Identification And Repair Of Communicative Failures In Talk Show Programme

As an inevitable phenomenon in conversational interaction,communicative failures have always been the focus of researchers over the last few decades.However,a wealth of research in the area mainly revolved around people interacting through English,there are relatively fewer studies of communicative failures among people who use Chinese as lingua franca.This study explores the identification and repair of communicative failures in a talk show context,built on the Cognitive Pragmatic Theory proposed by Bosco et al.(2006),a taxonomy of different forms of failure which may occur in the comprehension/production process of a communicative act-failure of expression act(non-comprehension,misunderstanding),failure of speaker’s meaning(non-comprehension,misunderstanding)and failure of communicative effect(rejection of the move,refusal to play the game).It intends to answer the following two questions:(1)What are the means of identification of communicative failures at each level from the perspective of speakers?(2)What are the specific strategies used in repairing failures at each level from the perspective of speakers?Drawing on a TV programme-Informal Talks(Fei zheng shi hui tan)as data source,112 instances have been identified and classified in the study.Firstly,this study tries to interpret the cognitive process underlying identification and repair of communicative failures employing the approach of discourse analysis,on the basis of Bosco et al.’s Cognitive Pragmatics Theory.Afterwards,grounded on the distribution of related instances at each level,it proposes specific ways of identification,and frequent repair strategies when communicative failures occurred from speakers’ viewpoint,along with its possible underlined reasons.The study yields the following findings:(1)At the level of expression act(non-comprehension),speakers tend to identify communicative failures by the clues: explicit utterance of asking for clarification;gestures or/and facial expressions;lack of coherence between adjacent turns;repetition in an interrogative mood.At the level of expression act(misunderstanding),the clue involves lack of coherence between adjacent turns.At the level of speaker’s meaning(non-comprehension),the means is mainly explicit utterance of asking for clarification.At the level of speaker’s meaning(misunderstanding),speakers would perceive ‘relevant while inappropriate utterances or reactions’ as communicative failures.At the level of communicative effect(rejection of the move): non-positive answers and explicit utterance of awkward situation from listeners are both considered as cues of communicative failures.(2)In terms of repair strategies,at the level of non-comprehension of expression act,speakers frequently adopt the strategies as follows: no repair(participants do not try to negotiate an understanding),interpretation of particular words or phrases in failed utterance(literal meaning),repetition of failed utterance(slight change in its sequence sometimes).At the level of misunderstanding of expression act,the strategies involve: repetition without any change,negation,along with a repetition of right utterance or with an interpretation of certain words or phrases(literal meaning)as well as no repair.At both levels of non-comprehension and misunderstanding of speaker’s meaning,major repair strategies include: interpretation of intended meaning in failed utterance,rather than literal meaning of certain words or phrases,and no repair.At the level of rejection of the move of communicative effect,speakers primarily handle communicative failures by means of no repair and reformulation of failed utterance.In addition,the study also shows that not any instance of refusal to play the game of communicative failures has occurred in the talk show context.Meanwhile,sometimes it’s difficult to classify certain failures into a particular level,or the failure is a combination of two or more of those failures levels.The research involves a conjoined analysis of identification and repair of communicative failures at each level,which could present some implications for mass commutation:(1)with regard to identification means,speakers should perceive from both linguistic and non-linguistic levels comprehensively.(2)depending on the kind of failure that has occurred in an interaction,speakers could employ different repair strategies.In addition to interpretation,repetition or reformulation of failed utterance,no repair is a crucial strategy throughout the whole conversation.Oftentimes,there isno need to make any repair in the talk show context where speakers could either take good advantage of the incorrect interpretation to create unexpected contextual effect,or merely disregard it to avoid the communicative predicament.