Error correction as an interactional resource

TLDR

The paper examines small errors in natural speech, distinguishing production errors that affect grammatical coherence from interactional errors that affect appropriateness to interlocutors and context. It proposes that an error‑correction format can be used as a resource to negotiate and potentially reformulate identities, selves, and relationships during interaction. The authors analyze how two classes of errors—production and interactional—can be announced and extracted via an error‑correction format, employing conversational analysis and discourse devices such as metalinguistic and attitudinal markers. They describe a rule‑governed use of the interjection “uh” that signals an almost‑made error, and argue that listeners can systematically detect such near errors and infer what was intended.

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper considers some small errors which occur in natural talk, treating them as matters of competence, both in the production of coherent speech and the conduct of meaningful interaction. Focusing on a rule-governed occurrence of the interjection ‘uh’, a format is described by which one can display that one is correcting an error one almost, but did not, produce. It is argued that there are systematic ways in which someone who hears such talk can find that an error was almost made and what that error would have been. Two broad classes of error are considered, both of which can be announced by and extracted from the occurrence of an error correction format. These are ‘production’ errors; i.e. a range of troubles one encounters in the attempt to produce coherent, grammatically correct speech, and ‘interactional’ errors; i.e. mistakes one might make in the attempt to speak appropriately to some co-participant(s) and/or within some situation. Focusing on interactional errors, it is proposed that the error correction format (and other formats for events other than error) can be used to invoke alternatives to some current formulation of self and other(s), situation and relationship, and thereby serve as a resource for negotiating and perhaps reformulating a current set of identities. (Conversational analysis, discourse devices (metalinguistic, attitudinal markers), U.S. English.)