Abstract: This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate repair in email discussions. Repair in email discussions does not need to deal with troubles arising from real-time spoken interaction, such as repair of simultaneous speech or mid-turn self-repair of word choice or sentence construction. However, all four types of self- and other-initiated self- and other-repair are found, serving a range of purposes such as clarification of meaning, correction of factually incorrect statements, and repairs of technology-related turn-taking problems. A major source of trouble in email discussions is the need to deal with turns which are deemed to be in some way inappropriate, and participants' attempts to deal with these may result in extended metadiscussion, facilitated by the persistent nature of the interaction. Participants may choose to refuse an other-initiated repair initiation, or subvert an apparent repair or repair-initiation for other purposes: such phenomena are particularly associated with flaming exchanges.
Keywords:
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The research described in this paper forms part of a larger project which investigates the discourse structure of email discussions, and also investigates the suitability of Conversation Analysis (CA) developed from the work of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), and Discourse Analysis (DA) developed from the work of Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) for the analysis of email discussion data. Since DA in general does not concern itself with repair, the theoretical framework for the investigation of repair is taken from CA.
Although CA was originally used for the investigation of spoken conversation, Sacks et al note that conversation is one of many "speech-exchange systems", others of which include "debates, meetings, press conferences, seminars..." (Sacks et al, 1974, p.729), and that the turn-taking system will vary from one speech exchange system to another. They saw conversation as a standard for comparison with other types of spoken interaction, and indeed CA has been used in this way, in particular for the comparison of various types of institutional talk with the "benchmark" of casual conversation (see for example papers reporting research on a wide range of institutional talk in Drew and Heritage (1992)). Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.148) writing about CA argue that "The significance of this approach is that it succeeds in revealing what is distinctive about interaction in different types of environment". Communicative environments now include virtual environments, so an appropriate extension of the use of CA might therefore be to investigate interaction mediated by computer. The issue is a current one, and a prominent conversation analyst has recently called for the use of CA techniques to analyse Computer-Mediated Communication:
Now that an increasing number of people spend various amounts of their time 'online', chatting with friends or whoever is available, it is time to study Computer-Mediated Conversation (CMC), as we previously studied face-to-face conversation and Telephone (Mediated) Conversation, using the same procedural perspective (ten Have (2000, p.1)).
A central concern of CA is that of repair, and Sacks observes that the conversational system contains within itself the mechanisms for dealing with conversational problems:
The business of remedial exchanges is to handle problems of local order in conversation: failures to understand, failures to hear, interruptions, silences, more than one person starting up at the same time, etc. It turns out that the means for remedying local problems of order in conversation are adjacency pairs. (Sacks (1995), Vol 2, p.525)
This paper investigates the use of repair in email discussions, and, since common sources of trouble in email discussions are turns which are considered to be in some way inappropriate, it investigates how participants deal with inappropriate turns.
The data for this research are email discussions. Although email discussions are carried out asynchronously and in writing, a frequent perception of participants in email discussions is that they are carrying out some form of conversation. This has led to debates about the relationship between the language of these discussions on the one hand, and spoken or written language on the other. It has also prompted a few researchers to comment on the nature of turn-taking in email discussions, and to suggest that this does not operate in the same way as in spoken conversation (e.g. Murray (1985), p.212).
Email discussion lists were chosen for study because:
Email discussion lists usually focus on one particular topic or theme. This can be recreational, practical, professional, or academic. The lists used in the current study are open lists (i.e. anyone can join) and are publicly available from the JISCmail site (formerly from the Mailbase site). From this site one can join a list, or access the archives of the list. All of the lists used in this study have a professional or academic theme. The ostensible reasons for the existence of these particular lists are detailed in the list information and introductions (see Section 3.2 below). Here it will be seen that their overt purpose is primarily transactional, but an examination of the data will show that they are in fact significantly interactional. Herring (1996), Matthews (2000) and Knapp (1997) have observed a similar tendency. Thus Matthews (2000, p.85) comparing two discussion lists, finds that the "Computer Professionals Forum dialogues did not match the reported communication intention of the members", i.e. that of information exchange, and that the incidence of "socially-oriented messages" was similar to that found in an overtly social group, "the New Age Forum", while Knapp comments (1997, p.183) on the merging of the public and private on email lists, and Herring concludes:
My results suggest that both women and men participate in discussions on electronic mailing lists to exchange opinions, beliefs, understandings, and judgments in social interaction with other human beings, with the pure exchange of information taking second place. (Herring, (1996, p.104))
The finding that email discussions are interactional supports the decision to use the interactional framework of CA for this research.
