Study On Referential Trouble And Its Repair In American TV Series

Both discourse reference and conversational repair have received a detailed study from different perspectives by linguists,however,the studies for referential trouble which is closely connected with the two fields are not systematic and enough yet.Referential trouble is a common phenomenon in interpersonal communication.Ma Wen(2005)defines “referential trouble” as “any real or potential problem that takes place in using and understanding of reference forms.” Due to the distinctive features of referential trouble,its repair sequence also shows its own preference.Previous studies are mainly limited to the referential trouble in Chinese conversation or in written discourse in the field of second language acquisition or the learning of foreign language.This study is undertaken to probe into the sources that cause referential trouble and its repair preference in English conversation.This study is mainly conducted with the theoretical framework of Ariel's Accessibility Theory(Ariel,1988;1990;1991),Ma's Cooperative Principle of Reference(CPR)(Ma Wen,2004)and Schegloff's Conversational Repair(Schegloff,1997).The first one provides an important theoretical basis for the choice of referring expressions from the cognitive perspective and reveals of the cognitive and psychological origin of anaphoric repair;the second one gives a comprehensive and reasonable account of the referential establishment and the third one provides four basic repair patterns for referential trouble.The data for this thesis is collected from two sets of American TV series Mad Men and Modern Family.The conversations in Mad Man mainly occur at work while the conversations in Modern Family mainly occur in daily life and 172 cases of referential trouble are collected altogether.The aim of this study is to explore the sources causing referential trouble and the repair preference for referential trouble in English conversation.Three questions will be focused on in this research:(1)What are the sources that lead to the referential trouble in English conversation and which one is the main one?(2)Does the repair for referential trouble in English conversation favors self-repair/self-initiation?(3)What are the distribution laws of the four anaphoric repair patterns for the five sources causing referential trouble in English conversation?Data analysis and discussion in this thesis reveals three major findings:1)There are five sources causing referential trouble in English conversation: listening problem,speaking error,lexical non-/misunderstanding,referential unclearness and identity inadequacy,among which referential unclearness is the main one;2)In English conversation,the repair of referential trouble favors self-repair,which is in line with Sacks,Jefferson and Schegloff's conclusion about conversational repair“self-repair is more favorable than other-repair”.However,quite different from the preference of self-initiated repair in conversational repair,the repair of referential trouble favors other-initiated repair.3)Different types of referential trouble in English conversation have different repair preferences,which can be explained reasonably by the inherent features of the repair for referential trouble and the diversity of the sources causing referential trouble.