediately It is important to note that the feature of synchromcity is dynamic rather than static because, for example, email may be as fast as or even faster than online chats

52 Third, the levels of synchromcity are not only a function of the medium being used but also of decisions made by participants Users constantly make decisions on the level of synchromcity they prefer for each conversational exchange they are involved in Most participants are aware of the technological functions of available media that can serve their need or the "context of situation" (Murray 1988b p 351) Murray (1988b) suggests that the context of situation covers the nature of the topic being communicated (whether it is sensitive, whether it is recorded, or whether it is a secret) Also, the context of situation covers the availability of a certain CMC mode at that moment In addition, the context of situation includes the relationship between the sender and the receiver, amount of time for participants to communicate, and the nature of communication (e g, whether or not it is urgent, or secret) Kalman and Rafaeh (2007) propose four technological trends facilitated by advanced computer networks that weaken the dichotomy distinguishing asynchronous and synchronous First, the ease and ubiquity of digitahzation allows information to be digitahzed and communicated anytime anywhere Secondly, the convergence of media blurs the boundaries between the message and the medium used to create the message and to receive it Third, the increasing availability and quality of wireless connection allow devices to be online all the time Fourth, portability allows messages to be created, sent, and responded to instantly, and stored indefinitely These four factors imply that synchromcity of computermediated communication does not reflect a function of technologies for communication, but rather a result of user preferences and decisions at the time they communicate

53

There are other factors which are user-related and network-related which blur the dichotomy between synchronous CMC and asynchronous CMC Osman and Herring (2007) and Murray (2000) identify factors, such as typing speed and skills, language proficiency, internet connections, system overload, length of delays, and the computer capacity To sum up, the idea of classifying CMC into either synchronous or asynchronous modes should be done with caution because of participants' decisions and the emergence of new communication technologies This section is not meant to disqualify the dichotomy but to provide useful guidelines for the classification Besides the debate on synchromcity, another issue that is debated is the medium of computer-mediated communication This is discussed next

The medium of online chat- is it speech or text? It is unquestionable that synchronous CMC is changing language in general because of new technological means for production and transmission of language (Baron, 2003) One topic that is of interest to linguists is the type of discourse or mode of online chats, I e, whether it is spoken or written It is essential to point out that messages are typically delivered via channels and through a medium (Halhday & Hasan, 1989) As a component of mode, channel is defined as the actual modality employed by owners of the text to transmit the message That is, via channel, owners of a message send the message through phonic (I e, sound), graphic (I e, sign and orthography), or gestural (e g, sign language) means Medium is defined as the patterning of wordings which can be either spoken or written

54 Language that seems spoken-like not only associates with the phonic channel, as in everyday exchanges, but also can be conveyed by a graphic channel, as in emails among acquaintances Language that seems wntten-hke in the same fashion can be phomcally transmitted, as in academic conferences, or graphically transmitted as in term papers At this point, we can assume the potential difficulties when categorizing synchronous CMC, whether it is spoken or written Biber (1986), Chafe (1982), Chafe and Tannen (1987), Schafer (1981), and Tannen (1982) have discussed in great length the differences between spoken and written language of various text types However, they did not include in their corpus texts that were distributed by reciprocally interactive, text-based, and electronic means Before the relationship between online chats and spoken and written discourse is presented, it is useful to see the characteristics of spoken and written discourse as they have been typically characterized

55 Table 2.1 Features ofspoken language and written language3

Variables Innate capacity Spoken Language Human beings are equipped with vocal systems We all acquire a speaking skill All reach the same general level of their competence Through an organized system of sound (phonic] symbols Two-way transmission Primarily a social activity, carried out between two or more persons Speakers must constantly monitor their recipients to check their understanding There is time pressure Written Language Was developed long after spoken language It must be consciously taught mostly in formal settings Some become literate, while others do not Through an organized system of graphic symbols One-way transmission Mainly monologic where the audience is removed in time and space Writers often take their readers into account, but they can only do this by a process of empathy There is no time pressure for writers Receivers are not expected to provide immediate feedback or response Written texts are decontextuahzed as they cannot rely on contextual clues There is no use of such cues, especially in academic writing Authors have time to put their ideas into a more complex, coherent, and integrated whole There is an extensive use of markers to mark relationships between clauses Writing allows repeated reading and close analysis Writing features include pages, lines, capitalization, and punctuation

Transmission method and process

Participant involvement Responsibility of participant who originates the message

Context

Immediate response, e g, verbal tokens or physical reactions are expected Speech is more context-sensitive and flexible than writing There are visual cues such as body language, gestures, and auditory cues Looser construction, repetition, rephrasing, and comment clauses

Parahnguistic cues

Structure and organization

Time-related factors Linguistic features

Discourse markers replaced by fillers, such as er, umm, hmmn, and logical connectors, such as and, but, then, etc There is no time-lag between production and reception Includes prosody and intonation, and other vocal characteristics, e g, contracted forms, and slang, etc Ungrammaticahty is allowed, even

Grammaticahty is expected

The table is based on all of these authors Brown, G (1978), Chafe, W (1981,1982), Chafe, W and Tannen, D (1987], Crystal, D (2001), Foertsch, J A (1995), Lippi-Green, R (1997), Murray, D (1988b), Schafer, J (1981), and Tannen, D (1982)

56
expected Less syntactically complex and complete than written language Contains more repetition than written language and more interactive control markers Ephemeral Editing occurs in spontaneous "online" fashion (1 e, repair) Errors, once spoken, cannot be withdrawn Formality Social functions Can be planned, but is, very often, spontaneous Very suited to social or phatic functions due to the vast range of nuances which can be expressed by prosody and non-verbal features Syntactically complex

Fillers and channel markers are not normally included in text Relatively permanent It is more likely to be edited Errors are eliminated in later drafts Some ideas or weak constructions are more likely to be filtered out along the way Always planned Very suited to the recording of facts and the communication of ideas, and to tasks of memory and learning It is heavily informational and documentary

Transience Editing

57

I now turn to a discussion of the medium of online chats which is based on the variables used in Table 2 1 Note that linguistic features and organization, which are partially the results of, for example, time-related factors or participant responsibility, may be discussed under those variables These thirteen variables are overlapping rather than absolute, and some are discussed in the following section First, in terms of innate capacity, like written language, participating in online chats is, undoubtedly, not a natural feature of being human To participate in online chats, a participant has to somehow possess computer literacy skills Another requirement is that a participant needs an electronic device in order to chat electronically However, these two requirements are not what a normal child has to meet before he or she can speak The research by Kalman and Rafaeh (2007) presents convincing evidence for the biological basis of fundamental human communicative interactions that prefer "reciprocity, responsiveness, and synchromcity" (p 5) Therefore, asynchronous CMC remains new to human beings because it contradicts their nature that prefers highly synchronous interaction However, they point out that participants do not like time-lag synchronous CMC and that the technological developments for communicative purposes have not yet been around for enough human generations to allow natural selection to influence this technology or its effective utilization The second criterion deals with transmission method and process In online chats, participants transform information into text on the keyboard, those receiving it read it on the computer screen and respond in the same format as it is received That is, both parties electronically exchange the letter-like messages, and only text

58

conveys meaning and does interactional work (Herring, 2004a) Text production and text reception, which are "visually-presented language" (Herring, 2001, p 612), stress the fact that online communication is physically a written medium Like text, online chats are a one-way transmission (Herring, 2001) which means that the recipient does not see the message as it is produced or that recipients do not know that the messages are addressed to them until they arrive The third criterion explains the involvement of participants in online communication In this regard, online chats appear to have more in common with spoken language (Baron, 2003) because there are, at least, two participants logged on simultaneously in a chat room in order to start, resume, or end a conversation The nature of online chats assumes receivers of the message, and the relevant reaction of receivers resembles the synchronous collaboration of speech The next criterion, participant responsibility, claims that online chats have more in common with speech in that online chats allow senders to determine the clarity and effectiveness of a message as they are presenting it moment-by-moment (Foertsch, 1995) One reason for this is that, for an online chat to start or continue, two chatters have to be co-present This makes the chat more interactive and immediate When chatting online, participants have to be sensitive to their recipient in terms of understanding as the chat emerges Intersubjectivity as introduced earlier comes to play an important role in how participants build and maintain their mutual understanding That is, the recipient's understanding, feedback, or responses have effects on the shape and direction of chats

59 The fifth criterion is context Like speech, a sequence of e-turns can display how each e-turn is both text-shaped and text-renewing That is, each e-turn is interpreted in the context of the talk that precedes it and forms part of the context of talk that follows it This aspect of context is constructed, maintained, and modified e-turn-by-e-turn as chat progresses The next criterion includes paralmguistic cues In online chats, receivers are electronically, not physically, co-present The physical absence of online chatters causes the lack of paralmguistic and extrahnguistic cues (Edge, 2006, Kiesler et al, 1984, Krohn, 2004, Murray, 2000, Wilkins, 1991) that are used to convey meaning, expedite the sender's message delivery, allocate the turn, and facilitate the receiver's comprehension of the message (Goodwin, 1981, Schegloff, 1984) The seventh criterion, structure and organization, explains writing conventions, which can be found in online chats (Baron, 2003), e g, punctuation, the presentation of idea, discourse markers, etc Still, in their studies, Al-Sa'di and Hamdan (2005) and Mumandy (2002) discovered that in most of the samples, punctuation was missing Some punctuation marks (e g, a question mark or a period) can be intentionally omitted unless it impedes the comprehensibihty of the message (Wilkins, 1991) With regard to structure and organization at the discourse level, Brown (1978), Foertsch (1995), and Murray (1990) show that arguments communicated in computer conversation, like speech, are not presented in an orderly fashion Some ideas are left unmentioned while some already mentioned messages are reordered, repeated, or presented slightly differently Ideas are presented in online chats in a

simple manner or simple syntactic structure because of time pressure This makes online chats more like speech With regard to structure, verbal fillers used in verbal communication, such as er, umm, and hmmm are often used by online chatters The eighth criterion is time-related factors Due to the interactive nature of the exchange, many think of online chats as speaking because they are found to be responsively and interactively faster than ordinary written exchanges Time pressure results in electronically typed text that is "interactive, colloquial, and spontaneous" (Foertsch, 1995, p 304), which resembles the production of speech By the same token, when messages are typed quickly and spontaneously, they are therefore less coherent and less thoughtfully structured than printed texts Yet, it is found that the speed at which people type is significantly slower than the speed at which they talk (Herring, 2001, Murray, 2000) With regard to time-lag, as discussed earlier, interactiveness in online chats depends on, among other things, typing speed, internet connections, system overload, or computer capacity However, online chatters expect to get a reply immediately Although replies in online chat are not as instantaneous as face-toface talk, they occur more quickly than during written correspondence In online chats, long time-lag or silence simply means the other participant is not available to chat or has left the chat room Linguistic features are the ninth criterion The language used in online chats makes it seem like speech Because message transmission is immediate and interactive, e-turns are short and unedited (Al-Sa'di & Hamdan, 2005, Baron, 2003) However, compared to speech, texts in synchronous CMC are simpler in terms of

range of vocabulary used and measures of word and sentence length (Herring, 2002) E-turns are found to contain contractions (e g, I'm vs / am, He'll vs He will), sentence fragments, tag questions (e g, right7), incomplete sentences, informal lexis, colloquialisms, and informal constructions (Murray, 1988b, 1990,1991) The tenth criterion is transience Like written text, online chats can be recorded, which depends largely on the participants Many websites (e g, MSN, Yahoo, and Skype) in which a chat room is housed provide such technical options not only whether to record a current conversation but also whether to retrieve previously recorded ones Therefore, online chats are not always as ephemeral as previously thought by Foertsch (1995) and Murray (1988b), who believed that the transcripts are completely gone once the computers on which the web chat occurred are turned off or once the participants log off The next criterion is editing Online chats allow senders, while and after typing, to check, revise, edit, and format the message as often and as long as needed before the intended receivers read it (Al-Sa'di & Hamdan, 2005, Herring, 2001, Murray, 1991) Ideally, as a result, it is presumable that online chats can create the careful and reflective construction of an abstractable and highly structured text (Foertsch, 1995) Although this is indeed technically possible for senders to do, in reality, it is pretty rare because of the simultaneously electronic presence of receivers, which requires interactivity In addition, long pauses in electronic media where physical and verbal cues are lacking can be perceived as conversational closings The twelfth criterion concerns formality There are two aspects of formality to be discussed here the linguistic features of e-messages and the process of e-

message production Message features, such as ellipsis and contractions which can be often found in spoken language (Chafe, 1982), can be frequently located in online chats (Murray, 1991) The process of message production explains how a message is produced in regard to spontaneity Because of the fast flow of online chats, online chatters do not usually have time to plan their message This makes online chats closer to spoken language than to written language The thirteenth and last criterion concerns social functions Like everyday exchanges, online chats are a highly social medium where the activities of social interaction, conveyed through some social features of language, are designed to bond online chatters and maintain social solidarity This is supported by Al-Sa'di and Hamdan (2005) and Foertsch (1995), who assert that it is common to see humor, emotional subjectivity, and taboo words in online chats Yet Murray (1990) finds that online participants are not usually engaged in phatic communication such as greetings or bidding farewell, both of which often are considered social interactional functions of language (Crystal, 1997) This is supported by Trevino, Lengel, and Daft (1987), who believe that personal information, which is conveyed by, for instance, non-verbal codes, does not pass through written medium The above variables have been discussed as characterizing the differences between spoken and written discourse When the criteria used to mark differences between these two types of discourse are used to classify online discourse, it appears that online chats are more similar speech than to text However, Crystal (2001) argues that language in online communication is "better seen as written language which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech than as spoken

63 language which has been written down" (p 51) It can be problematic to classify online chats, using the traditional dichotomy between spoken-like language and wntten-hke language Online chat is neither of them, it selectively and adaptively displays properties of both These properties are discussed in the next subsection

Unclassified features of online chats. There are some features of online discourse that do not fall into spoken or written discourse categories The first feature is simultaneous talk which includes overlaps and interruptions, which cannot be located in online communication (Schonfeldt & Golato, 2003), though, according to Sacks et al (1974), it is common in ordinary talk Overlaps and interruptions may be identified in online chats only when participants simultaneously type e-turns, nevertheless, simultaneous typing does not interrupt the flow of the chats and does not prevent others from starting and continuing to type a message, or from sending a message to the chat server Messages that are simultaneously typed by participants in the same channel will all be put in the dialog box and still be intelligible The second feature concerns the process or product of online discourse Baron (2003) views e-turns as a product, on the one hand, in the sense that only a finished work can be consumed by receivers On the other hand, she considers eturns a "process" due to the fact that an "[electronic] conversation is typically a work in progress, with the outcome being determined by the interaction between participants" (p 11) The logs of typed verbal interaction in online chats reflect an "ongoing discourse process" (p 11) that consists of at least two participants taking

turns These turns, sequence of turns, and turn-taking systems found in online chats are not the same as in spoken language Another feature is the multi-dimensionality of communication Synchronous CMC allows multiple participants to communicate simultaneously, therefore, there are many exchanges and topics to attend to at a time, and a participant can attend to more than one exchange and topic at a time This feature contrasts with ordinary conversation where "one party talks at a time" (Sacks et al, 1974, p 700) Sacks et al (1974) also propose "turn allocation techniques" (p 703) as a hierarchical process for selecting the next speaker in everyday conversation Although all the turn-taking techniques can be located in online chats, they do not necessarily have to be hierarchical as in everyday talk Moreover, unless the name of the addressee is included in the message, for instance, in a question-answer sequence, self-selection seems to be the default speaker selection technique in online chats In brief, this section introduced the differences between written discourse and spoken discourse Then, based on the criteria used to identify these two types, we discussed the features of online chats Online chats have characteristics that cannot be classified into either written or spoken discourse, leading it to be considered either a new type of discourse or a hybrid (Al-Sa'di & Hamdan, 2005, Baron, 2003, Foertsch, 1995, Herring, 2001, Mumandy, 2002, Murray, 1990, Tanskanen, 1998, Zitzen & Stein, 2004) While the categorization of online discourse remains controversial, many researchers have directed attention to the following language features that are

65 created in online discourse to see how online language is developed, used, and how it conveys meanings, the spoken language features that are used in textual communication, and the features of written language found in web chats The next section presents some of the features found in English online discourse

Language in Synchronous CMC This section examines the linguistic features of the English used in online chats at the lexical, morphological, and syntactic levels Al-Sa'di and Hamdan (2005) contend that cyberspace has left its impact on language at all levels, from the word level to the discourse level Chat programs allow online chatters to use only characters, symbols, smileys (see the discussion of the use of smileys under emoticons below), and a combination of these, which are available on the keyboard It should be mentioned here that not only communication technologies but also participants, intentionally or accidentally, have an impact on online language form This is evident when synchronous CMC participants employ strategies that reduce the time needed to write the message, substitute for the lack of paralmguistic or non-verbal cues, mimic spoken language features, or express themselves creatively

66 Table 2.2 Features of language m synchronous CMC Morphology and syntax4

Features Word Truncation Descriptions 1 Letter or numeral is used instead of a word when the letter or numeral and the word are homophones in speech (e g, u 2) 2 Syllables in a polysyllabic word are replaced by a homophonous letter or numeral (e g, b4,2nite) 3 All (or most) of the vowels in a word are deleted as long as the consonants are still capable of unambiguously conveying the intended meaning (e g, ppl] 4 One letter for a word (usually a function word rather than a lexical one) is common (e g, n] 5 g is dropped in -ing constructions (e g, suffenn, goin] 6 Informal, colloquial, or slang spelling is used if shorter than the standard spelling of the same word (e g, cuz) 7 Only the initial letter of a word is used when the context easily determines the intended word or phrase (e g, bday) 1 Asterisks are added to indicate emphasis or to correct what was previously typed (e g, *fnsbee) 2 Multiple vowels are added at the end of a word to raise intonation (e g soooo] 1 Capitalization is rare Even proper nouns and sentence-initial words are usually typed with a lower-case initial letter (e g, I do 2 u think so 7 ] 2 Sometimes a whole sentence (or a series of sentences) is typed in capitals That is because the user has his caps lock on It could be meaningless, but it is sometimes used to show emphasis or to denote shouting, anger, etc (e g YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT FROM BEGINNING] 3 Apostrophe is not used (lhv done tht) 4 A word is spelled just the same way it is pronounced (e g, hi, lata) 1 Subjects, auxiliary verbs, determiners, copulas can be deleted (e g, currently in park be by later) 2 Abbreviations or acronyms are widely used (e g, btw] 3 Series of punctuation marks are widely used to emphasize the functions of a message and affect (why-"7?-"7??????????????????)