Conversation is generally unplanned and is produced and managed in real time, with the result that it is subject to innumerable minor problems, as suggested by Sacks (see Section 1, above). However, a particularly satisfying feature of the turn-taking system is that it is used to deal with its own problems. Sacks et al declare that the turn-taking system is used both for the repair of problems in turn-taking itself, and for the repair of other types of troubles in conversation:
The compatibility of the model of turn-taking with the facts of repair is thus of a dual character: the turn-taking system lends itself to, and incorporates devices for, repair of its troubles; and the turn taking system is a basic organizational device for the repair of any other troubles in conversation. (Sacks et al (1974, p.724))
Sacks et al identify "repair devices …directed to, and designed for, turn-taking problems" including "Who me?", interruptions, false starts, etc. (Sacks et al (1974, p.723)). They also identify a device for the repair of simultaneous talk where one speaker might self-repair by stopping. That this is a repair rather than a conventional hand-over of the turn is signalled by the speaker stopping before reaching a transition relevance point. (Sacks et al (1974, p.724)).
Hutchby and Wooffitt define repair:
This is a generic term which is used in CA to cover a wide range of phenomena, from seeming errors in turn-taking such as those involved in much overlapping talk, to any of the forms of what we commonly would call 'correction' - that is, substantive faults in the contents of what someone has said. (Hutchby and Wooffitt(1998, p.57))
Repair includes the strategies which participants use for dealing with errors or with the need to adapt their conversation to the recipient(s).
Repairs to problems in turn-taking in conversation include dealing with interruptions and simultaneous speech (Sacks et al (1974, p.723-4)). As noted above, simultaneous speech is often resolved by one speaker stopping before the end of a turn construction unit. Another technique is identified by Schegloff (1987, passim) who discusses "recycled turn beginnings" which are widely used in the event of overlapping turns. In email discussions these would not be an issue, because interruption of one participant by another is not possible, and simultaneous speech is a feature of the system. So is turn-taking repair necessary and observable in email discussions?
Within spoken conversation, many other kinds of problems are observable, in addition to turn-taking problems. Sacks (above) suggests some sources of trouble; Hutchby and Wooffitt indicate a slightly different range:
There is a wide variety of problems in conversation: incorrect word selection, slips of the tongue, mis-hearings, misunderstandings and so on. (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.59))
Much repair in spoken conversation takes place immediately after the source of the trouble, in the same turn and by the same speaker (Sacks et al (1974, p.724)). Thus a speaker may make several attempts to produce a word, or may make an immediate correction to a word that has been produced. These problems too, are largely absent from email discussions because the interaction takes place in writing. If participants take several attempts to produce a word, if they decide to change a word or expression, they would normally delete the earlier attempts. However informal the interaction, participants do not leave all of their errors for the other participants to read in order to achieve a conversational effect - the result would be as confusing to the recipient as reading a conversational transcript. But if such errors are edited out before messages are sent, if turn-taking errors of the type discussed above are not applicable to this medium, and if mis-hearings are likewise absent, what kinds of trouble sources, if any, are found in the data? This will be addressed in the analysis below.
Many types of repair have been identified, for example Jefferson (1987) classifies repairs according to whether they are "exposed" or "embedded", i.e. a repair can be explicitly signalled or it can be an unconscious adjustment of talk in progress. The written equivalent of adjustment of talk in progress is editing, but the reader has no access to either the editing process or the original text - we see only the end product, the message as it was sent, and cannot even know whether the text has been edited. So in email any observable repair is usually exposed and explicitly signalled by the writer or another participant.
As Hutchby and Wooffitt note, the properties of the organisation of repair allow "participants to deal with a whole range of trouble sources" and thus "the term 'repair' is preferred to, say, 'correction', or any other term that refers to a specific kind of trouble source" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.59)). Indeed repair may be carried out "even when there is no error or mistake in the conversation" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.60)), for example to produce a word more suited to the needs of the recipient. The observation that troubles are addressed by use of the turn-taking system strengthens the analysis of the turn-taking system itself, and so repair has been the focus of much CA work.
