A Study On Repair In Conversation Of Larry King Live

This thesis studies the conversational repair in a television talk program "Larry King Live". The aim of the study is to describe the routine practices of conversational repair and to demonstrate how repair functions in Larry King Live.This thesis adopts conversation analysis and takes one of the American talk programs-Larry King Live as the main research subject. Following the model proposed by Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks for analysis of conversational repair, three major findings are obtained.First, the four types of repair are all detected in the talk program, that is, self-initiated self-repair, self-initiated other-repair, other-initiated self-repair, and other-initiated other-repair. And the occurrence of self-initiated self-repair is the most frequent among them, which matches with the findings of Schegloff.Second, regarding the placements of initiation, the placements of intiation for self-initiated self-repair exists in three positions:within the same turn, in that turn's transition place, and in third turn to the trouble source turn. The distribution frequence within the same turn is the highest while the frequency in the third turn to the trouble source turn is rare. The placement of initiation for self-initiated other-repair only appears in the trouble source turn's transition place. The placement for other-initiation basically comes after the turn of the trouble source turn.Third, as for the initiator techniques for the four types, there are distinct features. Initiator techniques for self-initiated self-repair contain non-lexical perturbations, lexical terms and inseparable initiators. And the non-lexical perturbations in the talk program are common and the inseparable initiators are the least. Initiator techniques for other-initiated self-repair only have lexical items. Among the lexical terms, the partial repeat has a significance compared with the rest means of lexical terms. Initiator techniques for other-initiated other-repair are relatively simple, that is, format with "no" initiator and format without "no" initiator. The distribution frequency of the two formats is basically equal. The initiator techniques for self-initiated other-repair are included in the initiator techniques for self-initiated self-repair. And in the talk program, only cut-off and sound stretches appear. The frequency of the formal is much higher than that of the latter. The present study may add to the existing body of work on repair and may help to gain deeper insight into the nature of American television talk program. It is hoped that the investigation might arouse the attention of domestic linguistic experts and scholars so as to promote the development of domestic linguistic research.