Emphasis and Intonational Word CyberOrthography

Syntactic Level

Al-Sa'di, R A, and Hamdan, J M (2005), Crystal, D (2001), DuBartell, D (1995), Flaherty, L,Pearce, K,& Rubin R (1998], Mumandy, A (2002), Murray, D (1988a, 1990)

67 It can be seen in Table 2 2 that a number of features of the English language have been affected by CMC This may have led some scholars to express their concerns regarding this issue and how teenagers naturally absorb this type of written language (see Baron, 2009, for the discussion) Baron (1986,2002a, 2002b, 2003,2005,2009) and Crystal (2001), however, believe that, on the internet, English is used differently because of the constraints of the technologies, which reflects the common sense, creative thinking and ingenuity of internet users This section has discussed some linguistic features of language on the internet Not only all language levels (e g, morphological, lexical, semantic, and syntactic levels), but also the interactional level has been affected by the internet In other words, both language and human social interaction operating in CMC are found to be different from that which people regularly experience face-to-face This is discussed next

Structural and Interactional Features of Synchronous CMC In addition to the above features of the English language (l e, lexical, morphological, and syntactic units) on which CMC has an impact, the discourse level has been affected by communication technologies and CMC users This can be demonstrated below

Turn-taking system and sequences. Computer conversation is characterized by a complex turn-taking system and by sequences consisting physically, not functionally, of adjacent pairs Chat systems

disrupt patterns of turn-taking, causing an initiating message and its response to become separated by irrelevant messages This phenomenon is different from what Schegloff and Sacks (1973) and Schegloff (1972) called insertion sequences, though insertion sequences can be found in online chats Herring (1999) contends that the interactional incoherence of computer conversation reflects the fact that computer networks were not originally intended as a means for social interaction, but for information analysis and retrieval This interactional incoherence can be observed locally and globally Local disruption results from an interruption in an adjacency pair For instance, in a dialog box, one can see the following pattern

A A B A B B

Question 1 Question 2 Answer 1 Question 3 Answer 3 Answer 2

Figure 21 Possible sequencing in a computer conversation

This figure shows the interactional incoherence of a conversation found in online chats Each message is posted in the order in which it is received by the system, without regard for which message they are responding to The system allows online participants to post a message whenever they want without negotiating to be the next one to post or to hold the floor Technically, this is because the operations of receiving and sending messages are separate (Wilkins, 1991) Besides the chat system, it is found that computer, network, and typing

69 speed lead to interactional incoherence Online chats are communicated only via the physical appearance of typed text, so senders do not know whether or not perspective receivers are in the process of replying Also, online participants cannot use eye gaze and intonation to control the flow of the conversation (Wilkins, 1991) as in everyday talk (Goodwin, 1981, Lerner, 1996a, 2003, 2004) Like locally-observed interactional incoherence, globally-observed incoherence results from chat systems that allow multiparty conversations Research in everyday interaction finds that when there are more participants, there tends to be more chance that the group will be divided into several subgroups and that topics are accordingly divided This is also true for online chats where each participant can participate in more than one topic at a time, and many topics can be simultaneously developed (Herring, 1999, Murray, 1991) If a script of online chats consisting of multiple participants is printed out, one can see that it is topically multidirectional and thus interactionally incoherent on a global level Although this feature might appear to be a weakness of online chats, it fosters playfulness and interpersonal interactivity, especially when multiple participants are involved (Herring, 2002, Walther, 2004) In brief, the turn-taking system and sequence organization of synchronous CMC represent the unique structural order of computer conversation In the bigger picture, these structures of talk reflect a course of action which resembles a spate of ordinary talk Some social activities found to be typical in ordinary encounters are not usually found in synchronous CMC, while some social activities are uniquely characteristic of synchronous CMC, the next subsection introduces some of them

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Social interactional activities. This section presents the interactional activities found in an online environment Not only are turns sequentially misplaced in online chats, some turns functioning as second pair parts can be missing as in openings and closings It has been found that ordinary talk usually begins with greetings and/or summons (Duranti, 1997) Yet, in her data, Murray (1988a, 1990, 2000) reveals that greetings, though optional, are absent in synchronous CMC She also finds that if online chatters use a greeting, it is never responded to with a greeting by the receiver This is due to characteristics of web chats that "free participants from traditional social constraints on interaction" (Murray, 1988b, p 366) or "social maintenance of conversations" (p 367), and the fact that participants do not think, when done online that it is rude not to greet each other or to respond to a greeting According to Duranti (1997) and Schegloff (1968), greetings also function as attention-getting devices, as described in summons-answer sequences before participants establish a shared field of interaction In online chats, participants are not physically present so it is hard or not necessary for them to display and acknowledge "public recognition" (Duranti, 1997, p 68) of each other's presence, while in ordinary talk, they can do so visually and/or verbally Some electronic messenger devices allow their users to recognize the electronic presence of others who are included in the list Still, the electronic presence of the other does not always guarantee that others are able and willing to engage in chats Murray (1988a, 1988b) reports the use of u there7 in online chats which functions as a summons She finds that 'u there 7 ' is used by senders at the beginning

of the chat as a conversational initiative, as checking the interest of the other to chat, and, during the course of chat, as checking the attentional status of the other Interestingly, in their study, Hancock and Dunham (2001) identify several forms of summons-answer sequences that were used as a second pair part by a receiver without a first pair part, for example, continue when a participant wants the other to keep doing what he is currently doing, or still here It can also be used by senders, e g, still checking or downloading, when they are expected to respond Another social activity is closings, which are customarily expected when ordinary conversation is ending Closings are usually prefaced by pre-closing activities negotiated between participants (Goodwin, 1981, Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) Yet, in online chats, Murray (1988a, 1990, 2000) found that participants did not usually employ pre-closmg activities and did not do closings She found that silence worked as a closing Also, when participants did close, the turns that functioned as closings were single turns rather than pairs of turns The reasons for this phenomenon would be the same as those for openings in addition to the communicative culture of online chats I have discussed social activities found in synchronous CMC Some are designed to imitate those of ordinary encounters, while some are developed specifically in synchronous CMC and are thus characteristic of synchronous CMC Two characteristics of synchronous CMC that have been widely discussed in several disciplines are presented below

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Flaming. This subsection introduces flaming - actions found in face-to-face and electronic encounters, but are more common in electronic encounters As you will see, flaming is mainly about strong language used in online communication In the same manner, other-completed repair is the practice of repair that pioneering CA researchers believe not to occur often in face-to-face talk, as the findings from this study reveal, other-completed repair occurs very often in synchronous CMC There may be some explanations for the occurrence of both flaming and other-completed repair in online communication The lack of contextual cues in online chats contributes to the use of language that is not usually found in either ordinary conversation or writing Flaming, was first introduced by Kiesler et al (1984) as the "practice of expressing oneself more strongly on the computer than one would in other communication settings" (p 1130) This definition, which emphasizes the rarity of flaming in speech and text, leads Kiesler et al to conclude that participants in CMC are more uninhibited than they are in face-to-face talk Flaming is generated by word choice, how language use, or the purposes or effects of language use that online participants attach to their e-turns Word choice considered as flaming contains direct, or even rude or profane language (Baron, 2003) Avgennakou (2003) and Crystal (2001) argue that flaming is characterized as nonconforming, direct, or aggressive as being related to some topics, and directed at an individual recipient Flaming can also be judged by the purpose of language use when flamethrowers use to express, for example, sarcasm, insults,

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aggressiveness, intimidation, offense, and hostility (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, 1986) Kiesler, Zubrow, Moses, & Geller (1985) have listed activities considered flaming which are impolite statements (e g, You are a jerk), swearing, flirting (e g, Can we meet after this experiment7), exclamations (e g, Hoorayf), expressions of personal feelings toward the other ( e g , / like you), and the use of superlatives in expressing evaluations ( e g , / like him best) Sproull and Kiesler (1986) add to this list telling bad news, sending messages that express negative sentiment (e g, terrible), and using typographic extremes marked by exclamation points and by words typed in all capital letters Although these words or expressions are usually found in everyday talk, they are considered flaming not only because they are not often used in front of the person to whom they are addressed but also because their users are less careful with the language they use online Avgennakou (2003) usefully summarizes the causes of flaming in online communication First, online chats yield low social presence because of their lack of contextual cues, such as eye contact, facial expression, tone of voice, and body language This low level of social presence leads online chatters to be less socially oriented toward the other chatters In other words, the lack of those cues makes CMC less personal because it reduces the flamethrower's sense of others as individuals (Kiesler et al, 1985) Second, social anonymity is technologically supported in online communication, and therefore self-awareness is reduced As a result, relatively unconstrained and unregulated behaviors occur and embarrassment, guilt, empathy for others, and fear of revenge and rejection tend not to be found

Social anonymity assumes the absence of social contextual cues (e g, online participants' relative status, social indicators, and the nature of the social situation) Kiesler et al (1984) describe these social contextual cues as fostering less inhibited behaviors, as a result, certain behaviors are encouraged by the medium That is, lack of such cues leads participants and, therefore, their behaviors to be less repressed Some conversational behaviors, rarely displayed in face-to-face encounters because of cultural norms or laws, can be expected to appear online Kiesler et al argue that online participants are more uninhibited than they are in face-to-face groups as measured by uninhibited verbal behaviors, such as swearing, insults, name calling, and hostile comments Third, flaming can be caused by the lack of extraverbal cues and by the insufficient multiplicity of channels in online communication These cues and multiplicity of channels, which are found in everyday encounters, facilitate talk about certain topics that are relatively equivocal, ambiguous, and emotional Therefore, the lack of such cues and insufficient multiplicity of channels imply that the more equivocal, ambiguous, or emotional information should not be communicated online or, if done, that the outcomes might not be as successful as when done face-to-face This point echoes the ineffectiveness of the communicative function of online chats in comparison to everyday exchanges According to Turnage (2007), the fourth cause explaining the occurrence of flaming is second-guessing This occurs when receivers interpret an e-turn and also evaluate the flamethrower Wilson (1993), similarly, claims that in situations where there is a disagreement between spoken exchanges, as in situations in past

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conversations, and written exchanges as in e-turns, the receiver negatively interprets the e-turns because the receiver expects the e-turns to be biased either by the flamethrower or the flamethrower's experience Although the discussion above includes the characteristics and causes of flaming, when an exchange should be seen as flaming or what the indicators of flaming should be remain debatable Crystal (2001) argues that those involved in flaming do not usually see their hot interchange and communicative activities, for instance, arguments or discussions, asflaming,but other online participants do On the contrary, Avgennakou (2003) views flaming from an emic perspective He argues that a threat, insult, or highly emotional statement should not be interpreted as flaming if nobody in the interaction seems to take offense or be insulted by it For him,flamingis a "co-constructed phenomenon emerging between interactants" (p 276) A flaming e-turn is one that appears to run contrary to the norms sanctioned by other participants and thus provokes their reaction The debate mentioned above about whether or not an exchange is seen as flaming leads O'Sulhvan and Flanagin (2003) to classify flaming into four main categories according to the flamethrower's, receiver's, and third party's perception of the exchange First, a "failed flame" (p 84) refers to a situation where the flamethrower's intent is toflame,but no one else views this message as a violation Second, a "missed flame" (p 84) occurs when the flamethrower's intent is to violate norms but the receiver does not perceive the message as a violation, even though a violation is apparent to a third party Third, an "inside flame" (p 84) is evident when the flamethrower's intent is to violate norms and the receiver

perceives that norms are violated, but the violation is not apparent to an outsider Fourth, a "true flame" (p 85) is a message in which the flamethrower intentionally violates interactional norms and is perceived as violating those norms by the receiver as well as by third-party observers Effective flames, from the flamethrower's perspective, are those that are perceived by the receiver on whom the flamethrower intentionally wanted his or her message to have a negative impact If those people do not perceive the flame (1 e, failed flaming and missed flaming), the flaming is unsuccessful, and the flamethrower may revise or elaborate his or her initial thought The flamethrower's verbal process of revising or elaborating the initial thought after an unsuccessful flaming can be understood as a repair or, to be specific, a self-repair I have argued above that flaming is an activity that is not what participants typically do face-to-face This is because participants in an online communication are less socially oriented toward the other participants, because participants are socially anonymous, and because their self-awareness is reduced All of these reasons are believed to be caused by the fact that social cues and other cues are filtered out online (Culman & Markus, 1987) Although the explanations for the frequent occurrence offlamingin synchronous CMC are drawn on speakers' conscious intention and therefore appear to be static, they point out the nature of both flaming and other-completed repair as socially disaffihative actions The findings from this study, which focuses on other-completed repair in online communication, may be able to help explain the frequent occurrence offlamingin synchronous CMC, from a conversation analytic perspective The lack of physical

presence online, which leads toflaming,can result in the replacement of facial expressions with, among other things, emotional icons, or emoticons, which are discussed below

Emoticons. One of the most distinctive features of synchronous CMC is the use of emoticons Emoticons, also known as icons, emotional icons (Wilson, 1993) or relational icons (Walther & D'Addano, 2001) reportedly first appeared in online communication in 1982 when Scott Fahlman, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher, typed ) in his message Because of their appearance, all emoticons are also known as smileys To produce emoticons, one types punctuation marks (sometimes along with characters or numerals) to indicate facial expressions The punctuation marks that make up emoticons are typed in sequence on a single line, then placed after, if any, the final punctuation marks of each e-turn, and read sideways Normally, a smiley face needs two keystrokes which, first, represents eyes and, second, a mouth One additional keystroke, though unnecessary, can be typed between the two keystrokes to add a nose to the face Some emoticons have hands (eg, " or w ) even though a participant types only two keystrokes As the name implies, emoticons are icons used to express emotion in online chats because online chats lack facial expressions, gestures, intonation, and the conventions of body posture and distance which are critical in expressing personal opinions and attitudes and in moderating social relationships (Baron, 2003, Crystal, 2001, Derks, Bos, & von Grumbkow, 2008, Krohn, 2004, Provine, Spencer, &

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Mandell, 2007, Walther & D'Addano, 2001, Wilson, 1993) Besides, it has been found that emoticons are used to strengthen the verbal part of a message that otherwise would be done facially They are also used to express humor, jokes, or irony, and to function as a politeness device Other functions are to create rapport to minimize misunderstanding of e-turns, to increase the richness of CMC, to achieve socially oriented communication through typed text, and to increase the warmth of the chats This use of emoticons reflects the conversational nature of synchronous CMC and the inadequacy of writing to express conversational intent There are many linguists and CMC researchers who study the effectiveness of emoticons Crystal (2001) identifies differences between facial expressions and emoticons in terms of consciousness of their online participants He believes that, because of the typing process, emoticons are consciously used to express the emotion of the participants, which differs from facially expressed emotions To rephrase this claim, senders have to put time and effort into typing an emoticon This raises the question of whether emoticons really represent the true emotion of the sender Crystal's claim is supported by Walther and D'Addano (2001), who comment that, although facial expressions are considered to be among the most controllable of non-verbal cues, they are not as deliberate and voluntary as emoticons One example is when one may unconsciously smile, but it is hard to imagine someone typing 0 with less awareness than of the words he or she is selecting To manually type texts that represent messages that are typically conveyed through the face is indeed conscious Walther & D'Addano conclude that, "although emoticons may be used to replicate non-verbal facial expressions, they are not non-verbal behavior" (p 329)

79 Differences between facial behaviors and emoticons are assumed to echo the shortcomings of the later When used as indicators of feelings, emoticons can cause mismatches between senders' actual feelings and the emoticons and, consequently, between receivers' interpretation of the emoticons and the emoticons to which senders attach intention (Wilson, 1993) Moreover, during ordinary talk, participants interactively and simultaneously use both linguistic and non-linguistic cues to make themselves understood (Goodwin, 1979,1984,1986, Lerner, 1996a, 2003), while emoticons are electronically produced and textually interpreted in a linear fashion In ordinary talk, participants speak and use prosody, facial expressions, and body language at the same time, while these activities are presented linearly in online chats Also, in online chats, the different places where senders put emoticons in their e-turn may have different emotional effects on a receiver The question regarding whether or not emoticons represent accurately the facial expressions of the users remains controversial in the field of CMC In either case, following an emic perspective, what appears in the dialog box is what other participants involved in the same chat room see and rely on when producing the next e-turn moment-by-moment, and is therefore what I as a researcher analyze Findings from this study, based on a CA perspective, can add to studies of emoticons in general as it reveals how participants take into account emoticons as parts of their interaction and establishment or reestabhshment of their mutual understandings Functioning as a code, emoticons are subject to misinterpretation, misunderstandings, and therefore repair When used as irony, humor, or politeness devices, emoticons may not be picked up by the receiver, and therefore the

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emotional impact on the receiver can be unexpected Humorous effects, for instance, may turn out to be face-threatening, as in the following example

Example 22. Emoticons (Wilson, 1993, p. 391) A anyone wanna buy some CPROS lottery tickets7 0

At a department in a university, there was a hot debate on whether lottery tickets should be sold More people that worked at the department voted for this activity A, one of many people who voted for it, sent out this e-message to everyone in the department This e-message was sent also to colleagues who disagreed on this departmental project who later interpreted this message as sarcasm In this situation, such colleagues tended not to pick up the humorous tone, though A believed it was humorous Due to the varying pragmatic functions of emoticons and the receivers' possible misinterpretation, there is a chance for misunderstandings to occur Regardless of a great chance for misinterpretation and emoticons' inaccurate representation of their users, emoticons represent the conversational nature of synchronous CMC and represent how participants try to adapt to the limits of web programs to imitate ordinary talk Emoticons are supposed to serve that very purpose, though the process and outcomes may be different

Summary This chapter reviewed the literature on repair and synchronous CMC Repair occurs ubiquitously because sources of misunderstandings can include almost

everything, external (e g, an endless list of differences between participants, environments, languages, etc) or internal to the ongoing talk (e g, violation of turntaking rules, word searches, replacements of what is said with something within the same lexical class, etc) A trouble source is visible to me, as the researcher, only when it is recognized as such by participants in a conversation Troubles in typing, reading, and understanding can be observed in synchronous CMC Causes, in addition to those mentioned in the last paragraph, can arise from the medium itself or from shortcomings of the writing system for dealing with the new environment Again, I am not exploring those in this dissertation, but rather how participants deal with them once they recognize them as a source of misunderstanding that hinders their online socializing Included in this chapter was a review of the sequence organization of conversational interaction It was intended to explain how people talk or communicate whether in an ordinary or mediated context Interaction consists of sequences of turns interactionally produced by participants during the course of conversation In this study, I analyze turns or, to be more specific, e-turns in online chats, that constitute the practice of repair The next chapter outlines the research methods employed in this study

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CHAPTER 3 DATA AND METHODOLOGY