Discussions about repair usually characterise the repair according to who initiates it, and who carries it out. Ten Have offers a clear explanation of this:
The initiative can be taken by the speaker of the repairable, which is called a 'self-initiated repair', or others can take such an initiative, 'other-initiated repair'. And the repair itself can be done by the original speaker, 'self-repair', or by others, 'other repair'.(Ten Have (1999, p.116))
This results in the four combinations listed by Hutchby and Wooffitt:
Self-initiated self-repair…
Other-initiated self-repair…
Self-initiated other-repair…
Other-initiated other-repair
(Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.61))
Examples of self-initiated self-repair include self-correction in the middle of an utterance (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.61-2)), or some kind of corrective action when it is clear from the listener's next turn that s/he has misunderstood (ten Have (1999, p.116)).
Examples of other-initiated self-repair include use of a "next-turn repair initiator (NTRI)" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.62)) such as "huh?" or "what?" (ten Have (1999, p.116)) which prompts the original speaker to repair. Or the next speaker may "offer a candidate understanding of a target utterance, possibly in a format like 'you mean X?'" (ten Have (1999, p.116)).
Self-initiated other-repair would include situations such as the speaker attempting to remember a name and asking the listener(s) for assistance (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.61)).
Other-initiated other-repair "is closest to what is conventionally understood as 'correction'" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.61)).
There has been very little work on repair in CMC. Even those studies which have identified problems in the interaction have not then extended this to include a discussion of how the troubles are repaired. For example, McLaughlin, Osborne, and Smith (1995) list factors that generate complaints in newsgroups, including technology-related problems, breaking of established conventions, "Inappropriate language" and "Factual errors" (McLaughlin et al (1995, p.96-7)). McLaughlin et al do not link these offences to conversational repair, but find that they generated "reproaches".
Cherny (1995) makes brief references to instances of repair in her MUD data. One example can be found in Cherny (1995, p.219), in which the author observes in the form of asking "clarifying questions" (other-initiated repair), and instances of when a participant deems it necessary to clarify what is being responded to (self-initiated repair), for example when another message intervenes and adjacency had been assumed (Cherny (1995, p.221)).
However, these mentions of problems and brief references to repair-like features do not constitute an investigation into repair in CMC. There is therefore a need to develop an understanding of how repair is carried out in CMC. This paper will begin to address this need by investigating repair in the email data.
This paper will deal with 1) repair in email discussions, 2) what participants in email discussions can do if they feel a turn is in some way inappropriate, and 3) metadiscussions, which can arise as a result of behaviour which is perceived by some participants as inappropriate.
The email discussions used in this study are naturally occurring data from UK-based email discussion lists generated between March 1998 and October 1999, and collected from the Mailbase archives at [http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists] (now available from [http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk]).
For the study, 360 email messages were collected: 60 consecutive messages from each of six email discussion lists. Email discussions often take place in parallel, so that there may be several discussions taking place simultaneously on the same discussion list. Samples of 60 messages were chosen because it was found that this was sufficient to allow at least one (and normally more than one) entire discussion to start, develop, and reach completion in each sample.
The data samples are summarised below.
| No. of participants subscribed to list at 18 Jan. 2000 | No. of active speakers | No. of topics | Time period of data | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writing development | 177 | 19 | 10 | 1 Mar 98 - 25 Mar 98 25 days |
| Business ethics | 135 | 16 | 23 | 2 Jul 98 - 2 Nov 98 124 days (Messages 1-47 all in July) |
| Feminist theology | 341 | 26 | 10 | 7 Sep 99-18 Sep 99 12 days |
| Humour research | 196 | 29 | 21 | 2 Jul 99 - 3 Oct 99 94 days |
| Probation practice | 205 | 28 | 23 | 7 Sep 99 - 27 Oct 99 51 days |
| Dyslexia | 317 | 29 | 13 | 25 Sep 99 - 11 Oct 99 17 days |
In the remainder of this paper, the email lists will be referred to by abbreviations as follows:
| WD | Writing development in higher education |
| BE | Business ethics |
| FT | Feminist theology |
| HR | Humour research |
| PP | Probation Practice |
| DX | Dyslexia |
All of the lists in the sample have an academic or professional focus. All are open lists (anyone can join), participation is voluntary, and the lists are unmoderated (i.e. all messages sent to the list are automatically sent to the other participants, without being read, filtered or edited by anyone). The email discussion lists are unusual, compared with spoken conversation, in that the purpose of each list is specified overtly, in two places: the list information and list introductions.
