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Context-sensitivity in conversation: Eye gaze and the German repair initiator bitte?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Maria M. Egbert
Maria M. Egbert
Affiliation:
Department of Germanic Studies, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
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Abstract

Just as turn-taking has been found to be both context-free and context-sensitive (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974), the organization of repair is also shown here to be both context-free and context-sensitive. In a comparison of American and German conversation, repair can be shown to be context-free in that, basically, the same mechanism can be found across these two languages. However, repair is also sensitive to the linguistic inventory of a given language; in German, morphological marking, syntactic constraints, and grammatical congruity across turns are used as interactional resources. In addition, repair is sensitive to certain characteristics of social situations. The selection of a particular repair initiator, German bitte? ‘pardon?’, indexes that there is no mutual gaze between interlocutors; i.e., there is no common course of action. The selection of bitte? not only initiates repair; it also spurs establishment of mutual gaze, and thus displays that there is attention to a common focus. (Conversation analysis, context, cross-linguistic analysis, repair, gaze, telephone conversation, co-present interaction, grammar and interaction)

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Language in Society , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 587 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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