In the preceding chapter, the literature on repair, sources of misunderstandings, sequence organization of conversational interaction, and computer-mediated communication was reviewed to provide the necessary general background on which this dissertation is based The current chapter demonstrates that CA, which was originated as a method for explicating primarily face-to-face talk, can be a potential method also for describing online human interaction Developed within a sociological domain, CA, a systematic analysis of the talk produced in everyday situations of human interaction, has proved to be highly distinctive both in methodology and findings Its methodology, inspired by the intellectual development of ethnomethodology, has been descriptive, observational, qualitative, and naturalistic in nature, which, through conversational data, leads to understandings of social action and interaction Repair in synchronous CMC, the focus of this dissertation, will be examined from a conversation analytic perspective It is the purpose of the current chapter to discuss the applications of CA to the study of both online interaction in general and repair in synchronous text-based talk in particular In order to accomplish this task, it is necessary to systematically analyze participants' interaction in synchronous CMC Here, the methods and procedures for doing so are introduced in four sections, namely, data, participants, and the language of the chats, electronic recordings and data collection, units of analysis, and data analysis

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Data, Participants, and Language of the Synchronous CMC Data As discussed, CA was developed to investigate norms, practices, and competencies underlying the organization of social action and interaction rather than language itself Because norms, practices, and competencies are what ordinary participants use and rely on in participating in intelligible, socially organized interaction, talk-in-interaction has been recognized by CA researchers as a strategic setting in which social structure can be studied Indeed, talk-in-interaction is a primordial site of sociality and a primary constituent of social life (Schegloff, 1991) Instead of examining conversational data collected from ordinary encounters as most CA researchers do, this study analyzes data collected exclusively from electronic talk-in-interaction Therefore, the data in this study consist of chat scripts Chat scripts at first glance appear similar to the transcribed mundane talk that most CA researchers customarily analyze However, working with web chats does not require me to transcribe the interaction This is because chat scripts function as the data that capture and present original online interactional phenomena That is, what actually goes on in web chats and what participants actually see are adequately coded textually in the chats (Herring, 1996) This yields high reliability (Perakyla, 1997, Seedhouse, 2005) In contrast, CA researchers working on ordinary talk need both transcriptions and recordings because, theoretically, the transcriptions are not a substitute for recordings, but a convenient way of looking at the conversational data I collected approximately seventy web chats from the participants I define one web chat as consisting of, at least, two e-turns that respond relevantly to each

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other In other words, one e-turn belongs to one participant and the other to the other participant One web chat typically starts when participants perform a summons-answer sequence after they log in or when they start talking to each other, a web chat ends with bidding a farewell (which is very rare), when participants log off, or when there is a long silence What counts as one web chat can be complicated when participants abruptly discontinue their chats, or stop chatting without bidding a farewell while not logging off from the chat program, or when they do not log off over a long period of time during which they participate in several chats A web chat consists of chat scripts which are produced in the form of e-turns Some web chats were as short as consisting of a few e-turns, while many were as long as comprising twenty pages or more In this study, it is the long web chats in which repair practices were frequently found to operate This is due to the fact that repair is usually inserted into ongoing talk, and that the longer the interaction is, the more chances it is subject to repairs Overall, there are more than nine hundred and fifty pages of chat scripts analyzed in this study Some web chats were a result of one-time chats, while some dyads participated in several online chats over an extensive period of time I have introduced what is considered data in this current study The chat scripts reflect the actual online interaction as it was produced moment-by-moment as a computer conversation emerged The next section will introduce the participants who produced the chats in their regular encounters

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Participants There were thirty-five parties participating in this study The majority of the parties were composed of two participants in each channel, only two web chats consisted of three participants The majority of the participants were Thai ESL, undergraduate, or graduate students in American and British universities, who chat with their Thai friends or non-Thai friends Their non-Thai friends are from China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Italy, Canada, the US, and UK The participants have known each other for quite some time, for instance, through school or work, and the majority of the participants had met their co-participants mperson before they started chatting online Each party consisted of at least one Thai student, to whom I was introduced by the Royal Thai Embassy I contacted them to request their chat scripts I consider them primary participants Each of these Thai students may have had a different co-participant in each chat room I consider the primary participants' coparticipants to be secondary participants because, although they participated in the study, I never had any contact with them The participants interacted in their ordinary online encounters What they produced reveals the structural organization of human sociality which this study further explores In addition, because their interactions were in English, this study explores how English functions as an international language The next subsection gives more details about the language of these online interactions

Language of the synchronous CMC The majority of the web chats were produced in English Although there were a few dyads who were both Thais, they always used English as the medium of interaction Foreign languages (e g, Thai, Chinese) were used sometimes in the web chats, though this was rare and when it did occur, it did not last throughout the whole computer conversation The participants sometimes used words from another language (e g, particles, and words signifying the gender of participants) in e-turns that had been so far constructed in English or in one-word e-turns When some words or some e-turns were produced in Thai, they were transcribed wordby-word and later glossed as a sentence underneath by me Some participants sometimes romanized the spelling of non-English words or expressions, but this was rare Besides the American and Canadian participants, other participants spoke English either as a second or as a foreign language These foreign students had lived or lived in either the US or UK for an extensive period of time Having been admitted to a program where English was used as the medium of instruction and having lived in English-speaking countries for quite some time suggests that their English language proficiency was sufficient enough for them to communicate on a regular basis The next section presents how data were collected in this study

Electronic Recordings and Data Collection This is a naturalistic observational study exploring mundane situations of human communication that were mediated by the internet This subsection, which

describes how the data were collected, deserves less space than others in this section and, certainly, than that of an experimental approach because CA researchers employ naturally occurring conversations as the basis for their research All web chats took place in a chat program Chat programs typically allow participants to chat and provide them with technological options (e g, a list of emoticons, voice and video calls, the display of the participants' and their coparticipants availability, image displays, and photo and file sharing, etc) By default, chat programs automatically save the chat scripts for a certain period of time on the chat messenger This means that the chat programs record the whole computer conversation as it emerges, unless the participants change the record option Participants can go back later to read their chat scripts, to save them on their computers, to forward them, or to delete them However, they are not allowed to make changes in the script itself once their chat scripts are recorded All the data that were collected are chat scripts that were recorded long before I was introduced to the participants This ensures that they are naturally occurring discourse To collect their chat scripts, I contacted the participants, provided them with instructions on how to retrieve their chat scripts from the chat programs, and asked them to send the chat scripts to me The chronological process of data collection is illustrated below

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Ordinary online social interaction (1 e, participants chatted before the researcher contacted them]
\y

Chat scripts (1 e, each time participants chat there are chat scripts which are stored in their chat programs)
\y

Data Collection (1 e, voluntary submission of chat scripts from the participants)

\y

Data (1 e, chat scripts)

Figure 3 1 The data collection process

Because the participants chatted long before I contacted them, I did not intervene in their chats and, therefore, I did not prompt reasons for conversation The participants freely chose with whom they wanted to chat, picked the time to chat, set up topics, managed the direction and flow of conversation, negotiated their participatory roles, and decided how long a chat should take That is, the participants mutually oriented to their chats and collaborated in order to achieve meaningful communication After the data were collected, they were analyzed from a conversation analytic perspective Before I demonstrate how the chat scripts were analyzed, it is important to understand the units of analysis, which represent repair practices

Units of Analysis The chat scripts were analyzed to locate repair practices Specifically, this dissertation studies e-turns that are sequenced in the practice of repair That is, as

89 was previously discussed, the unit of analysis in this study is the e-turn Like the organization of repair in everyday talk, that in synchronous CMC begins with an eturn at which the cause of problematic understanding or trouble source is located Recall that repair can be initiated without a trouble source and, on the other hand, some trouble sources do not necessarily lead to repair A trouble source e-turn is usually followed by an e-turn(s) designed by a participant or participants to initiate and complete a repair In order to observe the outcome of repair, whether there is a solution, whether it is successful, or whether there is an abandonment of the repair, it is essential to include e-turns following a repair-completion To sum up, the organization of repair covers a sequence of eturns starting from a trouble-source e-turn, if any, and ending with an outcome eturn, if any, which can be illustrated below

Prior turn Trouble source or repairable item Repair-initiation Repair-completion Outcome Continued talk

B A B A B A turn 1 turn 2 turn 3 turn 4

Figure 3 2 Sample of repair sequence in synchronous CMC

Figure 3 2 shows the sequential relationship between a trouble source, repairmitiation, and repair-completion This is one of the typical organizations of repair in

90 computer conversation However, it may take fewer e-turns when the repair is abandoned, if it is a self-repair or an other-completed repair completed within one turn, or if a repair-initiation specifies the trouble source On the other hand, a repair may take more e-turns, if repair is initiated much later, or if repair-initiation does not specifically locate the trouble source Some of these points may be more likely in computer conversation, which may be more incoherently organized or topically multidirectional, as discussed in chapter 2 I have presented how e-turns function as repair, how repair practice as a course of social action occupies several e-turns, and how e-turns are connected during the course of repair It is within e-turns that repair practices occur, and thus the e-turn is the unit of analysis The next section demonstrates how the chat scripts were analyzed

Data Analysis The data analysis process started with how to locate repair, the unit of analysis To so do, I employed an emic perspective Before I demonstrate how an emic perspective was applied in this study, it is necessary to discuss what I mean by an emic perspective An emic perspective contributes to CA by demonstrating that any interactional behavior can be examined from the inside of the system and during the investigation In other words, there are two possible interrelated, simultaneous analytical practices when CA researchers approach data First, CA researchers can obtain views internal to the talk by including those who participate in the talk Participants are believed to be able to provide such an

91 internal view because they are familiar with the conversational patterns and organizations and know how to function within them Involving the participants, in other words, allows the analyst to understand the talk-in-progress through participants' membership knowledge-in-use and their understanding of the procedural infrastructure of interaction This practice does not include data collection techniques, such as interviewing the participants or having them fill in questionnaires, but instead uses close analysis of how participants formulate and organize their turns This leads to the second practice which argues that analysts can access an emic perspective in the details of the interaction by adopting the same perspective as the participants to the way the interaction is organized Close analysis of the recordings of talk-in-interaction and transcripts can display in detail the actions participants perform as the talk itself emerges This is because participants document their social actions in the details of the interaction These two simultaneous practices reveal to CA researchers the participants' analysis of the organization of action and understanding in interaction In the case of repair in each sequence of talk or discourse, participants display their analysis and understandings of the prior talk and its conduct as they take a turn That is, each turn provides a display of the speaker's understandings A participant whose turn is misunderstood ordinarily takes the next turn either to initiate or complete a repair, or both In the same way, a recipient who does not understand the current turn or does not think that the current turn has been understood as intended usually takes the next turn either to initiate or complete a repair, or both From an emic perspective, talk-in-progress is problematic only

92 when it is detected and treated as such by participants Therefore, in this study, an e-turn is considered to contain a repairable item only when participants make it clear that there is a trouble source - by initiating and/or completing a repair, for instance,

Extract 3. KSU-A (2009) Chris oh' I talked to my family last week Dave OH Dave how was that 7 Chris weird Chris my mom is so weird TS Chris but, my brother was cool with he but 1 told him (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

really quickly and changed the subject Dave your mom is Japanese, give her times Dave wait 01 SC Dave you told your bro frist7, Gary7 Chris I told my mom, then told my twin

In Extract 3, there is an ungrammatical usage (e g, times in e-turn 7) and a misspelled word (e g , frist in e-turn 9) which, from an analysts' perspective, could be potential trouble sources However, in order to take the participants' perspective, I treat only those instances that result in repair as trouble sources The participants in this chat did not treat either times or frist as trouble sources Close

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analysis of this excerpt reveals that there is a trouble source in e-turn 6,1 e, whether Chris talked to his mom or brother first about his problem The next step is to identify repair-initiation which is related to the trouble source Repair-initiation typically locates the source of misunderstanding By locating the TS and the repair initiation, I as an analyst can identify whether it is self or other who does the initiating In Extract 3, the repair is other-initiated, occurring in e-turns 8-9 Extract 4 provides another example

Extract 4: FI-AR-UP (2009-5/29) Tina l just found out they have a very good deal for one mostunzer I need TS 01 TS 01 SC Matt theres a sephora at the local mall here Tina where7 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Matt the mall here Tina which mall7 near me7

Matt no near me Tina o

Extract 4 shows that the TS (I e, here) is located in e-turn 2 and is owned by Matt The repair is initiated in turn 3 (I e, where7) by Tina This where7 is not used by Tina to request additional information, but to initiate a repair Where7 functions as a repair initiator which reveals that the TS precedes it Where7 responds relevantly to here (e-turn 2) as here represents a problem with deixis Because Tina does not

own the TS, this repair-initiation is also other-initiated Although Matt s e-turn 4 is designed to repair what Tina initiates, it does not do so If this interaction had occurred face-to-face, Matt's e-turn 4 would reasonably be understood as a more proper repair-completion because he may have thought that Tina did not hear his eturn 2 However, his e-turn 4 in synchronous CMC repeats what he just types in eturn 2, which at any time could be reread by scrolling up the screen Tina's e-turn 5 is therefore specifically designed to re-initiate repair (I e, other-initiated repair) It can be seen that her e-turn 5 is used to locate the initial TS which is in e-turn 2 and then another trouble source in turn 4 (I e, when the previous repair does not work) and that these two TS's are connected Matt's e-turn 6 solves the trouble in understanding here This extract demonstrates that once the trouble source is identified, repair-initiation can be categorized either as self-initiated repair or other-initiated repair Another analysis is demonstrated below

Extract 5: KSU-A (2009) Joe Joe Tim Tim Tim Joe Joe TS Joe long distance relationship SUCKS trust me we are long distance right now, though 2 hours O well, you can drtive thru not FLY thru 1 year in Japanmust be difficult for you (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

95

OC

Tim Tim Joe

it's not a full year and i'm coming back in between oh then it's great

(9) (10) (11)

Extract 5 reveals that a trouble source is located in e-turn 8 which specifically is 1 year 1 year is a factual error which leads to repair Notice that the misspellings in e-turn 6 and the lack of a space between words in e-turn 8 do not lead to repairs This excerpt shows two things understanding the meaning is typically what is important in repair and the fact that the analyst only sees something as a trouble source if the participants make it clear that it was a trouble source - by repairing it Recall that there are four types of repair (see Chapter 2) The only type found in this excerpt is other-completed repair, while there is neither self-initiated repair nor other-initiated repair Previous research has shown that othercompleted repair is usually preceded by either self-initiated repair or other-initiated repair (Schegloff et al ,1977) Thus the stand-alone, other-completed repair in the above excerpt is unusual in face-to-face talks Whether it is a common occurrence in the online chats is a question that can only be addressed by examining more data, which is the purpose of Chapters 4 and 5

Summary This chapter has presented the research methods implemented in this study I have shown above what is considered data I have also demonstrated how electronic data were collected and will be analyzed from a conversation analytic

point of view, which values naturalism and an emic perspective To locate repair, I examined closely when and how troubles in talk were detected and completed by the participants This again emphasizes the emic approach in CA I would like to emphasize the usefulness of CA as a potential method for analyzing synchronous online interaction as done in this study The next chapter examines the issue of other-completed repair in the data in more detail, that is, self-initiated othercompletion and other-initiated other-completion, both of which are types of othercompleted repair

CHAPTER 4 VARIATIONS OF OTHER-COMPLETED REPAIR IN SYNCHRONOUS CMC

In the last chapter, I outlined the research methods implemented in this study This chapter is intended to present the turn design and sequential organization of other-completed repair found in synchronous CMC In everyday talk, other-completed repair customarily follows either self- or other-initiated repair The two practices, then, are self-initiated other-completion and othermitiated other-completion Recall that in Chapter 2,1 emphasized the fact that because of the structural and social bias, self-completed repair is preferred, while other-completed repair is dispreferred, especially other-initiated other-completion, which is extremely rare in face-to-face talk This chapter is organized into the five main sections corresponding to five variations of other-completed repair that have been found in this study

Self-Initiated Repair and Distanced Other-Completed Repair This section concerns self-initiated other-completion This pattern is shown in Example 23

Example 23: Self-initiated other-completion (Schegloff et al., 1977, p. 364): TS SI B He had dis uh Mistuh W-whatever k-I can't think of his first name, Watts on, the one thet wrote / / that piece, (2) (1)

OC

Dan Watts

(3)

In Example 23, B cannot think of a man's name when due B then does a wordsearch (turn 1) which is unsuccessful, the evidence is / can't think of his first name B, after that, resumes the same turn (turn 1, e g, the one thet wrote // that piece) In the second turn, A performs other-completed repair by providing B with the first name and then partially repeating part of the previous turn (I e, Watts) This practice of self-initiated other-completion is considered successful Example 23 demonstrates self-imtiated other-completion which can be found now and then in face-to-face talk, while other-initiated other-completion is rarer The infrequent occurrence of other-completed repair in face-to-face talk echoes the fact that it is dispreferred, as opposed to its counterpart, self-completed repair, which is more preferred and therefore occurs more frequently (Schegloff et al, 1977) In my data, self-initiated other-completion is frequently found Like selfmitiated other-completion in face-to-face talk, self-initiated other-completion in synchronous CMC has three components a trouble source, self-initiated repair, and other-completed repair In synchronous CMC, the other-completed repair was found to immediately follow self-initiated repair or, in many cases, to follow several e-turns that separate it from the self-imtiated repair In other words, there may be e-turns interpolated between the self-initiation e-turn and the other-completion eturn This is presented in Extract 6

Extract 6: EA (2009-4/5) Tony You want me to buy for you or you can go to amazon and do that (1) Tony it's up to you 0 TS SI Tony I brought one for Xiaocheng Tony Xiaochen Dan Ok, I want one too (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

Tony I dont know how to spell Tony You want me to buy for you 7 0C Dan Xiao Shan

Tony oh Tony Ok c} Tony Xiao Shan 0

Extract 6 illustrates self-initiated other-completion in synchronous CMC Tony and Dan talk about purchasing new calculators on one website Telling Dan that he bought one already for their mutual classmate, Tony misspells that classmate's name in e-turn 3 (l e, Xiaocheng) Then he types again the name in e-turn 4 (l e, Xiaochen), that is, he corrects himself, though unsuccessfully before calling for help from Dan (e-turn 6, l e, / dont know how to spell 0 ) In e-turn 7, he then resumes talking about purchasing new calculators without further correcting himself Witnessing Tony being unable to spell correctly the name of the classmate twice (e-turns 3 and 4) and being asked for help (e-turn 6), Dan takes e-turn 8 to solve the problem, I e, he provides Tony with the right name Lines 9-11 indicate

100 that the repair is successful It can also be observed that there are several e-turns between the self-initiation e-turn (1 e, e-turn 4) and other-completion e-turn (1 e, eturn 8), and that these interpolated e-turns (e-turns 5,6, and 7) belong to both participants Several extracts from the collected data demonstrate the same phenomenon as follows

Extract 7: UP (TN 2009 28/34) Nick so would u mind further explaining what u meant by u were attracted to me during onentaiton Val TS SI Val Val l guess I was interested is that the same as attracted7 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Nick in meeting me 7 Nick Val OC interested in waht away in getting to know you