The list information is provided on the web site for each list. This information includes a brief summary of the purpose of the list. For example, the list information for Writing Development gives the following statement of the purpose of the list:
To encourage discussion and the exchange of good practice by those actively involved in teaching and research which help native English speakers in any discipline in higher education to improve their writing. (Mailbase 2000a)
These brief statements provide a reference point. Potential list members could use this information to decide whether the list is likely to be relevant to them, and existing members could use it to determine whether contributions are relevant. This suggests that contributors are expected to be aware that each list has a purpose and that this purpose has been defined.
The list introductions are posted to new members and are also available from the web site. At the time when the data were collected, the Business Ethics list had no introduction, but all the other lists in the data did have one. Thus all list members of the lists in the data (except Business Ethics) would have received a list introduction, and would have been able to find out about the purpose of the list in this way even if they have no access to the web site - or no inclination to look at it. List introductions vary in length. They appear to be written by the list owners and usually include a welcome message together with an outline of the purpose of the list, and may include other information. For example, the list introduction for Writing Development gives the following statement of the purpose of the list:
Welcome to writing-dev-he. This is a discussion list for academics who have responsibility (in teaching and/or research) for developing students' writing in any discipline in higher education in the UK.
PURPOSE
The list provides a friendly forum where members can
* exchange ideas, information and news
* share good practice
* ask for advice
* publicise events relevant to our subject
* decide for themselves how they want to use the list. (Mailbase 2000b)
These list introductions, like the brief summaries on the web site, suggest that contributors are expected to be aware that each list has a purpose and that this purpose has been defined. In some cases, the list introduction gives a more detailed account of the purpose of the list, and may also suggest the kind of contribution that is expected (see for example Humour Research, which suggests an informal approach, indicates the kind of people who might wish to participate, and suggests some types of material which would not be suitable for inclusion in messages).
As indicated above, a framework from CA has been used for this research because repair has long been a major concern of CA. A useful starting point is to take the categories of self- and other-initiated self- and other-repair and investigate the extent to which they can be applied to CMC. If similar features are found in email discussions, are they being used for similar purposes?
The location of repair in spoken conversation is also significant:
In fact, most repair (e.g. correction of a word) is done within the turn in which the repairable occurs. But when repair spills over the boundaries of a turn, as when other-than-the-speaker initiates a repair in the turn following the one in which the repairable occurred, then the sequence so initiated is organized by the same turn-taking system, and the repair sequences exhibit the same features of turn-taking as we have been discussing… (Sacks et al (1974, p.724)).
Crystal identifies one potential obstacle to repair in CMC:
… there is no way for a participant to get a sense of how successful a message is, while it is being written - whether it has been understood, or whether it needs repair. (Crystal (2001, p.30))
Where turn-taking rules are different, as in email discussions, the techniques used for repair and the types of trouble needing repair will be different, if indeed repair exists in this medium. A preliminary reading of the data shows that there are indeed features that resemble repair. However, in email discussions, we would expect that some of the types of problem identified by Sacks et al are absent - incorrect word choices if identified by the writer would be edited out, we would not expect to find turn-taking errors arising from overlapping talk, etc.
In order to establish the range of repair in email discussions, the categories identified by Hutchby and Wooffitt (see Section 2.2 above) were used. This section first discusses the findings of this analysis, and then goes on to consider what strategies are used by participants to deal with turns they consider to be inappropriate, and finally to discuss the phenomenon of metadiscussion.
In the email data there are a few occasions where a speaker carries out a self-initiated self-repair. There is no evidence of speakers self-correcting in the middle of a turn, but this is understandable: any self-correction in the middle of a written turn would probably take the form of deleting what had been written and replacing it with new text.
