The Adaptation Of Conversation Repair To Contextual Correlates In Business Interviews

This thesis is a pragmatic analysis of the conversational repair in business interviews.It is aimed at disclosing the features of repair in this particular context and exploring the pragmatic reasons behind them under the adaptation theory.Based on the new model of analyzing repair which is proposed by Li Yue'e,the thesis discusses the repair in two categories,that is,repair on production problems and repair on understanding problems.Each sub-category receives careful analysis under these two categories and certain features of repair are disclosed.In order to achieve a convincing and objective result,a statistical analysis is made among several groups of repairs.Finally five features of repair in business interviews are revealed.After disclosing the five repair features in this context,the paper further analyzes the pragmatic reasons behind these distinctive repair phenomena.Under the theoretical framework of linguistic adaptation,the study makes effort to explore the contextual correlates that the repair adapts to.To be specific,analysis is undertaken from two aspects,namely the generic social factors and the properties of interview programs.The study shows that these repair phenomena are the result of adaptation to the contextual influences in business interviews.This study may add to the existing body of work on repair and may help to gain deeper insight into the nature of business interviews.It is hoped that the investigation into the repair and the pragmatic reasons behind its utility in business interviews can help the participants in this interaction gain a positive attitude towards this phenomenon and take the right repair strategies so as to achieve a better and effective communication.