Nick yea, that's attracted Nick but l thin there are different types of attraction

In Extract 7, Nick and Val talk about their first meeting during the orientation for new students at their school The TS is located in the third e-turn Following that TS e-turn, Val questions her own use of interested in the previous e-turn, she is not certain whether interested or attracted should be used to describe her feeling in the fourth e-turn (l e, is that the same as attracted7), though Nick uses the word

attracted earlier in the first e-turn and though Val corrected Nick following that eturn (e-turn 3, / was interested) Note that Nick's e-turn 5 is not designed to help Val solve the word selection problem, but to complete the sentence Val left incomplete in e-turn 3 To help Val solve the problem, Nick asks her one question in e-turn 6 (l e, interested m waht away) Val's answer in e-turn 7 (I e, m getting to know you) leads Nick to provide the word in e-turn 8 (l e ,yea, that's attracted) that he believes is the right word In other words, Nick does an other-completed repair Below, Extract 8, is another extract in which other asks a question after self has initiated repair (l e, self-initiated repair) The recipient's question (e-turn 15) functions as a "candidate understanding" (Heritage, 1984, p 319) in the repairable or ultimately as an other-initiated repair

Extract 8: T-TXT (2009-3/9) Fred i'm watching Olympic Ken Ken Ken TS oo me too well not right this sec (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Fred i'm watching swimming Ken which event7

Fred now SI Fred how to call Fred haha

102 Fred Ken Fred Fred Ken OC OC Ken Ken Ken men team 4 people ooohhfun'" 400m 7 yeah I saw that (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17)

Extract 8 illustrates a self-initiated other-completion Fred and Ken talk about swimming in the 2008 Olympics Ken's follow-up question in e-turn 6 (I e, which event7) leads to repair-initiation, though this question actually is not the repairable The TS actually is located in e-turn 5 (I e, / 'm watching swimming) Ken's which

event7 is an information-seeking question used to seek further information about the swimming Fred watches The which event question makes it conditionally relevant for Fred to provide an answer, which could be 100m, 200m, 400m, etc However, Fred cannot answer this question, possibly because he may not remember it or does not know the answer Fred's responses are the description of the swimming he watches which is men (e-turn 10), team (e-turn 12), and 4 people (eturn 13) In e-turn 15, after waiting for the answer Ken does what seems to be other-initiated repair in the form of a question (I e, 400m7), however, Ken's yea h (eturn 16) and l saw that (e-turn 17) imply that 400m7 was intended as an othercompleted repair

In conclusion, it has been observed in this section that self-initiated othercompletion, which can be found in everyday talk, can be located in synchronous CMC Additionally, other-completed repair is placed in an e-turn that is several eturns away from the self-initiation e-turn In other words, the other-completion eturn is relatively distant from the TS e-turn and from the self-initiation e-turn Finally, once other-completed repair is performed, repair tends to be successful In the following section, other-initiated other-completion in synchronous CMC, a counterpart of self-initiated other-completion, is introduced

Other-Initiated Repair and Distanced Other-Completed Repair In other-initiated other-completion, other can initiate repair in the turn subsequent to the TS turn as found in second-position repair This gives self an opportunity tofixthe problem or, in other words, do self-completed repair This is exemplified in Example 24

Example 24: Second-position repair (Schegloff etal., 1977) TS 01 SC Gary so what'dya think of the news7 John what news7 Gary yihknow about the election7 John o-*uh*'ste rnble isn't it, (1) (2) (3) (4)

In Example 24, John asks a question which functions as other-initiated repair in the turn subsequent to the TS turn Doing so gives Gary an opportunity to repair it (l e,

self-completed repair) in the third turn It is observed that three components of the practice of repair, namely, trouble source (turn 1), other-initiated repair (turn 2), and self-completed repair (turn 3), are placed adjacently to one another This example illustrates other-initiated self-completion which is not uncommon in everyday talk, while other-initiated other-completion is rarer and the rarest of all types of repair However, it can be frequently identified in synchronous CMC, as presented below

Extract 9- UP-SO-MA-TH (2009-5/14)

Pam Pam Bill Bill Pam Pam Bill Bill Bill Bill Pam l want that sentence to have real meaning "back to mind blowing sex" literally lol meaning u wanna go back 7 or u jus want some either way it's been too long I wont be picky haha goin through withdrawl I see lol picky wats that mean ull do it w / anybody l'mjing (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

In Extract 9, the TS is located in e-turn 6 (l e, it's been too long l wont be picky) To locate specifically the TS, in e-turn 8 Bill repeats the word picky before in the

following e-turn asking Pam to clarify it (1 e, wats that mean) Bill s wats that mean functions as other-initiated repair which demands repair-completion After that, Bill completes the repair (1 e, other-completed repair) in e-turn 10 (1 e, ull do it w/ anybody) This is acknowledged by Pam's response in e-turn 11 (1 e, l'mjmg) Other-initiated other-completion is not only found to frequently occur in synchronous CMC, but to sometimes have a unique organization Extract 10 shows that there are interpolated e-turns between the other-initiation e-turn and othercompletion e-turn

Extract 10: FI-AR-UP (2009-x/29) Gale so we gonna meet on tuesday and fnday, Saturday too 7 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13)

Tom yep Gale Tom Tom Gale Gale TS wow u ok with that 7 u did say u wanted more of me yep the more the better

Tom waht if u get too much of me, and won't let me go 7 Gale haha is that call "too much" waht if ginger or darcy try to get more of me7

01

Gale Tom

Tom what if dr house wants more of me7 OC Gale l thought "too much" means u dont want it anymore

106 Tom these are qs u need to ask Tom lol Gale Gale Gale well, I need to ask7 those questions r for u to decide not me (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20)

Tom lol Tom but u never answered

In Extract 10, too much introduced to the chat by Tom in e-turn 8 seems to be problematic for Gale Gale takes e-turn 10 to initiate a repair (I e, other-initiated repair) Her is that call "too much" (e-turn 10) requires Tom to explain the meaning of too much However, Tom uses the next two e-turns (e-turns 11 and 12) to complete his series of questions which he begins in e-turn 8 Gale then defines the meaning of too much in e-turn 13 Her definition, although it may not be completely accurate, functions as other-completed repair which remains ignored by Tom One more extract below demonstrates the practice of other-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair

Extract 11: CH-FR-RA (2009-1/18) Will Joe Joe Will Hi Joe, I have a quick question for you hey what's up 7 Do you know how much an oil change costs7 (1) (2) (3) (4)

107 Joe TS Will 15~20, sometimes you get it less than 10 I am offered $22,300 with a trunk tray from Honda in Brighton (30 minutes away from AA) while Fishcer in Ypsi offers 22,500 without accessory But they have 10 times free oil change Will Joe 01 Joe Joe Joe Will OC SC Joe Will Will really 7 with services 7 oh, only oil change you're buying a truck 7 l see okok nope sorry truck tray an Accord yes (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (5)

In Extract 11, the TS is located in e-turn 6 when Will tells Joe about his car offer and price There is a misunderstanding about a part of a car or truck located in this e-turn (l e, trunk tray) Joe may have confused a trunk tray with a truck tray (e-turn 9) A trunk tray is a plastic tray that is put in the trunk of a sedan car, while a truck tray is a rectangle metal container that is a part of a truck or is attached to a truck Although these two words fall into the same semantic class, these two parts mark different types of vehicles Then, Joe initiates repair (I e, other-initiated repair) in e-turn 9 and completes repair (l e, other-completed repair) in e-turn 13 Also, self-completed repair is found in e-turn 14, one e-turn immediately following other-completed repair

108 Although what is clear from this extract is that other-completed repair can precede self-completed repair, what remains unclear is whether self-completed repair responds to other-initiated repair or unsuccessful other-completed repair I have suggested that other-initiated other-completion occurs in synchronous CMC in different variations One variation this section reveals is called othermitiated repair and distanced other-completed repair It occurs when there are eturns inserted between the other-initiation e-turn and the other-completion e-turn These inserted e-turns reflect an opportunity for se//to complete the repair, though competing for an e-turn to do so is not required in synchronous CMC In other words, the other-completion e-turn is deferred several e-turns away from where it is due In the next section, another variation of other-completed repair, othercompleted repair performed within one e-turn, is introduced

Other-Completed Repair Completed in One E-turn The previous section suggests that other can complete a repair far after, or several e-turns away from, where he initiates it (1 e, other-initiated repair) This is considered the furthest other-completed repair point from the initiation point, while the most immediate other-completed repair point occurs when other-initiated repair and other-completed repair are in the same e-turn, 1 e, other performs othercompleted repair which is contiguous with other-initiated repair This is the focus of this section In everyday conversation, there is an inherent structural bias that allows self-completed repair to occur more often than other-completed repair because self

109 still holds the floor (Seedhouse, 2004) This allows same-turn repair and transitionspace repair to be developed without being interrupted by other or competed for by other Another reason is that other-completed repair is face-threatening and thus dispreferred (Lerner, 1996b) (the issue of face-threatening act in regard to ordinary encounters and electronic communication will be discussed more in Chapter 5) This section deals exclusively with other-initiated other-completion, where other both identifies and later resolves the problem within one e-turn, as in Extract 12

Extract 12: T-UC (2009-1/177) Sam how r u 7 fine (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

Katie I'm Sam TS Sam just got back from the teaching

must be careful not going home alone

Katie Why7 Sam Sam OC the guys might u questions better go with friends

Katie Oh'You mean me7 Thanks Sam how's the food made by u7

Katie 555 Sam lmeanu yes

In Extract 12, Sam in e-turn 4 omits the subject of the sentence, which leads Katie to think that Sam has told himself that he must not walk home alone Her Why7 in e-

turn 5 appears to be a sequentially appropriate response to Sam s e-turn 4 Her Why7 should be taken as a forwarding or go ahead response allowing to Sam to continue his talk and therefore to provide additional information As the talk continues, e-turn 6 (1 e, the guys might u questions ) displays to Katie that her initial understanding of e-turn 5 is faulty The pronoun u indicates that in his previous turns, he warns Katie that she should not walk home alone In eturn 8, then, Katie initiates a repair (l e, other-initiated repair) by asking You mean me7, which locates the repairable in Sam's prior talk You mean plus a possible understanding of the trouble in the prior e-turn is a very strong locator of the TS In this extract, You mean me7\s an other-initiated repair that allows the owner of the TS to carry out self-completed repair, but instead of having Tom complete the repair, Katie completes it within the same e-turn Katie's Thanks implies that she resolves the trouble and that the practice of repair is terminated Extract 13 presents another example of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair performed within one e-turn

Extract 13: T-UC (2009-26/177) TS Jess I had finished the book ka DCL TS Jess Don Jess Jess Jess How about you7 hello Did u finish it7 Today, We have Suki for dinner It's so delicious"'>"'> >' (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (1)

Ill OI-OR Don which book71 have many books 1finishedsmall ones by naowarat pongpaiboon Jess SC/TS Jess OR Don um the one u send to me math short stories I have read many chapters but a few more to read Jess Jess I went to your blog (10) (11) (12) (7) (8) (9)

Don reading many books at the same times two books by tantai and one by nn Jess Don Jess There is a new group blog by win me but not any blog in it (13) (14) (15) (16)

Extract 13 illustrates two incidents of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair that are performed within one e-turn Jess and Don, international students, talk about the same book both have Don had two copies of this book, so he sent one from his country to Jess, who lives in the USA Trouble in understanding is caused by the use of the noun phrase, the book in e-turn 1, because Jess may have assumed that Don knows which book she is talking about However, he is not certain about which book she is talking because he has so many books (in e-turn 7, i have many books) In e-turn 7, Don initiates a repair (l e, other-initiated repair) by asking which book (I e, which book7) Jess is talking about, and he completes other-

112 completed repair (1 e, i finished small ones by naowarat pongpaiboon) That is, he performs other-completed repair within one e-turn Another incident of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair in one e-turn occurs later in this excerpt Although Don performs other-completed repair, still the book is not the same one about which Jess is talking, which is evident when in e-turn 9 she says, the one u send to me Her the one u send to me can be plausibly taken as another trouble source because she may have forgotten the name of the book This TS leads to the second other-completed repair to be performed, again, by Don within one e-turn (e-turn 10) At the beginning of e-turn 10, he provides the name of the book (math short stories), which is a candidate understanding This candidate understanding may or may not be acknowledged by Jess, though he does not wait but completes other-repair This section has presented evidence to show that other-repair occurs frequently in synchronous CMC, while previous research has shown that it is rare in face-to-face encounters Moreover, here it was shown that other-completed repair can be completed within one e-turn The process of other-completed repair completed within one e-turn is not observed by participants other than its owner, therefore, it does not engage se//in the process That is, in the case of othercompleted repair within one e-turn, the process of repair is revealed to self once it is completed The next section introduces one variation of other-completed repair that is similar to one-e-turn other-completed repair but is found to occur relatively often in synchronous CMC

Other-Completed Repair Performed Over Two Consecutive E-turns The previous section showed how other-initiated other-completion is performed within one e-turn This section presents a similar pattern where repair is performed by the other, while the difference is that this new variation of repair is performed over two consecutive e-turns Before I introduce this variation, to avoid confusion, I have used examples given by Heritage (1984) to elaborate on some activities that are grouped under other-initiated repair

Example 25: Other-initiated repair and oh (Heritage, 1984 p. 318) F S between now en nex' Saturday, hh F S A wee k from (0 3) this coming Saturdee Yeah When didjuwant'ertih come do wrn Lhhh oh any time (2) (3) (4) (1)

0
F hhh oh (5)

Example 25 shows that the trouble source is located in turn 2, I e, nex'Saturday, hh, which can be either the coming Saturday or the Saturday after F then proposes a remedy for the trouble by producing an "understanding check" (Heritage, 1984, p 318) which proposes a solution to that problem By producing an understanding check in turn 3 of what S had intended in turn 2, F invites S either to confirm or disconfirm the proposal (turn 4) Heritage considers understanding check as a

114 repair-initiated repair, while either a confirmation or disconfirmation should be viewed as self-completed repair Whether S confirms or disconfirms the candidacy of understanding (here, yeah implies confirmation in turn 4), F uses oh as a changeof-state token to complete the understanding-check sequence One more example is given below

Example 26: Other-initiated repair and oh (Heritage, 1984, p. 319) B So we thought thet yihknow= =if you wanna come on over early C'mon over M B M hhhh- hhhh Ah hhh fer dinner yih mean7 Hh

No not fer dinner h= =oh

Example 26 is similar to Example 25, though in Example 26, B, the owner of the TS disconfirms M's proposal of a solution to the trouble M's first turn is an understanding check intended to propose a remedy for the trouble B then corrects M's understanding The repair found in Example 26 is thus an other-initiated selfcompletion In brief, the two examples from Heritage (1984) point out that other can propose a candidate understanding which is considered an other-initiated repair which will be evaluated by se//(i e, self-completed repair) Whether the proposal (l e, other-initiated repair) is confirmed or disconfirmed by self, oh is produced by other to reflect a change of state from not knowing to knowing (Heritage, 1984)

115 I now turn to other-completed repair that is completed over two consecutive e-turns, other takes one e-turn to initiate a repair (1 e, other-initiated repair), and completes the repair in the very next e-turn, as in the following

Extract 14: UP (JU-RE, 2009-4/10) Jess Rob Jess TS 01 OC Rob Jess Jess Jess Jess Jess anyone take me back to thailand pleasesesessssssssss sorry there is no way l can leave my room in that weather yea wen are you going to go shopping7 clothes7 I dont know yet unclear emoticon my thai friends can take me shopping on thanksgiving but the family I lived with I cant really tell when will they have time Jess I just wish there is some kinda of outlet around l can go by myself Rob hmmdontkno (10) (11) (9) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

In Extract 14, Rob explains to Jess how cold the winter in the USA is, before he asks her when she wants to go shopping (e-turn 4), which turns out to be problematic because Jess does not know what types of shopping or goods he is asking about In other words, the question is not specific enough So in the fifth e-turn, she initiates a

repair (1 e, other-initiated repair) by asking if he means clothes shopping (1 e, clothes7) She makes the initial question by Rob more specific by proposing one possible candidate (1 e, other-initiated repair), Rob's question is then heard as yea wen are you going to go shopping for clothes7 Without waiting to hear from Rob whether or not clothes is what Rob meant, she provides the answer in e-turn 6 Her answer in e-turn 6 indicates that she completes the repair (1 e, othercompleted repair) which is done in the e-turn that immediately follows her initiation in e-turn 5 Although clothes7 (I e, other-initiated repair) in e-turn 5 remains unanswered by Rob, Jess's e-turn 6 assumes that it is the right word that makes Rob's question less problematic and more specific Her answer / don't know yet responds appropriately to the question asked by Rob, and her e-turn 5 is designed to let Rob know that the initial question is problematic Because Rob does not respond to e-turn 5, it is reasonable to assume that what Jess proposes as a candidate understanding is correct, even though she does not wait for Rob's acceptance This practice can be observed in the following extracts

Extract 15: CNL (2009-12/13) TS 01 OC Lisa Jane Jane When will u get back here u mean bkk/ don't know yet

Extract 16: WARW-UK-AP (2009-2/12) TS Pat How is the atmosphere there 7

117 Pat 01 is it good 7 means kmutt ler 7 Q

Chad 'there'

there means kmutt, right 7 OC Chad

ft) "Ui 16 111 kmutt lau yet not have gone DCL I have not gone to KMUTT yet yes

Pat

Extracts 15-16 illustrate how other-initiated other-completion is performed in two consecutive e-turns This practice is similar to other-completed repair done in everyday talk in that self can, if he wants, take the e-turn next to other-initiated repair to perform self-completed repair However, this practice is different from the other-completed repair within one e-turn because the latter does not allow se//to observe if there is trouble in the talk and possibly complete a repair There are two more extracts below that illustrate other-completed repair performed over two consecutive e-turns

Extract 17: FL-JU-NA (2009-1/1) TS Kate it's ok 1 just want to tell you one thing Today 1 went to the temple Kate 01 01 OC Lisa Lisa Lisa I am good, thanks which temple 7 in West Palm 7 never heard of that (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Lisa

It's near Orlando

(6)

Extract 18: FL-JU-NA (2009-1/2) TS Mel Deb 01 OC Deb Deb I will check my posting on pantip l don't know if l use correct word correct word7 which posting7 the one l read7 nothing wrong m na EMP nsiQ Discussion Boards/Blog at DCL

Mel

Deb

yess I read ur Katuu (Discussion Boards) na DCL lii | mma-anqi* ifh Itf fin OXi not know English they use word what I don't know which English word which should be used nothing wrong l understand jar
DCL

