ABSTRACT
Before I review the work on repair that has been done within a CA framework, I briefly discuss an SLA-oriented model of repair derived from social psychology. This model was developed by Varonis and Gass (1985) to account primarily for the negotiation of meaning in NNS-NNS talk. However, to the extent that this model is also held to account for the negotiation work done by NS who do not share linguistic or cultural backgrounds and values, I present its main outlines here rather than in the subsection that discusses the organization of repair in L2 talk-in-interaction. This procedure highlights some of the main differences between CA and non-CA-oriented ways of analyzing repair. Varonis and Gass (1985) begin by noting that:
When the interlocutors share a common background and language, the turn-taking sequence is likely to proceed smoothly, reflecting what Jones and Gerard (1967) call a “symmetric contingency”, each speaker responding to the utterance of the previous speaker, while maintaining her own sense of direction in the discourse. However, in discourse where there is not shared background, or in which there is some acknowledged “incompetence”, the conversational flow is marred by numerous interruptions. These may be seen as vertical sequences in a horizontal progression, (pp. 72-3).