Problems with turn-taking are not common in email discussions because there can be no problems of interruptions or simultaneous speech in this type of discourse. When turn-taking errors do occur, they may be the result of a technical problem. Occasionally the accidental misuse of the email software results in the sending of a blank message, or the sending of a private message to all the members of the list. The former problem can be repaired by sending the message again, complete with the text; the latter problem cannot be undone, but may result in an apology. Both of these problems are identified by the sender of HR12 who has made two separate mistakes in two earlier messages, sending a private message to the whole list in HR10, and sending a message without any text in HR11:
Sorry for the confusion in trying to respond to this and to your other message about the print version of the bibliography. The latter was apparently sent out over the list when it should have been directed to you personally and this present one went out sans text on the first try. To those whose mailboxes I'm cluttering with my techno-ineptness, I sincerely apologize.
The above provides an explanation of the errors and occurs in the message which immediately follows the two problem messages (HR12 is sent only twelve minutes after HR11, and three hours after HR10). The repair takes place by sending the current message with the missing text, and apologising both for sending an empty message previously and for sending a private message to the list.
A similar problem occurs in PP41 which was sent without text, and is rectified in PP43, along with the comment:
My previous attempt having failed-I'll try again from work
This message is only two messages after the one with the error, but was sent 24 hours later and from a different email address.
The above errors are noticed by the senders and repaired explicitly. A similar error occurs in FT32, where the writer sends a message with no new text (only quoted text from a previous message), either sent by mistake before she added her own comments, or with her own comments accidentally deleted. However, in this case the sender does not appear to notice the problem and does not carry out any repair, at least not in the sample.
Because of the different turn-taking rules in email discussions, unlike conversation it is not necessary for each participant to listen to every turn. However, when a participant decides to contribute to a discussion which they have not been following, there is a potential for errors such as repeating what has already been said, or making an off-topic contribution. The sender of DX15 is aware of this danger and prefaces her contribution with an apology:
I agree. I haven't been following this thread so I may be coming in from the wrong angle and repeating things that have already been said - sorry.
Occasionally one participant will accuse another of not paying sufficient attention to a previous message - see BE23 and BE33 in Section 5.1.5 below.)
Another turn-taking trouble source is caused by cross-posting, when a participant sends the same message to more than one list. Recipients who are members of more than one of the lists to which the message has been sent will receive the same message more than once. Where cross-posting is considered necessary, it is often accompanied by an apology, as in DX17 which ends with:
(apologies to list members who are members of two lists since they would receive this message twice!)
The apology is more often placed at the start of the message, as in BE45:
** apologies for cross-postings **
Similar apologies for cross-posting are found in BE51, BE52, and BE53.
In addition to the above turn-taking problems, there are some self-initiated self-repairs in the data which address a variety of different troubles.
In WD41 the sender self-repairs in order to clarify an ambiguity that he has noticed in one of his previous messages, WD38, which was sent two hours earlier the same day. At the start of the repair message he quotes the relevant sentence from WD38, where it is not clear whether "119" is the total sample, the number who responded, or the number of respondents who asked for feedback.
When I said:
"They also say in huge numbers (119 in
sample) that FEEDBACK is what they crave!"
I should clarify:
"huge" was a bit of an exaggeration (I'm
excited, can't you tell!) and 119 was the total number of
returns out of c700 questionnaires sent out - most of these
119, however, cite feedback as a major priority.
In BE52 the sender self-repairs in order to correct a factual error in her previous message BE51, sent fifty minutes earlier, in which she gave contact details for a conference. She has identified a mistake in this information, and now sends a new telephone number with the comment:
Apologies for the wrong dialling code.
This repair occurs in the adjacent message and is apparently self-initiated, but it is possible that it was initiated by a private message from another participant.
In DX39 the sender self-repairs to correct a rather thoughtless and insensitive remark made in DX38. In DX38 he envisioned a technological future in which dyslexics would have equality of opportunity and as a result would outshine their peers, adding that only poets and blind people would be unable to cope. Sixty-six minutes later in adjacent message DX39, he makes a repair:
>Blind people might find it a bit tough also.<
Before you respond to my insensitive remark above, blind people will obviously be increasingly empowered by technology in the future. If there are any visually blind members amongst this group, I apologise.
In the above examples, the sender overtly signals the repair. In HR23 there is a rare instance of a sender making an unannounced repair. In HR21 the sender responds to an offer of a bibliography from another participant. However, the other participant had specifically said that the bibliography was in printed form and that anyone requesting it should send him their postal address, which the sender of HR21 omits. In HR23, she simply quotes her previous message and adds the address without any reference to the omission. (This takes place only two messages later, but after a time delay of two days).