Mel

Deb Deb

Briefly, three observations are made here First, se//is not involved in the practice of repair even though other, by composing one e-turn that functions as othermitiation and making it visible to self, gives self an opportunity to complete repair Second, the other-initiation e-turn and other-completion e-turn are adjacently placed Third, there is a relevant and sequential relationship between the TS e-turn and the other-initiation e-turn, and between the other-initiation e-turn and the other-

119 completion e-turn The next section introduces the last variation of other-completed repair found in synchronous CMC, namely, immediate other-completed repair

Immediate Other-Completed Repair This section presents the last variation of other-completed repair, that is, immediate other-completed repair, found in online chats In ordinary talk, other may replace what was previously said by se//(e g, wrong information) with what he believes is right This is similar to correction, which Schegloff et al (1977) define as "the replacement of error or a mistake by what is right" (p 363) This can be demonstrated below

Example 27: Correction (Jefferson, 1987, p. 87) TS Pat the Black Muslims are certainly more provocative than the Black Muslims ever were OC c} Jo Pat Jo "=) Pat Jo The Black Panthers The Black Panthers What'dl You said the Black Muslims twice Did I really7 Yes you di d, but that's alright I forgive you (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

In Example 27, Pat uses the same word (I e, Black Muslims) twice in turn 1, while the intended second referent is Black Panthers The intended word is supplied by Jo in the turn right after the TS turn (I e, turn 2) That is, Jo replaces what Pat said with

120 the correct word The series word replacement found in this example can be outlined below

1 Pat produces an object (1 e, Black Muslims in turn 1) 2 Jo produces an alternative (l e, Black Panthers in turn 2) 3 Pat produces an alternative (I e, Black Panthers in turn 3)

This replacement is known as an (X, Y, Y) series (Jefferson, 1998), where X stands for an initial term, while Y for an alternative It is noteworthy that Jo's replacement of Black Panthers in turn 2 discontinues their ongoing talk because the speakers now are doing the business of correction (turns 3-6) Jefferson (1987) refers to this practice as "exposed correction" and draws attention to the fact that, once exposed correction is made, "there is room for accounting, regardless of how or by whom the correction is done" (p 97) Turn 6 (l e, Yes you di d, but that's alright 1 forgive you) functions to acknowledge the mistake and correction Exposed correction is frequently found in synchronous CMC Extract 2, repeated below, presents exposed correction

Extract 2: MK-Chat (2009-25/48) Alice I feel sorry to see you alone in office hours Alice no one coming TS OC Paula So I can do other stuffs Alice Did you know what Jane's teacher just told us that there is no such thing as stuffs (4) (1) (2) (3)

121 Alice stuff is already noun plural Paula I don't think there will be costomers since there is no assignment/HW Alice Jane made mistake in her writing and the teacher showed is to us c^ Paula OK I can't do other stuff(good to know ) Alice yes, I learn a lot from my kids Alice okay, l'll talk to you later, I'll finish my dinner I can't eat after midnight for the glucosa test so I have to fill up my tummy by now (10) (7) (8) (9) (6) (5)

Extract 2 presents an exposed correction that follows an X-Y-Y format, though it is a unique one There is a word change in this extract, from stuffs (e-turn 3) to there is no such thing as stuffs (e-turn 4), and finally to stuff Although this X-Y-Y format may appear like an X-X-Y format because Alice uses the same word stuffs, a close analysis shows that Alice's there is no such thing as (e-turn 4) plus her e-turn 5 imply the other word stuff The word stuff is repeated by Paula in e-turn 8

Extract 19: PSR (2009-1/1) Jill u can track your package online na DCL Jill Mike it said that it shipped or not 7 not (2) (3) (1)

Jill

when did you order 7

(4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16)

Mike yesterday Jill Jill com'on just order ysterday

Mike Jill Jill TS OC Mike Jill I think the latest u will get is either thurs of Friday otherwise monday It just a curious I'm just curious or it's just my curiosity

Mike oops c) Mike cunousity Jill Jill ya I don't think curious can be used as a noun na DCL

t$

Mike I should chat with you more to practice my language skill

(17)

Extract 19 demonstrates how embedded correction is completed Mike incorrectly used the word curious in his sentence (e-turn 11) His e-turn 11 requires a noun form, not an adjective form (I e, curiosity versus curious), or he needs a sentence that requires an adjective form so that his curious can remain unchanged Jill takes the following next e-turn (e-turn 12) to provide Mike with both options This exposed correction follows an X-Y-Y format, where the introduced term is used (curious-curiosity-curiosity) A few more extracts below illustrates exposed correction in synchronous CMC

123 Extract 20- FI-AR-UP (2009-25/29) Mike umm I think u feel that you need to be upset at me but u cant' cuz u jus can't Sara TS OC Sara not upset but hate u for being so tricky and win all the time (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Mike ur supposed to say smooth Mike not tricky Mike tricky sounds bad

d)

Sara Sara Sara

ok smooth but the part that I canr is true cant*

Extract 20 shows that Sara's use of tricky in e-turn 3 to describe Mike's personality In e-turn 4, he suggests that Sara use smooth Mike's e-turns 5 and 6 explain why he does not like the word tricky In e-turn 7, Sara acknowledges the newly introduced word So the exposed correction follows an X-Y-Y format (tricky-smooth-smooth) A few extracts are shown below

Extract 21: UP (FIAR-2008) Mel Gary TS OC Gary Mel l feel bad but my paper is not making any progress at all wen is it due i'm pretty usre the 27 th 24 (1) (2) (3) (4)

Gary u sure 7 Gary need 1 ask u alway are Mel c) yea

(5) (6) (7)

Gary that is, by the end of the second week after the return from the Fall Break Mel yep (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13)

Gary y woulnd't he jus give a date 777 Mel not the beginning of the third

Gary he makes everything so difficult Gary ok

In Extract 21, Mel and Gary talk about the due date of their assignment Following the (X, Y, Y) series introduced above, we have X which is located in e-turn 4 (I e, the 27th) On the next e-turn, Mel or other provided Y or an alternative, \e,24 Gary, or

self, repeats the idea of "24" (which is the OC), saying "by the end of the second week after the return from the Fall Break," which presumably refers to the 24th From Extracts 20 and 21, it can be concluded that other-completed repair (l e, the first Y) can occur in the e-turn immediately following the TS e-turn (I e, X) However, what I found in these extracts from synchronous CMC is that there are eturns interpolated between the two Ys That is, the second Y is removed a few eturns away from the first Y Therefore, the pattern here is X-Y-Z-Y In the data, however, there are many extracts that present X-Y, not X-Y-Z-Y, in the practice of immediate other-completed repair The uptake by self can be in

125 the form of acknowledgement, rather than the original or the alternative, after other introduces an alternative This is illustrated also in Extracts 22 and 23 below

Extract 22- CHN-0 (2009-1/1) Chad more exams are coming Chad next week (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

Hank what's subject 7 Chad Economics Chad and Quantitative finance TS OC iz) Hank sound difficult Chad brutal Hank hah how many sub u r taking this sem 7 Chad 3 Hank it is not too much Chad yes

In Extract 22, Chad and Hank, two international graduate students, discuss how hard Chad's courses are Hank uses difficult (e-turn 6, sound difficult) to describe what he thinks about Chad's classes, however, in the next e-turn, Hank replaces difficult with brutal Hank's hah can be heard as same as oh, the change-of-state token His hah reflect his knowing state The two extracts below present the X-Y format This is also demonstrated in the extract below

Extract 23: YNR (2009-2/3) TS OC Rick Sean Sean c) Rick I am going for super, see you then supper ThanK you~If u find any errors in English, no matDr which kind, please Dll me Sean Sean Sean Rick Sure Please Dll me too haha, Okay (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (1) (2) (3)

In Extract 23, in e-turn 1, Rick misspells a word (I e, super) This is corrected by Sean in the second e-turn Although there is no uptake, Rick's e-turn 4 indicates "accounting" or an "attendant activity" (Jefferson, 1987, p 88) Rick's e-turn 4 expresses appreciation Therefore, this is an exposed correction in which accounting can be expected One more example, Extract 5, which shows exposed correction, is repeated again below

Extract 5: KSU-A (2009) Joe Joe Tim Tim long distance relationship SUCKS trust me we are long distance right now, though 2 hours (1) (2) (3) (4)

Tim Joe Joe TS OC Joe Tim Tim d) Joe

well, you can drtive thru not FLY thru 1 year in Japanmust be difficult for you it's not a full year and i'm coming back in between oh then it's great

(5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

Extract 5 reveals that a trouble source is located in e-turn 8 which specifically is 1 year 1 year is a factual error which leads to other-completed repair, while there is neither self-initiated repair nor other-initiated repair Jim's e-turn 9 functions as immediate other-completed repair which changes Joe into a knowing state This is evident in e-turn 11, when Joe uses both an oh token (Heritage, 1984) and responds to the new correct fact Recall that an oh token is usually used by those in conversations when they know a new fact, it reflects the speaker's change of state from not knowing to knowing In this extract, Joe uses it to signal the end of the repair practice This last section shows how other takes the e-turn that is subsequent to the TS e-turn in order to do other-completed repair The first set of extracts show the practice of immediate other-completed repair that is similar to exposed correction However, the difference between the two is that the former follows X-Y-Z-Y, not X-YY as found by Jefferson (1987) in exposed correction in face-to-face contexts The second set of extracts indicates that other corrects in the second e-turn what was

produced by se//in the first e-turn The uptake by se//acknowledges the alternative given by other

Summary This chapter has presented five variations of other-completed repair identified in synchronous CMC involving non-native speakers, namely, 1) selfmitiated repair and distanced other-completed repair, 2) other-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair, 3) other-completed repair performed in one eturn, 4) other-completed repair performed over two consecutive e-turns, and 5) immediate other-completed repair These variations result from the turn-taking system managed by chat programs Chat programs also expand the practice of repair whose components (1 e, the TS, repair-initiation, and repair-completion) are not physically adjacent to one another In addition, as presented under immediate other-completed repair, othercompleted repair can run differently from repair found by pioneering CA researchers That is, the repair-initiation component is missing The next chapter will explore the sequential relationship between the components of othercompleted repair in detail Also, due to the frequent occurrence and unique patterns of other-completed repair, the next chapter is devoted to the discussion of these phenomena

129 CHAPTER 5 SEQUENCE ORGANIZATION OF OTHER-COMPLETED REPAIR IN SYNCHRONOUS CMC

In the previous chapter, the data were analyzed and presented A systematic observation was made about how the trouble source and repair are made and where they are located, I also discussed who identifies and executes the repair in relation to the TS e-turn These findings will be summarized in the next section This chapter, based on the previous one, starts off with the research questions and possible answers to them In the next section, I present general observations on the sequence and organization of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC The last section is the conclusion

Research Questions Question 1: How Other Initiates and Completes Repair The first research question is aimed to explore how other initiates and completes repair in synchronous CMC Five variations of other-completed repair were introduced and explored in Chapter 4 The analysis in Chapter 4 is based on the location of repair-initiation and of other-completed repair This section further investigates the sequential organization and e-turn construction of other-completed repair This section starts off with the five variations of other-completed repair that were found in Chapter 4 In addition to the five variations, there is another variation of other-completed repair found in this study that will be introduced here

Types and positions of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC. Other-completed repair typically follows either self-imtiated repair or othermitiated repair There are then two configurations, self-imtiated other-completion and other-initiated other-completion The location of the TS, repair-initiation, and repair-completion is taken into account in the analysis in Chapter 4, with particular attention to other-completed repair, resulting infivevariations of other-completed repair observed in synchronous CMC

1 Self-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair (Variation A) 2 Other-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair (Variation B) 3 Other-completed repair performed in one e-turn (Variation C) 4 Other-completed repair performed in two consecutive e-turns (Variation D) 5 Immediate other-completed repair (Variation E)

General observations are made according to these five variations of othercompleted repair First, other-completed repair in synchronous CMC is performed similarly and differently from that in ordinary talk They are similar in that, for instance, both represent the two configurations mentioned above Another similarity is that other-initiated repair at the earliest occurs on the second turn to the TS, and not earlier than that Inserted e-turns mark distinctions between the two Second, the electronic medium plays an important role in repair Two-way transmission and public presence of the production of e-turns reflect technological constraints on social interaction All of these lead to unique variations of other-

131 completed repair found in synchronous CMC In addition to the five variations of other-completed repair introduced in Chapter 4 and above, there are two intriguing facts to be revealed here First, I found one additional type of other-completed repair in the data I call it simultaneously-completed repair and describe it below Secondly, other-completed repair seems to be more pervasive and frequent in synchronous CMC than in face-to-face conversation (this is discussed in Chapter 6)

Simultaneously-completed repair The findings show that, after a repairable is identified, both parties sometimes complete repair roughly at the same time This results in self-completed repair and other-completed repair The self-completion e-turn and the othercompletion e-turn are placed in the dialog box in the order in which they are received by the chat program Simultaneously-completed repair (hereafter Variation F) in synchronous CMC is illustrated below

Extract 24: T-UC (2009) Sue TS Sue Sam 01 Sam Sam SC OC Sue Sam He take one course with me yesterday And today we met in UCEN and UCEN
7

good for you hope u meet all nice friends University Center university center

132 Sue Sam Sam good guess again slower than u one step

Extract 25: MK-Chat (2009-6/45) TS 01 OC SC Carol I might stay up 'til morning later, so I might see you again Ryan Won't sleep7 Ryan Oh IC See you Carol no I'll probably sleep right now and wake up early in the morning, around 3 and wrap up the presentation

The fact that both participants complete repair roughly at the same time means that, although both may start typing at the same time or may press the ENTER key, or their e-turns may arrive at the chat server at roughly the same time, their e-turns which function as repair-completion may be placed adjacent to each other in the dialog box This variation, if identified in everyday talk, might end up appearing similar to overlap, although they are not identical Technically speaking, this phenomenon in synchronous CMC has different interactional result from overlaps Overlaps tend to be brief as one party has to withdraw If overlapped utterances continue, the talk becomes unintelligible, and thus in need of a repair of the turn-taking system However, in synchronous CMC, eturns that are simultaneously composed do not interrupt each other and do not become unintelligible, and thus overlap is not a relevant issue in synchronous CMC

133 Although simultaneously-completed repair results in other-completed repair, it is not entirely accurate to group this practice of repair only under othercompleted repair because it also consists of self-completed repair However, for the purpose of further discussion, simultaneously-completed repair is included under other-completed repair This section has begun to answer the research question how does other initiate and complete repair in synchronous CMC, and the rest of the answer can be found in the rest of this chapter and the next one The next subsection aims to detail the sequence and organization of other-completed repair and presents a figure of each variation of synchronous CMC

Sequence organization of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC. Earlier, I listed five variations of other-completed repair and I introduced one new variation It is necessary to devote one section to summarizing the overall sequential and organizational relationships between components (1 e, TS, repairmitiation, and repair-completion) of each variant First, in synchronous CMC, repair is often initiated by other Other-initiated repair is considered the most immediate when it is placed in the e-turn subsequent to the TS e-turn or the second e-turn (Figures 5 1 and 5 2) That is, other-initiated repair is never produced earlier than the TS or than the TS e-turn In everyday talk, other can begin projecting an other-initiated repair turn right next to the repairable, which is the earliest such a turn can be placed In contrast, an other-initiation e-turn can be composed once the TS e-turn is displayed in the dialog box, and therefore, placed next to the TS e-turn at the earliest

134
Self Other Trouble source Repair-initiation (e-turn n] (e-turn n+1)

Figure 51 Possible sequence of other-initiated repair

Self Other

Trouble source Repair-initiation and repair-completion

(e-turn n) (e-turn n+1)

Figure 5 2 Possible sequence of other-completed repair on the same e-turn

Second, other-initiated repair can be considered contiguous with the TS, when the TS is positioned at the end of the prior e-turn and when other-initiated repair is placed at the beginning of the immediately following e-turn (Figure 5 3)
Self Other xxxxxxxxxxxx Trouble source Repair-initiation xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (e-turn n) (e-turn n+1)

Figure 5 3 Possible sequence of the TS and other-initiated repair

Third, in synchronous CMC, repair can be completed by other Othercompleted repair can be placed in an e-turn that immediately follows the TS e-turn (Figure 5 4) In this case, repair-initiation is skipped, making it the most immediate one Other-completed repair is most immediate to other-initiated repair when they are both placed next to each other in the same e-turn (Figures 5 2 and 5 5), while the second most immediate place to other-initiated repair (as well as self-initiated repair) that other-completed repair can occur is when it is placed in the e-turn subsequent to the other-initiation e-turn (as well as to self-initiated repair) (Figure

135 5 6) Other-completed repair is considered furthest from the other-initiated repair when it is placed several e-turns away (Figure 5 7)
Self Other/Self Trouble source Repair-completion (e-turn n) (e-turn n+1)

Figure 5 4 Possible sequence of repair-completion

Self Other

Trouble source (There may be e-turns here) Repair-initiation and repair-completion

Figure 5 5 Possible sequence of self-imtiated other-completion

Self Other/Self Other

Trouble source (There may be e-turns here] Repair-initiation Repair-completion

(e-turn n] (e-turn n+1)

Figure 5 6 Possible sequence of repair initiation and other-completed repair

Self Other/Self Other

Trouble source Repair-initiation (There are several e-turns here] Repair-completion

Figure 5 7 Possible sequence of other-completed repair and inserted e-turns

Fourth, other-completed repair can be contiguous with the TS, when the TS occurs at the end of the prior e-turn and when other-completed repair is positioned at the beginning of the e-turn (Figure 5 8) If this occurs, there is no other-initiated repair between them

136

Self Other

xxxxxxxxxxxx Trouble source Repair-completion xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(e-turn n] (e-turn n+1)

Figure 5 8 Possible sequence of the TS and other-completed repair

Fifth, there can be one e-turn or more e-turns interpolated between the TS eturn and repair-initiation (Figures 5 5 and 5 6), or between repair-initiation and repair-completion (Figure 5 7) These interpolated e-turns are sometimes topically relevant to the TS, repair-initiation, or repair-completion Extract 26 below reveals that the inserted e-turns are topically relevant to an other-completed repair

Extract 26: Other-completed repair (NP:2009-2/68) TSi, 2 Sarah ur datastructure course is going smooth 7 Oh Mel you mean 7 Sarah you have an online course rite 7 Sarah a bridge course 7 SCi Sarah how is tht easy 7 Mel Mel yes this semester is C++ (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Sarah ook Sarah u takin 4 subjects this semestr 7 OC2 Mel datastructure will be on the next semester

