Repair structures in web-based conversation

Abstract

The paper attempts to demonstrate how Conversation Analysis (CA) can help us pragmatically to explore the repair organization of human talk-in-interaction via the Web, and reports on a case study of conversational repair structures for Chinese academic discussion through Web. The data collection was based on naturally occurring written interaction on Web-based discussion boards from teacher education courses. Over 4,000 postings containing nearly half million Chinese characters were captured and analysed to assist in understanding how conversational repair sequences possibly structured, in the Web-based discussion setting. Findings suggested that while description of repair structure introduced by Schegloff et al. (1977) is still a fundamental framework applicable to the repair in Web-based conversation, some different features of repair structure from which has been described for ordinary conversation exist. Detailed examination showed that successful repair in Web-based conversation can take the same four possible structures as in ordinary conversation, and efforts at repair sometimes can fail in possible structure of issuing from either self-initiation or other-initiation. Six special features on repair organization in Web-based conversation have been identified. The research provided fresh data differently from CA traditional source of data for analysis of how repair is sequentially organized in conversation taking place in Web.