Although the above repairs all appear to be self-initiated, it is not possible to be certain that this is the case: it is conceivable that in some of these instances another person could have sent a private communication to initiate the repair.
The example below, however, is a clear example of self-initiated repair by the original speaker, following a turn by the second speaker which the original speaker perceives as a misunderstanding: WD27 original message, talking about student writers:
for them, writing is not -- has never been -- an important way to communicate anything. It's mostly a way of laying yourself open to humiliation.
WD32 interpretation:
It is not fair to equate correction with humiliation.
WD33 clarification by original speaker:
BLOCKQUOTE>I didn't equate correction with humiliation, my students have.
Another self-initiated self-repair to counter a misunderstanding is found in PP13:
I wasn't intending to write any more about the issue, but a couple of the more recent emails appear to be working on the assumption that I in some way endorse CRAMS (which I do not)...
As Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (1977) have shown, there is a marked preference for self-repair, and Hutchby and Wooffitt offer an explanation:
Explicit other-repair in this manner can be a sensitive issue: to correct another person is to draw attention to and topicalize an error or 'lapse in performance' on their part. This could be interpreted as a slight, a 'put-down' or might even be cited as evidence of deliberate rudeness, which in turn may undermine the harmony or accord of the exchange. (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.68))
So when another speaker wishes to initiate a repair in conversation, this often takes the form of a prompt to the original speaker which leads to self-repair, rather than an other-produced correction. A prompt of this type is known as a "next-turn repair initiator (NTRI)" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.62)). The element that is being repaired can itself be the first or second part of a pair, and is followed by a repair pair, of the form (prompt + repair). In the data, NTRIs mostly take the form of requests for clarification or for correction, for example, FT2:
Best of luck, Jo, on your educational adventure! When you say "leaving Christianity" do you mean for other religions (i.e. Judaism, Hinduism, Krishna, others) or leaving all realigions? [sic] I, too am curious about this phenomenon and would be interested in what you find and/or your research.
Here the sender seeks clarification of an element from a previous message (FT1) and subsequently receives it (in FT3), i.e. the trouble source and repair sequence take place in three adjacent messages. This NTRI is a request for clarification which shows the sender's interest in the topic and is expressed in a non-threatening manner.
Here the sender seeks clarification of an element from a previous message (FT1) and subsequently receives it (in FT3), i.e. the trouble source and repair sequence take place in three adjacent messages. This NTRI is a request for clarification which shows the sender's interest in the topic and is expressed in a non-threatening manner.
Another repair sequence, of the conventional "Do you mean" type, takes place in FT34 and FT40. The trouble source is located in FT31 where the original sender mentioned work by "Carol Myer". In FT34 there is an NTRI which is a request for clarification:
Hey, thanks for the help. Do you mean Carol Meyers?
This is mitigated somewhat by the thanks at the start of the message, and receives a response realising the repair in FT40:
Yes, I heard her speak a few years ago...
Another NTRI asking about the meaning of a trouble source is found in WD29. Message WD28 mentions a "script moderator", and the sender of WD29 asks:
What's a script moderator?
The repair is carried out four and a half hours later in WD34 where the writer offers a synonym and an explanation of the term:
A script moderator is sometimes called a 'second marker'. It's someone who does a quality assurance check on your work by looking at ramdom [sic] samples of essays you have marked...
There are three occurrences in our data of a report of an incorrect URL with subsequent correction. (URLs often include complicated sequences of letters, numbers and symbols, and are prone to typing errors.) Each of these are realised by repair pairs, with the trouble source (the incorrect URL) identified by an NTRI which is followed by a repair carried out by the original speaker. For example in WD46 (NTRI) the speaker makes an unmitigated report of the problem:
Roy, when I tried this URL, I got a 404 - File Not Found error.
This is repaired by the original speaker in WD47:
Thanks for the feedback, Marcy, and apologies to listmembers.
The correct URL is as follows:
http://www.mantex.demon.co.uk/index.htm
[because it's a framed site]
Look under BOOKS on the homepage
There are two similar cases, NTRI in FT29 with a correction in FT30, and NTRI in FT57 with a correction in FT58 (all three NTRIs are followed by the repair in the adjacent turn).