137 In Extract 26, TSi (e-turn 1) leads to other-imitation (e-turn 2) Sarah then completes the repair (I e, self-completed repair) in e-turn 5 It is Sarah's repair-completion (l e, self-completed repair) that makes it clear to Mel that Sarah's initial understanding of Mel's class is incorrect Then, Mel completes other-completion in e-turn 10 The repair components and e-turns inserted throughout the repair are topically relevant I have suggested that there are a total of six variations of other-completed repair The last variation (l e, Variation F) added to the list consists of simultaneous self-completed repair and other-completed repair That is, both participants feel the need for repair-completion The sequence and organization of these six variations were presented by the eleven figures above The eleven figures also suggest the different ways that participants can be involved in the practice of repair It can be observed in this section that some other-completion phenomena are similar to those found in everyday talk First, other-completed repair found in faceto-face talks and in synchronous CMC typically consists of the following trajectories repair-initiation (self- or other-initiated repair) and other-completed repair Second, repair-initiation precedes other-completed repair The differences include the presence of interpolated e-turn (s) between the three components of othercompleted repair (I e, the TS, repair-initiation, and other-completed repair) in synchronous CMC, while, in face-to-face talk, the three components are placed relatively physically adjacent to one other Heritage's (1984) concept of "doubly contextual" (p 242) relationships between participants in face-to-face talk is exercised in a more loose way in synchronous CMC, allowing e-turn(s) to be unaccountably interpolated between the three components

138 Another difference is that sometimes repair-initiation is not performed in other-completed repair in synchronous CMC as we can see in immediate othercompleted repair (1 e, Variation E) These two differences lead to the six variations of other-completed repair as introduced in Chapter 4 and earlier in this chapter Participants in online chats make use of available technical properties of web chats, and adapt to technology limitations in order to socially interact with each other, and in some cases, they transfer over interactional skills they have mastered in everyday talk, leading to unique social processes that operate electronically The next section will deal with the second research question

Question 2: Functions of Other-Initiated Repair and Other-Completed Repair I found that the locations where other initiates and completes repair significantly differ from each other in that many participants do it immediately, while some participants do it later in the chat, and there are also different strategies, such as the use of emoticon, prefaces, tokens, etc (these are discussed and exemplified later in this chapter) How other-completed repair is performed and how participants can engage in other-completed repair may have social and interactional consequences which can lead to the answer to the second research question what are the functions of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair7 One conversational organization that can help explain the functions of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair is preference organization, which is discussed next

139 Preference organization of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC. This section deals with the social functions and turn design of othercompleted repair It first briefly introduces preference organization and later relates it to the practice of other-completed repair Preference organization is elucidated by CA researchers to present how turns are designed, packaged, and formulated by participants to maintain their social bonds In talk-in-progress, an interrogative turn can be heard as a question, however, interrogatives have many functions, for instance, an invitation (e g, Why don't you come and see me some time7 (Heritage, 1984, p 285)), an assessment (e g, isn't he cute7 (Pomerantz, 1984, p 60)), an offer (e g, Don't chu want me tih come dow n getchu7 (Schegloff, 2007, p 68)) The answers to an invitation and to an offer can then be either an acceptance or a rejection, while either an agreement or a disagreement is responsive to an assessment The responses to these questions are considered conditionally relevant Adjacency pairs, as introduced in Chapter 2, explain the conditionally relevant relationship between the first and second pair parts, where the first pair part makes it conditionally relevant for the next speaker to respond with an appropriate second pair part In addition to being heard as a question, the first pair part can be produced as a statement (e g, announcements, complaints, etc) that needs a conditionally relevant response from the second speaker Sacks (1987) broadly divides second pair parts into two categories "yes-like responses" and "no-like responses" (p 57) The former includes, for example, acceptances, agreements, grantings, accedings, and the like These second pair parts are considered "preferred" (Pomerantz, 1984, p 64) In contrast, the latter includes

140 rejections, denials, dechmngs, disagreements, and the like These responses are "dispreferred" (p 64) Invitation, for instance, as a first pair part is designed to prompt the recipient either to accept or refuse Acceptance to the invitation is a preferred action, while the refusal in contrast is a dispreferred one Although the terms preferred and dispreferred may first appear to explain a psychological feature of talk, they in fact explain "a social/interactional feature of sequences and of orientations to them, not a psychological one It is not a matter of the motives or desires or likings of the participants Preferred or dispreferred rather refer to a structural relationship of sequence parts" (Schegloff, 2007, p 61) Preference is essentially social and interactional, not psychological, in nature, which can be seen in the turn construction of preferred and dispreferred responses Even though second pair parts are considered conditionally relevant to their first pair part within the same pair-type, those seconds are not "symmetrical" (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, p 314) Such asymmetrical alternativeness implies not only that conversational actions are either preferred or dispreferred but also that each can be achieved in a different way That is, participants perform the preferred and dispreferred second pair part differently However, in general, CA researchers claim that a default second pair part is direct, immediate, usual, and unremarkable This is demonstrated below

Example 28: Preferred next action (Heritage, 1984, p. 285) B A Why don't you come and see me some time ll would like to

141 Example 29: Preferred next action (Pomerantz, 2006, p 248) A B T's-tsuh beautiful day out isn't it7 Yeh it's just gorgeous

Examples 28 and 29 present the features of preferred second pair parts which are simple acceptances and are typically performed without delay and without explanation However, the dispreferred ones are not performed in the same way as the preferred ones Heritage (1984) believes that the reason for this is that dispreferred ones are disruptive and destructive of social solidarity and thus socially disaffihative In fact, many scholars, such as Brown and Levinson (1987), Heritage (1984), Holtgraves (1992), Lerner (1996b) argued dispreferred actions result in face threat to the recipient As a result, a speaker who needs to produce a dispreferred second pair part, may need to perform it in a different way in order to minimize social disaffiliation That is, he needs to do extra conversational work, or to delay or even avoid performing dispreferred actions at all Sacks (1987) ties the concept of preference to the "contiguity" (p 54) of the adjacency pair The preference of contiguity holds that the first pair part and second pair part should be placed immediately next to each other That is, normally, participants do not produce extra action or irrelevant action between the two pair parts However, this is not always the case, especially when the second pair parts are dispreferred This is explained as follows One characteristic of preference organization is that preferred second actions are produced with no delay, no prefaces, no accounts, or no declination component

142 (Levinson, 1983) That is, the first pair part is contiguous with the second pair part In contrast, dispreferred second pair parts are accompanied by accounts, delays, palliatives, or hedges This means that the contiguity between the first pair part and the dispreferred second pair part is broken In other words, the consistent contiguity of first and second pair parts is found when the second pair part is preferred, whereas contiguity is disrupted when the second pair part is dispreferred This section introduced the concept of preference organization, which explains how dispreferred second pair parts are designed In the case of other-completed repair, a dispreferred action, CA researchers claim that it is rare in everyday talk possibly because, as explained earlier, there is an inherent structural bias in the turntaking system That is, self can correct himself as in same-turn repair or transitionspace repair because, as a current speaker, he still holds the floor Another explanation is that repair, as will be discussed next, involves a face-threatening act The next subsection presents the concept of face and face-threatening acts

Face and face-threatening acts. Another related concept to preference organization is "face" (Goffman, 1955, p 213) Goffman (1967) defines face as "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself (p 5) There are two types of face that participants maintain during the course of interaction positive face and negative face Positive FTA's are defined by Brown and Levinson (1987) as actions that threatens one's "positive consistent self-image or personality including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of, while negative FTA's are described as actions that

threaten one's "territories, personal preserves, and rights to non-distraction, 1 e, to freedom of action and freedom from imposition" (p 61) Other-completed repair can potentially threaten selfs positive and negative face because it involves suggestions (1 e, other suggests that se//correct what other believes is problematic in selfs prior turn and that selfsolve it), expressions of disapproval (1 e, other believes there is something wrong or problematic in selfs prior turn), disagreement (1 e, other thinks that se//is wrong that his prior turn in problematic), requests (1 e, other wants se//to stop talking to solve a problem), etc Schegloff et al (1977) support that the practice of other-initiated othercompletion implies an expression of disagreement That is, other in the second turn replaces what he thinks is incorrect with what he believes is correct As a result, other-completed repair is dispreferred To lessen the degree of dispreferredness, participants perform certain actions to minimize the degree of social disaffiliation The notion of face and face maintenance is found to relate to the preference organization (Brown & Levinson 1987, Heritage 1984, Holtgraves 1992, Lerner 1996b) in that certain actions should be performed or avoided in talk-in-interaction to minimize FTA's and therefore social disaffiliation, because, as Heritage (1984, p 265) argues "the organization of talk is generally favorable to the maintenance of bonds of solidarity" Goffman (1967) argues that people when encountering others are unavoidably engaged in face-threatening acts In synchronous CMC, too, the participants in this study were found to design particular contributions to the ongoing online chats in order to build mutual understanding The current study

however focuses on how participants design their e-turns during the practice of other-completed repair, and suggests that, as in face-to-face talk, they have to do some extra work to maintain the social bonds with others The next section introduces the sequential organization of other-completed repair and how it maintains face

Sequence organization of distanced other-completed repair. What Variations A and B have in common is that both consist of an othercompletion e-turn that is placed later after the repair-initiation point As outlined in the earlier figures, according to where other-completed repair is carried out in relation to repair-initiation, there are two main types of other-completed repair 1) immediate and 2) distanced The most immediate type occurs when other-completed repair immediately follows other-initiated repair in the same e-turn (as in Variation C, or as outlined in Figures 5 3 and 5 5), while the most distanced type can be exemplified when othercompleted repair is placed several e-turns away from the other-initiation e-turn (as in Variation A, and Variation B, or as outlined in Figure 5 7) The second type allows self-completed repair to be produced by self, while the first type does not However, at some time later when self-completed repair does not occur, other-completed repair is performed In other words, distanced other-completed repair gives self a chance to act first Generally, in everyday talk, other-initiated repair, as explicated by CA researchers, allows se//to undertake repair in the next e-turn because it makes it known to se//that there is trouble in

145 understanding the ongoing talk and that some conditionally relevant conversational actions are needed The following extracts from synchronous CMC show how othermitiated repair results in self-completed repair

Extract 27: Question (BBT:2009-x/23) TS 01 SC Jim Tina Jim Tina Tina btw,nice camera
7

your pic oh

Extract 28: Confirmation check (UP PEGGY-2009-16/20) Jane Jane TS 01 SC Jane Tim Jane to bad that back in my parent's teenage year people went for dark tall and handsome guys my dad was talllbut not dark does darm mean skin7 yea

Extract 29: Alternative question (BBT:2009-9/23) TS Mark I got another SWOT for YAHOO company Mark if you want to 01 Mike you mean you did it, or you just find it online7 Mark http //www scribd com/doc/65298/Yahoo-Case-Analysis

146 SC Mark I found it online

Extracts 27-29 show that other uses different strategies to give self an opportunity to do self-repair Then, expectedly, self takes the next e-turn to complete a repair (1 e self-completed repair) However, there are occasions when, once the TS is identified by other, self, intentionally or unintentionally, it does not perform selfcompleted repair This, later, permits other to complete the repair (1 e, othercompleted repair) (see Variation B) In the same vein, other-completed repair can be brought about by self-initiated repair if self-completed repair is not carried out or is not performed successfully (see Variation A) This subsection has explored the mechanism of distanced other-completed repair other-completed repair that is placed several e-turns away from the repairmitiation The inserted e-turns reflect the opportunity for self-completed repair to operate before other actually completes the repair This opportunity ranges from one to several e-turns The next subsection explores the mechanism of othermitiated other-completion that operates either in one e-turn or two-e-turns

Sequence organization of other-completed repair in one or two e-turns. This subsection deals first with Variation C and then Variation D The former is frequently identified in the data when both other-initiated repair and othercompleted repair are performed in the same e-turn One of its characteristics is that it does not involve se//in the process of repair This is because the process of repair is not observed by self, while other keeps typing and, while doing so, performs

147 other-completed repair in the same e-turn That is, other does not allow an opportunity for self to complete a repair, but after other-completed repair is performed, self may agree or disagree The other-initiated repair component found in Variation C is performed to show self'how other understands the prior e-turn before he responds to it later in the same e-turn To display an understanding of the prior e-turn (by self), other either repeats or paraphrases it, which can be perceived as an other-initiated repair Extract 13, repeated below, demonstrates this practice

Extract 13: T-UC (2009-26/177) TS Jess I had finished the book ka DCL TS Jess Don Jess Jess Jess OR Don How about you 7 hello Did u finish it 7 Today, We have Suki for dinner It's so delicious"""'"'Q which book 7 1 have many books l finished small ones by naowarat pongpaiboon Jess Jess Don um the one u send to me math short stories l have read many chapters but a few more to read Jess (10) (11) (7) (8) (9) (2) (3) (4) (5) rgj (1)

Jess Don

I went to your blog reading many books at the same times two books by tantai and one by nn

(12)

(13) (14) (15) (16)

Jess Don Jess

There is a new group blog by win me but not any blog in it

This repeated or paraphrased e-turn (l e, e-turn 7) by other appears to function as other-initiated repair which is followed by a response in the same e-turn Othermitiated repair functions as an interactional token which helps self process the response and on which other bases his response The second possible function of other-initiated repair found in Variation C is to bring closer the first pair part by self to the second pair part by other It is necessary to bring the two pair parts together because the chat programs cause separation Once the two pair parts are brought together, co-participants (l e, self) can come to understanding which sentence, turn, or action in a prior e-turn the current response is given to In this case, again, othermitiated repair functions as an interactional token that connects the first pair part and second pair part and thus maintains the contiguity between the two The last possible function that other-initiated repair identified in Variation C performs is to defer the other-completed repair Other-initiated repair is inserted between the TS and other-completed repair to break the contiguity between the TS and other-completed repair If other-completed repair occurred closer to the TS, it would be recognized as a dispreferred action When other-initiated repair occurs

149 before other-completed repair, it pushes other-completed repair toward the end of the current e-turn, making other-completed repair non-contiguous with the TS Variation D is also frequently identified in synchronous CMC Other-initiated repair is found in one e-turn and is immediately followed by an e-turn in which other-completed repair is performed Although the gap (1 e, time allocation and electronic space - numbers of interpolated e-turns) between two e-turns is less than the gap between the other-initiation e-turn and other-completion e-turns of Variation B, it makes no interactional difference In other words, in Variation D, once other presses the ENTER key, self can observe the initiation and, if he wants, complete the repair This means that se//is given a chance to correct himself in the following e-turn The purpose of performing other-completed repair on the next following e-turn is that it not only provides an opportunity for self to correct his own trouble, but also delays other-completed repair This function is similar to the one discussed in the previous paragraph with regard to Variation C in that it is used to defer other-completed repair, the next conditionally relevant action However, the difference is that, while other in Variation C can push other-completed repair toward the end of the same e-turn, in this case, other-completed repair is one e-turn away Briefly, this subsection addressed possible functions of Variation C and Variation D, and suggested that other-completed repair can be placed in different eturns The production of each e-turn plays an important part in creating several variations of other-completed repair on other's part and interpretation on selfs part Whatever variations other creates and interpretations se//makes are displayed in the dialog box, and perceived and understood by co-participants While

150 contributing each e-turn, their understanding of prior e-turns is revealed The next subsection examines the mechanism of immediate other-completed repair identified in synchronous CMC

Sequence organization of immediate other-completed repair. I define immediate other-completed repair as other-completion that is placed in the e-turn that immediately follows the TS e-turn, other-completed repair can be found at different positions within that immediately following e-turn As demonstrated earlier, Variation E or the practice of immediate other-completed repair, as its name implies, is performed by other in the e-turn that immediately follows the TS e-turn It should be remarked that there are only two e-turns in this type of repair The TS by se//is in the first e-turn, which is immediately followed by another e-turn, in which other completes the repair Certainly, immediate other-completed repair has interactional import Because it is placed immediately at the beginning of the very next e-turn, it gives no opportunity for self to observe possible trouble in the interaction and, as a result, to perform self-completed repair Once performed, immediate other-completed repair ends the repair sequence without involving se//in the process of repair, though self may confirm or disconfirm later This action by other is a face-threatening disaffihative move not only in face-to-face talk but also synchronous CMC Although the extracts presented in Chapter 4 and Figure 7 show that othercompleted repair is placed in an e-turn that immediately follows the TS e-turn, the practice of immediate other-completed repair practice is organized systematically

151 There are three gross observations about the sequential organization of immediate other-completed repair either it occurs at a turn-initial position or it occurs somewhere other than a turn-initial position, or it is accompanied by emoticons

Turn-initial position. It is found that other-completed repair is often performed at the beginning of the e-turn In other words, other begins his or her turn, the turn subsequent to the TS e-turn, with other-completed repair, and the repair-completion e-turn is contiguous with the TS e-turn An other-completion e-turn should be understood as designed by other especially for the purpose of repair, that is, to deal with the repairable as immediately as possible Below are two previously presented examples of immediate other-completed repair

Extract 20. FI-AR-UP (2009-25/29) Mike umm l think u feel that you need to be upset at me but u cant' cuz u jus can't Sara TS OC Sara not upset (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

but hate u for being so tricky and win all the time

Mike ur supposed to say smooth Mike not tricky Mike tricky sounds bad

c)

Sara Sara

ok smooth but the part that l canr is true

152 Sara cant*5 (9)

Extract 23: YNR (2009-2/3) TS OC Rick I am going for super, see you then

Sean supper Sean

c}

Rick

ThanK you~If u find any errors in English, no matDr which kind, please Dll me

This practice of immediate other-completed repair can be considered the most immediate and unmitigated one The whole second e-turn is specially designed first for this purpose What the second participant believes to be the sources of misunderstanding or to be incorrect in the first e-turn is straightforwardly and immediately replaced in the second e-turn The contiguity is not broken between these two e-turns

Elsewhere other than turn-initial position m the same e-turn. In some cases where other-completed repair occurs in one e-turn, it is at the beginning of the e-turn, in others, it comes later in the e-turn In the latter case, there is some extra conversational work that is placed before other-completed repair When these other actions are placed at an e-turn initial position, other-

An asterisk is attached by a participant to a correctly spelled word that follows the misspelled one In this case, cant (e-turn 9) is what Sara intends to type, while the misspelled one is canr which is in e-turn 8

153 completed repair occurs later toward the end of the same e-turn, or at least it is pushed past the initial position This subsection explores that extra conversational work that defers othercompleted repair A close analysis found that turn-initial space is devoted to activities other than other-completed repair These activities that precede othercompleted repair include anecdotal stories (Extract 2, repeated below), hedges (Extract 31), or available options (Extract 19)

Extract 2: MK-Chat (2009-25/48) Alice I feel sorry to see you alone in office hours Alice no one coming TS OC Paula @ So I can do other stuffs Alice Did you know what Jane's teacher just told us that there is no such thing as stuffs Alice stuff is already noun plural Paula I don't think there will be costomers since there is no assignment/HW Alice Jane made mistake in her writing and the teacher showed is to us Paula OK I can't do other stuff(good to know ) (7) (8) (6) (4) (5) (1) (2) (3)

