ABSTRACT
Repair practices are fundamental resources for solving emerging troubles of intersubjectivity in social interaction. This chapter offers a discussion of research on interactional repair and more specifically on other-initiated self- and other-repair, based on the analyses of empirical data. The chapter is organized around key questions concerning the relevance of what action the practice is doing, who does it (which interactional party), when it is done (in what sequential position) and how it is done (with what format). This allows for a systematic comparison of the formal properties between other-initiated self-repair and other-initiated other-repair, enabling a discussion about the organizational and conceptual differences between the two, introducing correction as a distinct phenomenon. In other-initiated self-repair sequences, the repair initiation targets a problem of audibility, understandability or acceptability and solicits a solution to that problem. The repair operation subsequently proposes a solution to the problem in next position. In other-initiated self-correction sequences, the correction-initiation claims an aspect of the interaction as unacceptable, or erroneous, and solicits a replacement of that element, a “correct” candidate. In other-initiated other-repair sequences, an emerging problem of acceptability is claimed by means of proposing its solution, that is, replacing the problematic element with a “correct” candidate. Whereas previous research uses the terms repair and correction interchangeably, this examination suggests that repairing and correcting are overlapping but distinct practices involving discrete claims and attributions of knowledge on behalf of “self” and “other.”
