Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T21:30:55.293Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Error correction as an interactional resource1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Gail Jefferson
Gail Jefferson
Affiliation:
Center for Urban Ethnography, University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper considers some small errors which occur in natural talk, treating them as matters of competence, both in the production of coherent speech and the conduct of meaningful interaction.

Focusing on a rule-governed occurrence of the interjection ‘uh’, a format is described by which one can display that one is correcting an error one almost, but did not, produce. It is argued that there are systematic ways in which someone who hears such talk can find that an error was almost made and what that error would have been.

Two broad classes of error are considered, both of which can be announced by and extracted from the occurrence of an error correction format. These are ‘production’ errors; i.e. a range of troubles one encounters in the attempt to produce coherent, grammatically correct speech, and ‘interactional’ errors; i.e. mistakes one might make in the attempt to speak appropriately to some co-participant(s) and/or within some situation.

Focusing on interactional errors, it is proposed that the error correction format (and other formats for events other than error) can be used to invoke alternatives to some current formulation of self and other(s), situation and relationship, and thereby serve as a resource for negotiating and perhaps reformulating a current set of identities. (Conversational analysis, discourse devices (metalinguistic, attitudinal markers), U.S. English.)

Type
Articles: On Verbal Interaction
Information
Language in Society , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , October 1974 , pp. 181 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Brown, R. & Ford, M. (1961). Address terms in American English. Journal of abnormal and social psychology, 62. 375–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reprinted in Hymes, D. (ed.) (1964). Language in culture and society. New York: Harper &Row.Google Scholar
Fromkin, V. A. (1971). The non-anomalous nature of anomalous utterances. Language 47. (03). 27–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, G. (1972). Sequential analysis of two types of conversational disruption. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Revised version, A case of precision timing in ordinary conversation in Semiotica Vol. IX, No. I (1973). 47–96.Google Scholar
Nooteboom, S. G. (1969). The tongue slips into patterns. Leyden: Nomen.Google Scholar
In Sicaroni, A. G. et al. (eds) Studies in linguistics and phonetics. The Hague: Mouton. 114–32.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1972). The search for help.In Sudnow, D. (ed.), Studies in social interaction. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Siminoni, R. C. Jr (1956). Phonemic and analogic lapses in radio and television speech. American speech Vol. 3. Ded. 252–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar