Proffering insertable elements: A study of other-initiated repair in Japanese

Introduction. In every language for which we have adequate description, speakers have available a relatively stable set of turn-constructional practices that can be used to initiate repair on an utterance produced by a prior speaker. These practices for other-initiated repair (OIR) are “techniques for locating the trouble source” in a prior speaker's talk (Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks 1977: 377). As such, various features of their composition are designed to indicate (or index) what aspect of prior talk has caused a problem for the repair-initiating speaker (e.g., Jefferson, 1972; Selting, 1988, 1996; Sacks, 1992; Egbert, 1996; Drew, 1997; Schegloff, 1997; Robinson, 2006; Svennevig, 2008; Sidnell, 2010). While much research on these “initiator techniques” has focused on English-language material, there is now a growing body of studies that explore commonalities and differences in OIR practices across languages (Egbert, 1996; Kim, 1999; Wu, 2006, 2009; Sidnell, 2008; Egbert, Golato, and Robinson, 2009). One important point raised in this body of work is that the formatting of initiator techniques is sensitive to the grammatical inventory of the language in which they are produced. Thus, Sidnell (2008: 498) argues:. Other-initiated repair harnesses the available grammatical resources of a particular language. To the extent that those grammatical resources differ, we can expect to find systematic differences in the organization and operation of this otherwise generic organization of practice. This suggests that we might be able to explain just how a generic organization like other-initiated repair is “torqued,” or adapted to local circumstances. The present study pursues this line of inquiry and investigates one particular turn-constructional format used for OIR in Japanese that may be seen as an adaptation to the local (i.e., grammatical) organization of the language. The target practice to be examined takes the form of proffering an element that is “insertable” into the grammatical structure of the trouble-source turn, as illustrated by the following example. (Note that the element enclosed in double parentheses in the English translation for line 1 is left unexpressed in the Japanese original.).