In Extract 2, there is an ungrammatical use of stuffs in e-turn 3 Instead of correcting it immediately at the next e-turn initial, Alice prefaces her correction with a story

about her daughter s ungrammatical use of stuffs that was corrected by her teacher This anecdotal story does not involve the two participants directly and does not claim straightforwardly that Paula just made a mistake, and more importantly, it defers the other-completed repair toward the end of the e-turn The second type of activity is the use of a hedge to defer other-completed repair, as in the following extract

Extract 31: RP-CHAT (2009-27/68) Jen I went there last week (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Owen u and ur room mate, ok good Owen time square7 have u been there 7 Jen actually once 0

Owen wherE7 Jen because before l live here, l lived in manhattan for a month

Owen oh where r u putting up now same friends or new room mates7 Jen same (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14)

Owen oh that guy from ur home country Jen yes

Owen good, what his name Owen Jen

7

Matt

Owen ok

TS OC

Jen

no another thai in ur university

(15) (16) (17) (18)

Owen ur 1 think our uniersity Jen is there anything interested in queens7

Owen lemmme think

Extract 31 shows that there is a TS in e-turn 15 when Jen uses ur (I e, your) to refer to the university that both attend It seems to Owen that ur is not the right word, because it is also the university where Jen attends He then replaced ur with our Another possible cause of this other-completed repair is that ur is interpreted as a typo because it is spelled similar to our The dots Owen uses suggest pauses or hedges between the incorrect word and what he believes is more appropriate "/ think" is also an appropriate preface for the dispreferred actions (Sidnell, 2010) In Extract 19, repeated below, other not only locates an error but also shows how to correct it, thus allowing se//to correct himself

Extract 19: PNSI (2009-1/1) Jill u can track your package online na DCL Jill Mike Jill it said that it shipped or not7 not when did you order7 (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (1)

Mike yesterday Jill com'on

Jill

just order ysterday

(7) (8) (9) (10 (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16)

Mike Jill Jill TS OC Mike Jill 1 think the latest u will get is either thurs of Friday otherwise monday It just a curious I'm just curious or it's just my curiosity

Mike oops d) Mike cunousity Jill Jill ya I don't think curious can be used as a noun na DCL ^ Mike I should chat with you more to practice my language skill

(17)

Extract 19 shows that Mike's use of curious is incorrect (e-turn 11) Jill then repairs it by using Mike's curious in a correct sentence (e-turn 12) Also, she uses Mike's original sentence and changes curious to curiosity Jill initiates a repair, completes a repair, makes use of Mike's original words and sentence, and provides options [I'm just curious or it's just my curiosity, e-turn 12) One option, I'm just curious, repeats Mike's original word (i e, curious) but with the word in a new sentence The other option keeps Mike's original sentence (I e, it's just my ) but changes the word

curious to curiosity These options allow Mike to correct himself later (e-turn 14) I have shown how online participants do extra conversational work to defer other-completed repair Although other-completed repair is in the e-turn

157 immediately following the TS e-turn, other-completed repair is not contiguous with the TS Another remark is that practice of other-completed repair performed elsewhere as illustrated here is not as immediate and unmitigated as immediate other-completed repair performed at a turn-initial position While all of the conversational work presented here precedes other-completed repair, there is other conversational work that follows other-completed repair This is demonstrated in the next section

Accompanying conversational work. It is found that other-completed repair is sometimes followed by extra conversational work Such extra conversational work consists of the use of emoticons and disclaimers Emoticons have been used throughout the online chats Extract 23, repeated below, illustrates such use of emoticons

Extract 23: Variation E and emoticon (YNR: 2009-2/3) TS OC c) Rick I am going for super, see you then (1) (2) (3)

Sean supper Sean Rick ThanK you~If u find any errors in English, no matDr which kind, please Dll me

(4)

In Extract 23, Sean does immediate other-completed repair in e-turn 2 when he replaces super misspelled by Rick, with supper In the third e-turn, he types is

placed in the e-turn that immediately follows the immediate other-completed repair e-turn In addition to Variation E as in Extract 23, an emoticon accompanies Variation B (Extract 31), C (Extract 12, repeated below), D (Extract 32), and F (Extract 25) which are illustrated below

Extract 31: Variation B and emoticon (YFT: 2009-5/14) TS SC c} OC Jack Jack now I am sending potoes via MSN to my mumhahaha potos

Kate Kate photo photos yerpp

SC/OC Jack Kate

Extract 12: Variation C and emoticons (T-UC: 2009-1/177) Sam how r u7

Katie I'm fine Sam TS Sam just got back from the teaching must be careful not going home alone

Katie Why7 Sam Sam the guys might u questions better go with friends

OCc) Katie Oh'You mean me7 Thanks Sam how's the food made by u7

Katie 555 Sam lmeanu yes

Extract 32: Variation D and emoticons (MK-Chat: 2009-35/48) TS Amy it start shiny now is there any other place she wants to go7 Mel Mel 01 Disney world I promise that I bring her when she turn 6

Amy oo I see Florida right7

OCc) Amy that is not a weekend schedule G P Mel (rofl)

Extract 25: Variation F and emoticon (MK-Chat: 2009-6/45) TS 01 Carol I might stay up 'til morning later, so I might see you again Ryan Won't sleep7

OCc) Ryan Oh IC See you SC Carol no I'll probably sleep right now and wake up early in the morning, around 3 and wrap up the presentation

These above extracts, repeated above, show how emotions are used during the practice of other-completed repair The only type of emoticons used by the participants is smiley In addition to the use of emoticons, online chatters were found to use disclaimers after completing immediate other-completed repair This is presented in the following extract

Extract 33: CHATS FROM NP (2009-66/68) Sam Jess Sam Sam TS OC DIS Jess Sam Sam Jess why don't you go home early7 what do u mean7 It is very dangerous for another I have a lot of work works I think yes I guess (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

In Extract 33, Sam and Jess talk about safety He recommends that Jess come home earlier Jess's excuse is that she has work to complete It was work in e-turn 6 that is the TS Because Sam believes that it is ungrammatical, he does the immediate other-completed repair by proposing works in e-turn 6, the turn that immediately follows the TS e-turn After the other-completion e-turn, he produces a disclaimer / think in e-turn 7 This technique, Schegloff (2007) states, elaborates dispreferred actions

Summary This chapter presented the process of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC While it is undoubted that other-completed repair is needed once a serious problem is detected in either face-to-face talk or online communication on which this study focused, what is worth investigating is how

161 participants perform other-completed repair In face-to-face talk, other-completed repair is dispreferred because of the interactional nature of the turn-taking system Also, from a sociohnguistic perspective, other-completed repair threatens coparticipant's face As a result, preference organization reveals that other-completed repair is performed by participants differently than preferred actions This is also true in synchronous CMC, where participants in this study used several strategies to minimize the degree of other-completed repair's dispreferredness Some strategies were transferred from face-to-face talk, while some were supported by the chat programs, for instance, the use of emoticons This chapter revealed that e-turns in which other-completed repair was found were either specially delayed or designed The purpose and social function of specially positioned and marked e-turns in which other-completed repair was found will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6, which is the last chapter of this dissertation

162 CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The electronic data that were analyzed in Chapter 4 showed how repair located by either self or other was then accomplished by other Five variations of other-completed repair, namely, self-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair (Variation A), other-initiated repair and distanced other-completed repair (Variation B), other-completed repair performed in one e-turn (Variation C), otherrepair performed over two consecutive e-turns (Variation D), and Immediate othercompleted repair (Variation E), presented in Chapter 4 were then given further analysis and interpretation in Chapter 5 In addition, Chapter 5 revealed one additional variation of repair, namely, simultaneously-completed repair a repair that is completed by both se//and other I then further investigated other-completed repair according to its sequential organization, and examined the environment in which emoticons occur during other-completed repair Chapters 4 and 5 revealed that other-completed repair often occurs in synchronous CMC and that it does so in a variety of sequential organizations These six variations consist of either self-initiated repair or other-initiated repair, and other-completed repair, while in Variation E, there is no initiation As touched upon in Chapters 1 and 2, in face-to-face talk, repair that involves other either in repair-initiation or repair-completion is rare, while, as claimed by pioneering CA researchers, repair that consists of other-initiated repair and othercompleted repair (also known as other-repair) is the rarest among the different

types of repair The analysis of the chat script revealed that both other-initiated repair and other-completed repair made up almost all variations of other-repair found in this study (1 e, Variations B, C, and D, and F) While other-initiated othercompletion does not usually occur in face-to-face encounters, this study finds that it occurs relatively often in synchronous CMC Other-initiated other-completion is found by CA researchers to consist of three components the TS, other-initiated repair, and other-completed repair However, the analysis revealed that the second component can be missing in synchronous CMC (1 e, in immediate other-completed repair) Moreover, this study finds that there can be e-turns inserted between the three components These findings add new positions and variations to what has been found in face-to-face encounters by CA researchers This research can also potentially provide some explanations because, as Heritage (1995) speculates, research on face-to-face interactions predates the development of others both "phylogenetically" as in the life of society and "ontogenetically" (p 394) as in the life of the individual This chapter starts off with an introduction to the goal of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC This is followed by the discussion of the findings that show that, other-completed repair, a socially disaffihative action, on the one hand, frequently occurs in synchronous online chats, and on the other hand is specially performed to minimize its social disaffiliation The last section suggests some of the implications of this study the findings that can be applied in sociohnguistic, conversation analytic, and CMC research Included in this section are suggestions for further research

164 Other-Completed Repair as Social Action in Synchronous CMC This section aims to discuss the nature of turn-taking systems in relation to the display of mutual understandings and the purpose of repair I begin the discussion with Heritage's (1984) claim that "the organization of talk is generally favorable to the maintenance of bonds of solidarity" (p 265) His claim appears convincing as demonstrated by the turn design and preference organization used by participants to produce their contribution to talk-in-progress The appropriate design of dispreferred next actions, as demonstrated by CA researchers, is essentially social and interactional by nature (Liddicoat, 2007, Schegloff, 2007) The appropriate design of dispreferred next actions reveals how other wants to maintain a positive relationship with self, though in order to do so, other has to go through more conversational work Although Schegloff (1987) argues, "talk in interaction is built for understanding and on the whole effortless understanding" (p 202), this does not mean that talk is without problems Problems in talk-in-mteraction can be identified moment-by-moment when talk emerges When taking the next turn, participants reveal how each understands their so far collaboratively-generated talk and each other's messages Once trouble in understanding is detected, the participants need a mechanism that deals with it That is, they need what CA researchers term repair, which helps to reestablish intersubjectivity Other-completed repair, by definition, is a socially disaffihative action for many reasons Because of the structural bias of turn-taking systems, the opportunity for self-initiated repair over other-initiated repair, or both self-initiated repair and

other-initiated repair result in self-completed repair (Drew, 1997, Heritage, 1984, Lerner 1996b, Schegloff et al, 1977) From a sociohnguistic point of view, othercompleted repair threatens positive face, or a consistent positive self-image or personality including the desire that the self-image be appreciated and approved of (Brown & Levinson, 1987, Brown & Levinson, 2006, Levinson, 1983) The question raised in regard to the idea that other-repair is face-threatening is How can other do repair while maintaining social bonds with self or saving selfs positive face7 The threat to face becomes stronger in some media (see Chapter 2) because they limit and filter out the social cues, contextual cues, and social presence on which participants rely when interacting with each other Several CMC researchers have argued that CMC was in fact not designed for social interaction and relational communication but for information storage and retrieval Thus synchronous CMC may not be an effective communicative device participants can use to maintain social bonds The following section presents evidence from the analysis of electronic data that supports the claim that when communicating electronically via typed text, participants pay less attention to the maintenance of social solidarity This is exemplified by the occurrence of unmitigated immediate other-completed repair (I e, Variation E that occurs at a turn-initial position)

Other-Completed Repair: Evidence of Social Disaffiliation Recognized by CA researchers as a dispreferred action, other-completed repair, like many other dispreferred actions, needs to be performed differently from

preferred actions That is, to maintain social bonds, the speaker cannot perform dispreferred actions in the same ways they perform preferred actions Preferred actions, as argued by Heritage (1984), Pomerantz (1984, 2006), Sacks (1987), and Schegloff (2007), are produced straightforwardly with no delay and no accounts They are produced immediately in order not to break the contiguity with the first pair part When other-completed repair is performed in the same way that preferred actions are, it can be considered immediate, bold, unmitigated, or even conflict-provoking (Heritage, 1984)

Unmitigated or "still dispreferred" other-completed repair. In this study, other-completed repair is found to be performed in two primary ways either now- or later-type of other-completed repair The now-type was presented in Chapters 4 and 5 as immediate other-completed repair (Variation E), because it is performed in an immediately following e-turn However, not all practices under immediate other-completed repair are considered unmitigated, but only those that are performed at the beginning of the e-turn (see the discussion on page 151) The analysis of the data shows that immediate other-completed repair is a socially disaffihative action Extract 2, repeated below, elaborates this practice

Extract 2: Turns and dialog in synchronous CMC (MK-Chat: 2009-28/45) Alice I feel sorry to see you alone in office hours Alice no one coming Paula So I can do other stuffs (1) (2) (3)

167 Alice Did you know what Jane's teacher just told us that there (4) (5)

is no such thing as stuffs Alice stuff is already noun plural Paula I don't think there will be costomers since there is no assignment/HW Alice Jane made mistake in her writing and the teacher showed is to us Paula OK I can't do other stufffgood to know) Alice yes, I learn a lot from my kids Alice okay, I'H talk to you later, I'll finish my dinner l can't eat after midnight for the glucosa test so I have to fill up my ummy by now

(6)

(7) (8) (9)

(10)

In Extract 2, although Alice's e-turn 2 performs immediate other-completed repair, she does extra conversational work in and after e-turn 4 The extra work referred to here is the use of a story which has two interactional imports First, she uses an anecdotal story to initiate an other-completed repair (e-turns 4 and 7) This strategy does not directly involve Paula as someone who creates the problematic talk Second, that story also functions as a deferral of other-completed repair It pushes other-completed repair toward the end of the e-turn 4 or even to e-turn 5 It also functions as a preface which breaks the contiguity between the TS and othercompleted repair Third, at the end of e-turn 2, Alice acknowledges Paula's use of the incorrect word (l e, stuffs) by repeating the wrong word but changing its

environment (1 e, there is no such thing as stuffs) All but stuffs in Paula s original eturn is changed by Alice By doing that, she draws Paula's attention to stuffs Alice assumes her e-turn 2 is clear as, in general, a noun may be plurahzed (e g, book versus books), while some are already plural without adding -s added Fourth, Alice locates specifically little by little the trouble source (e-turn 3), though her e-turn 2 is other-completed repair Fifth, because of the above strategies, Paula does self-repair She reveals the uptake Extract 2 demonstrates that other-completed repair is a socially disaffihative action because of the extra work Alice goes through As explained above, she does not do other-completed repair straightforwardly, rather, she engages Paula in the practice of repair This confirms that other-completed repair by nature is socially disaffihative and explains why the practice of other-completed repair is designed specifically to minimize the degree of disaffiliation When othercompleted repair is not mitigated and, therefore, remains disaffihative, it can cause disaffiliation or argument, which can be observed in the following extracts

Extract 34: Chats-from-OW (2009-66/68) TS 01 l=D Beth what do u want to talk with me7 Betsy what about7 Beth my English is not good Betsy don't be serious Betsy everything can improve (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

169 In Extract 34, the TS is located in e-turn 1 The question Beth asks is ungrammatical It is ungrammatical because the preposition about, is missing Betsy in e-turn 2 repeats part of the TS e-turn (i e, what) and suggests about Repair by Betsy upsets Beth because it can be seen that there is an argument about the cause of TS, which is Beth's language proficiency Beth's immediate negative response (I e, e-turn 3) is perceived by Betsy as such Therefore, in e-turns 4 and 5, it can be observed that Betsy soothed and comforted Beth Another extract below demonstrates how immediate other-completed repair can lead to an argument

Extract 35: Chat-from-OW (2009-2/3) Laura I spent on Etude last weekend Laura but it works Sue wow, do they have it in department store (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Laura some people at work said my complexion looks nice Laura yep, Central Sue l never stopped by around there

Laura l emailed u the list this morning Sue 'coz I didn't bring 'ya dom' when I went like u suggested

Laura but it's overpriced, I mean they cost as much as Chnique (in Thailand) Sue got it ka DCL Sue isn't chnique cheap too (11) (9) (10)

Laura here 7 Laura 1 don't think so Laura a blusher costs 765 Sue TS 01 so now u found ur new favorite brand

(12) (13) (14) (15) (16)

Laura l checked prices in US dollar, it costs onlt half Sue but I remember like Chnique blush, the one that's made as flower on it, is around $25 na ka DCL Laura i'm talking about prices in thailand, not in the us ka DCL Laura like other brands, prices are almost double Sue yeah, but 765 baht is not much higher than $25

(17)

(18)

(19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27)

Laura it's still expensive for me Laura with my salary Sue Sue I mean, if u use 30baht/$, $25 is 750 only oh, I c .compared w / ur salary, not the p in $

Laura and etude prices in korea is only half Laura hurr, how can l afford shiseido Sue Sue lc common, I don't think u don't have to spend much on gas as u live close to ur office Sue

(28)

and there's no other big spending so u can spend on cosmetics (29) (30)

Laura got to save for retirement ka DCL

Extract 35 reveals how Laura and Sue argue about the cost of cosmetics sold in Thailand and the USA Their argument is built around the currency exchange rate, whether or not Chnique is cheaper in US dollars or Thai baht and where to get a better deal It can be seen that Sue in e-turn 17 immediately corrects Laura's previous e-turn (e-turn 16) The other-completed repair leads to an argument which lasts for 13 e-turns This section pointed out not only that other-completed repair by nature is socially disaffihative and dispreferred, but also that it is often found in synchronous CMC The analysis reveals that when other-completed repair is done online, it can be done with or without delay, hesitation, preface, or account Immediate and unmitigated other-completed repair can result in argument and disaffiliation The next section discusses the practice of other-completed repair as an indicator of social affiliation in synchronous CMC

Other-Completed Repair: Evidence of Maintenance of Social Bonds Goffman (1955, 2006) claims that everyone involved in social encounters with others has to, deliberately or not, participate in face maintenance and facethreatening acts This means that issues of face are impossible to avoid not only face-to-face talks but also electronic encounters Brown and Levinson (1987, 2006), and Levinson (1983) have outlined potential face-threatening acts and possible interactional strategies one can employ to save other's face and therefore one's own, while CA researchers (notably Pomerantz, 1978,2006, Sacks, 1978) have argued that turn design is important in face considerations

172 As elaborated above, other-completed repair is a face-threatening act that has to be dealt with, or the talk cannot continue The talk has to be discontinued so that participants can collaboratively deal with trouble and the talk can continue To maintain social solidarity or the positive face of others, the online participants were found to perform other-completed repair with the following functions

Opportunity given for self-completed repair. Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrated that other-completed repair is sometimes performed one e-turn, a few turns, or several e-turns away from where repair is initiated (l e, Variation A, B, C and D) E-turn(s) interpolated between repairmitiation and other-completed repair reflects an available opportunity for selfcompleted repair to operate (see Figures 5 5, 5 6, and 5 7) before other performs other-completed repair at a later point Variation A indicates that other-completed repair is performed later after the self-initiated repair point That is, other-completed is performed after it passes due for self-completed repair, or when self-completed repair is not successful This is shown in Extract 6, repeated below, where other-completed repair is interpolated by several e-turns

Extract 6: EA (2009-4/5) Tony You want me to buy for you or you can go to amazon and do that Tony it's up to you (1) (2)

173 TS SI Tony I brought one for Xiaocheng Tony Xiaochen Dan Ok, I want one too (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

Tony I dont know how to spell Tony You want me to buy for you 7 OC Dan Xiao Shan

Tony oh Tony Ok c) Tony Xiao Shan

In Extract 6, Tony [self) misspells their mutual friend's name (I e, Xiaocheng, e-turn 3) After the TS e-turn, he tries to spell the name in the next e-turn (l e, Xiaochen, eturn 4), and asks for help in another e-turn (l e, / dont know how to spell , e-turn 6) Two e-turns after that, Dan [other) does other-completed repair (e-turn 8) Variation A, consisting of distanced other-completed repair, gives self an opportunity to do the repair, so does Variation B I use Extract 10, repeated below, to show how distanced other-completed repair in Variation B may potentially lead to self-completed repair

Extract 10: FI-AR-UP (2009-x/29) Gale Tom Gale so we gonna meet on tuesday and fnday, Saturday too 7 yep wow (1) (2) (3)

174 Tom Tom Gale Gale TS Tom Gale 01 Gale Tom Tom OC Gale Tom Tom Gale Gale Gale Tom Tom u ok with that 7 u did say u wanted more of me yep the more the better waht if u get too much of me, and won't let me go 7 haha is that call "too much" waht if ginger or darcy try to get more of me 7 what if dr house wants more of me 7 l thought "too much" means u dont want it anymore these are qs u need to ask lol well, l need to ask 7 those questions r for u to decide not me lol but u never answered (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20)

In Extract 10, Gale [other) does not know whether or not the word too much (e-turn 8) has a bad connotation She then keeps asking Tom [self) about this word (l e, is that call "too much", e-turn 10) Several e-turns later since Tom does not do selfcompleted repair, Gale does other-completed repair (l e, / thought "too much" means u dont want it anymore, e-turn 13)

175 Variation D is similar to Variation B in that both consist of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair, while the difference is that in Variation D the other-initiation e-turn is immediately followed by the other-completion e-turn This probably implies that other does not give an opportunity for se//to do the repair This issue is touched upon in the next subsection In the case of Variation C, although other invites se//to do a repair by designing other-initiated repair at the beginning of the e-turn, other completes the repair later in the same e-turn The other-initiated repair of Variation C may be understood by self as an opportunity for self-completed repair but does not actually lead to other-initiated self-completion, but to other-initiated other-completion that may or may not be followed by self-completed repair in a subsequent e-turn This can be observed in Extract 12, repeated below, where other-initiated repair and other-completed repair are in the same e-turn

Extract 12: T-UC (2009-1/177) Sam how r u 7 fine (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Katie I'm Sam TS Sam just got back from the teaching

must be careful not going home alone

Katie Why7 Sam Sam OC the guys might u questions better go with friends

Katie Oh'You mean me7 Thanks

176 Sam how's the food made by u7 (9) (10) (11)

Katie 555 Sam lmeanu yes

In Extract 12, Sam's [self) answer to Katie's [other) question reveals to her that she has misunderstood the prior e-turns Sam's answer leads her to initiate and complete a repair later both of which are in the same e-turn A few e-turns after that, Sam responds to her repair-initiation, resulting in other-initiated othercompletion and self-completed repair It can be said that other-initiated repair can result in self-completed repair, but self-initiated repair, if performed, is placed after other-completed repair Briefly, Variations A, B, C, and D consist of other-initiated repair which is supposed to result in self-completed repair However, only Variations A and B allow the possible chance that self-completed repair will actually occur, while Variations C and D, though consisting of other-initiated repair do not permit self-completed repair to occur before other-completed repair Variations C and D are discussed again in this subsection, which presents another type of mitigated other-completed repair which maintains social bonds

Other-initiated repair as a display of understanding of the TS. This subsection discusses the occurrence of Variation C, or other-completed repair performed in one e-turns At first glance, this practice is similar to Variation B because they all consist of other-initiated repair and other-completed repair If

other-initiated repair and other-completed repair are placed in different e-turns (as in Variation B), other-initiated repair can possibly end up with self-completed repair There is even a chance that the self-completion e-turn would be contiguous with the other-initiation e-turn However, when other-initiated repair and othercompleted repair are in the same e-turn, other-initiated repair may have different functions, which are discussed below One possible function of other-initiated repair in Variation C is to show the owner of the TS how other understands the prior e-turn before other responds (1 e, other-completed repair) to it later in the same e-turn In this case, what appears to be other-initiated repair is in fact a method of displaying other's understanding of the prior e-turn before other responds to it To display an understanding of the prior e-turn, other either repeats or paraphrases what other is expected to respond to It is accurate to point out that this type of other-completed repair is borrowed from face-to-face conversation without modification Whatever other repeats or paraphrases is followed by his response placed in the same e-turn Other-initiated repair as a method of displaying others' understanding functions as other-initiated repair in the sense that, if it were done verbally, it would invite self-completed repair, which may be immediately relevantly next To demonstrate other-completed repair as a method of displaying other's understanding, I use Extract 13, repeated below

Extract 13: T-UC (2009-26/177) TS TS Jess Jess I had finished the book ka How about you7 (1) (2)

Don Jess Jess Jess OI-OR Don

hello Did u finish it7 Today, We have Suki for dinner It's so delicious""""" which book71 have many books I finished small ones

(3) (4) (5) (6)

by naowarat pongpaiboon Jess SC/TS Jess OR Don um the one u send to me math short stories I have read many chapters but a few more to read Jess Jess Don I went to your blog reading many books at the same times two books by tantai andonebynn Jess Don Jess There is a new group blog by win me but not any blog in it

(7) (8) (9)

(10) (11) (12)

(13) (14) (15) (16)

Jess asks Don if he has finished reading the book (e-turns 1 and 2) It is the book that is the repairable because Don does not know which book Jess is talking about Many e-turns later (e-turn 7), he begins his e-turn with a self-initiation e-turn (I e, which book71 have many books) If this was heard by Jess as in face-to-face talk, there would be self-completed repair In the same e-turn, Don continues typing

which later appears to be other-completed repair (1 e, ifinishedsmall ones by naowarat pongpaiboon) Other-initiated repair of Variation C can be said to function similarly to that of Variation D, though the latter can potentially allow se//to complete the repair (1 e, self-completed repair) That is, there is a chance for self-completed repair to occur before other-completed repair in Variation C, while there is no chance for selfcompleted repair to occur before other-completed repair in Variation D The next section presents how the smiley is used in faceless communication

Smiley as a reminder of face. As I have presented above, other-completed repair which is recognized as a socially disaffihative action requires other to do extra conversational work The use of emoticons is one of several conversational strategies online participants use in order to decrease the degree of social disaffiliation The data reveals that smileys were found accompanying other-completed repair (see Chapters 4 and 5) It is important to point out here that, although elsewhere the term emoticon was used, smiley (1 e, ) appears to be a better term for this discussion because smiley was the only emotional symbol the participants used during the practice of othercompleted repair in the data There are different locations and possible social functions of smiley to be discussed here The very first place smiley is found in the practice of othercompleted repair is an e-turn prior to the other-completion e-turn Extract 32, repeated below, illustrates this practice

180 Extract 31: YFT (2009-5/14)

TS Jack Jack c) Kate OC Jack Kate now I am sending potoes via MSN to my mum'hahaha potos Kate photos yerpp photo

In Extract 31, a single-smiley e-turn functions as a warning, letting se//know that there is trouble and that it can be found in prior e-turns, and thus should be dealt with That is, a single-smiley e-turn warns that there is a problem in the prior eturn As Extract 33 shows, a single-smiley e-turn also warns self of the upcoming dispreferred action, l e, other-completed repair Another function of a single-smiley e-turn is that it can delay an other-completion e-turn That is, a single-smiley e-turn pushes the other-completion e-turn at least one e-turn away The second position where a single-smiley e-turn can be found is right after the practice of other-completed repair in the same e-turn This is illustrated in Extract 31, repeated below

Extract 32: MK-Chat (2009-35/48) TS 01 Amy Mel Mel it start shiny now Disney world I promise that I bring her when she turn 6 is there any other place she wants to go 7

181 Amy oo I see Florida right7 OC Amy that is not a weekend schedule @ Mel (rofl)

Extract 32 shows how other places a smiley right after she produces othercompleted repair In Chapter 2,1 discussed the pragmatic function of emoticons In this case, because other-completed repair implies disaffiliation, other feels the need to minimize the degree of disaffiliation Closing other-completed repair with a smiley is one of several strategies In other words, a smiley reduces the degree of a face-threatening act In addition to being placed at the end of the other-completion e-turn, a smiley can be placed in the e-turn that immediately follows the othercompletion e-turn This is presented in Extract 23, repeated below

Extract 23: YNR (2009-2/3) TS OC c) Rick I am going for super, see you then (1) (2) (3)

Sean supper Sean Rick ThanK you~If u find any errors in English, no matDr which kind, please Dll me

(4)

In Extract 23, after Sean does other-completed repair, he types a smiley in the next e-turn The function of this smiley is the same as that found in Extract 32 presented above

182 Briefly, I have called attention to the fact that other uses several strategies to minimize the presence of other-completed repair in synchronous CMC and to involve se//in the process of repair Some of the strategies are transferred from everyday encounters, some are supported by technologies for communication (e g, the use of emoticons, the incompleted turn-taking system) These online participants employed whatever possible strategies that they know and that are provided by chat programs in order to maintain their social relationships with their co-participants The next section discusses other-completed repair as a transitional and interactional function of language

Other-Completed Repair: Transactional and Interactional Functions First of all, I need to define two terms on which I base this section Brown and Yule (1983) believe that language is used to fulfill several functions, though they adopt two terms to describe the major functions of language "transactional" (language for communicating information), and "interactional" (language for creating harmonious interactions) points of view (p 1) These two terms will be used below to support the argument I make in regard to other-completed repair I have discussed so far the function of other-completed repair, which is performed to reestablish mutual understandings before participants can resume chatting When trouble in understanding occurs, repair is needed Repair helps online chatters continue their chats smoothly, grasp what others say, and correct misunderstandings This emphasizes the fact that repair functions as a tool that may help achieve transactional goals Brown and Yule (1983) consider

183 "transactional" use of language to be when it is used to serve the "expression of content" (p 1) and "transmit information" (p 2) From this transactional point of view, language is "message-oriented" (p 1) Another function of other-completed repair that I have demonstrated is to help participants "establish and maintain social relationships" (p 3) The use of other-completed repair to help participants save one another's face is considered an interactional function In such faceless communication as synchronous CMC, repair helps participants maintain good social relationships with their co-participants This dissertation is not aimed to prove whether repair is needed or not In fact, if trouble is detected and perceived to cause a serious communication breakdown, repair is unavoidably needed Instead, this dissertation explores how online participants do other-completed repair, a dispreferred action, and how they make use of their social interactional skills transferred from face-to-face talk or develop new strategies provided by chat programs when doing other-completed repair The findings provide an insightful explanation about other-completed repair, which occurs often in synchronous text-based online communication The findings of Variation E, immediate other-completed repair that is placed at an e-turn initial position, suggest that the relation between intersubjectivity and contiguity found by sociologists and CA researchers may not hold in this environment Questions the findings raise for sociohnguistics concern the concepts of face, politeness theory, and electronic communication, which are explored next

184 Conclusion and Future Research This study explored how other-completed repair, a dispreferred action, is performed in synchronous CMC This study is beneficial to the area of intercultural communication, which explores the phenomenon of communication that occurs between participants who do not share the same language or culture As described in Chapter 3, all participants in this study were non-native speakers of English who ordinarily chatted with those with whom they shared the language or culture Although this study did not examine the impact of linguistic or cultural differences that resulted in misunderstandings, it presents the actual intercultural communication in which several variations of other-completed repair could be found Future research should be conducted to see if any given particular types of TS or repair correlate with participants' native culture and to discourse organization specific to that culture Based on preference organization, the analysis reveals that there are several variations of other-completed repair The most immediate and unmitigated repair points out that the degree of tolerance of face-threatening acts in online chats functions differently than that in face-to-face encounters The evidence supporting this claim is that other-completed repair is relatively frequent and that immediate other-completed repair (1 e, in an e-turn initial position without delay, preface, account, or smiley) also occurs The intersubjectivity that is explicated by sociologists as a concept which signifies participants' mutual understandings in their talk also exists in web chats Online chatters, through composing their e-turn, reveal their understandings of each

185 other and the chats However, intersubjectivity in web chats must be maintained in different ways because the turn-taking system of chat programs is so loosely structured This is exemplified when a relevant next action can be located several eturns away That is, intersubjectivity is different in web chats than in face-to-face talk In the same vein, the preference for contiguity as explicated by Sacks (1987) is affected by the medium This is demonstrated when other-initiated repair is performed several e-turns before other-completed repair (1 e, Variation B) In the CA literature on repair, in the case of trouble, repair is done first (Schegloff et al, 1977) However, this is not what was found in this study It was often found in the data that the contiguity between other-initiated repair and other-completed repair was broken by inserted e-turn(s), which suggests that the medium allows the practice of repair to be done later This shows that there is a connection between the medium, noncontiguity, and preference organization As revealed by sociologists, broken contiguity between first pair parts and second pair parts often occurs when the second pair part is perceived not to present the preferred response (I e, agreement with the first one) This practice can be found in the web chats That is demonstrated in the study where other-completed repair was found to be performed in an e-turn that is far from the TS e-turn or from the repair-initiation e-turn The concept of preference organization has been found to be related to the concept of face (Heritage, 1984, Lerner, 1996b, Sacks 1987, Sacks & Schegloff, 1978) because both concern social relationships between speakers and others The concept of face first discussed by Goffman (1955) focuses on how participants take into consideration co-participants' feelings and needs during ordinary social

186 encounters It is important to understand that the concept of face is socially and interactionally constructed, not static, as demonstrated by Lerner (1996b) The fact that other-completed repair and immediate other-completed repair (only those that occur in the e-turn initial position) often occurred in the data suggests that, in faceless communication like web chats, the concept of face is less taken into account by participants In ordinary conversation, as discussed in Chapter 5, the concept of face was defined as personal desires, wants, or needs, etc, that are presented, maintained, valued, negotiated, appreciated, or approved of during social interaction with respect to physical co-presence That is, the concept of face as explained and tied to Politeness Theory by Brown and Levinson (1987) focuses only on the interaction between speaker and hearer in face-to-face talk where participants are physically co-present (as opposed to electronically in online chat) and interact verbally (as opposed to textually in online chat) Their assumption or findings about the concept of face in everyday contacts may not apply to electronic encounters or may be different from that in electronic interaction This study suggests that dispreferred actions are performed and interpreted differently by participants depending on whether the interaction takes place face-to-face or electronically Face as understood as an interface between identity, personality, and desire, which can be socially and interactionally constructed through talk and actions, is intimately connected with the physical co-presence of participants Interacting with others allows a participant to display, maintain, and exercise the positive social value he wants to claim for himself When interacting face-to-face, one expects his

187 face to be interpreted, reacted to, respected, and saved by others with caution The findings of previous studies claim that not only one's face but also his physical presence should be well regarded by others When one communicates online, these aspects of face are filtered out This therefore leads to the frequent occurrence of face-threatening acts in online chats Another claim is that, when one is involved in ordinary talk with physically copresent participants, face is socially and interactionally constructed through talk and actions, and this is made transparent by one's physical presence If physical presence is not available, face is not effectively perceived or regarded by other participants These claims can explain why face-threatening actions (e g, rejecting, cancelling, postponing, requesting, disagreeing, ordering, etc), which can threaten others' face, can be more easily performed by a letter, with intermediaries, on the phone, via email, in web chats, etc, than when done face-to-face This is not because of the degree of interactiveness of the interaction, but it is the physical co-presence of others I am suggesting that participants are more sensitive to their co-participants when performing dispreferred actions face-to-face than electronically The physical co-presence of others affects how other-completed repair and other dispreferred actions are organized and sequenced The physical co-presence of others also affects the frequency of other-completed repair, though it is important to point out that other-completed repair does occur rarely in face-to-face contexts That is, the electronic co-presence of others reduces other's sense of self as an individual, though the maintenance of social bonds between online participants can be frequently witnessed

188 Additional conversation analytic studies should be conducted to strengthen or weaken this claim regarding the relationship between the concept of face and copresence (physical or electronic) of participants in mundane interaction Brown and Levinson's studies and Goffman's studies of face can be significant, though their findings concern only everyday talk Following their framework not only can provide further evidence for the claim this study makes, but also provide insightful findings for studies of social interaction Further studies should focus on other dispreferred actions that, sociologists speculate, threaten either positive or negative face, such as requests, criticisms, compliments, complaints, threats, etc, in natural online settings After that, the findings should be compared to those in ordinary talk, which have been thoroughly documented by CA researchers and sociologists This study has revealed how people do things, consciously or unconsciously, in the course of electronic interaction

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205 CURRICULUM VITAE

Phalangchok Wanphet Born June 17,1975 Place of Birth Phichit, Thailand

Education B Ed, Rajabhat Institute Phetchabun, March 1996 Major Elementary Education

M A, King Mongkut's University of Technology, Thonbun, September 2001 Major Applied Linguistics (English for Science and Technology) Thesis Title Developing Teaching through Comparison of Teacher's and Learners' Perceptions of Learning

M A, Georgia State University, May 2004 Major Applied Linguistics and TESOL

Dissertation Title A Conversation Analysis of Other-Completed Repair in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication

Academic Positions 2011-Present 2OO9-2011 2001-2002 1996-1999 Assistant Professor, LaGuardia Community College-CUNY Lecturer, LaGuardia Community College-CUNY Lecturer, KMUTT, Thailand Primary School Teacher, Thailand

206 University Service 2011-Present 2010-2011 2010-2011 2010-2011 Humanities Chair of Curriculum Committee Curriculum Committee Member Communication Studies Mentor Media and Promotion Committee Member

Invited Editorial Reviewer, 2009 International Journal of Applied Linguistics

Major Professor

Date