Another NTRI relating to the medium of the interaction is produced in HR42 by list owner:
Can I just remind people not to send anything but plain text messages to the list.
I know this can be tedious with all the new mail clients which send messages in HTML and handle attachments pretty seamlessly but please remember, not every one uses these and so such messages can be unreadable to some members of the list.
Thanks
This relates to previous message, HR41, which had been sent in HTML format. This NTRI is mitigated by explanation and thanks, and by addressing it to "people" rather than the individual participant whose error it was. Repair is carried out in HR44 where sender sends his message again, this time in plain text format.
WD7 also includes something which looks like an NTRI, closely resembling the example given by Sacks et al (1974, p.723) "Who me?":
Me? I couldn't refrain from using the red pen, me!
This question is imitating conversation, as if the participant had been selected as next speaker and wanted to check that she was the one being addressed. But she has not been selected in this way, and if she was really unsure there would have been no need for her to ask a question - if she genuinely wanted to find out whether she had been selected, she could simply re-read the previous message. Moreover, she does not wait for a response as she would if this were a genuine question in spoken conversation. The fact that she does not wait for a response, and that in fact no repair is provided, support the interpretation that this does not function as an NTRI. The writer is achieving a colloquial effect. She is also repeating the word "me", the discussion item from the previous message.
Self-initiated other repair, in which the speaker prompts the listener(s) to do a repair, is rare in the email data. There is one example, in HR14, where the writer signals with a question mark that she is unsure about the word she is using and thus makes a self-initiated prompt for other-repair:
Hi, my name is Regina and for my dissertation I'm working on the subject how it could be possible to improve the image of health food retail.
My thesis contents that it could be very helpful to use the realisations of gelatology(?), especially for the three fields:
1.communication with customers
2.communication with the staff
3.public relations.
Three subsequent messages address this prompt directly. HR16 responds confirming that the original writer has used the word incorrectly, but does not provide a repair:
Gelatology? Would that be the study of how fruit desserts come together when cooled? I'm a professor of gerontology, and our department sometimes gets mail for the department of gynecology, or even genealogy, but I've yet to see much on gelatology.
The repair is provided in HR17:
The word is gelotology- the study of humor
and elaborated in HR19:
For those interested, gelotology comes from the Classical Greek word for laughter, gelos. The e is an eta, not an epsilon, so the etymologically correct pronunciation is with "gee" in the first syllable, not the vowel in "jell". So far as I know, this word was suggested many years ago by Edith Trager Johnson...
The above sequence is remarkable in that four participants collaborate to produce the correct word.
Other-initiated other-repair identifies and repairs a trouble source "in the form of an explicit correction" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.63)). It is therefore potentially more face-threatening than other types of repair.
Message WD57 from Mark has more than one trouble source:
The "academic writing is not reader directed" argument is based on a falacious [sic] assumption that out there there is a "general reader" who needs to be apeased [sic] each time I produce text. I don't think he or she exists, but even if they did I wouldn't give them my stuff to read.
This paragraph receives two other-initiated other-repairs in the adjacent message WD58, from Russ:
This isn't the assumption I was making. I don't think that reader exists, either. But I do think the choice of the word "appeased" is significant. Whatever reader I'm imagining, I don't think of what I'm doing as "appeasing" her . . . unless she happens to be a blind reviewer for an academic journal, maybe.
First, Russ corrects a view Mark attributes to those who, like Russ, oppose Mark in this argument ("This isn't the assumption I was making"). However, this is not a self-repair because Russ has made only one previous contribution to this thread, WD56, which is a very brief agreement with a previous message, WD55. Russ is therefore doing an other-initiated other-repair on Mark's stereotype of his opponents' positions. Second, Russ corrects the spelling of the word "appeased". He puts this in quotation marks, as it is a word used in WD57, but with the spelling corrected. He does not explicitly mention the error, but he reinforces his repair by using the form "appeasing" in the next sentence, also in quotation marks, and also spelt correctly. This resembles the example provided by Hutchby and Wooffitt in which a caller to a British Airways information service mispronounces Bordeaux, and the agent simply corrects the pronunciation in the next turn:
C: could you give me an ETA please on BA three six five from bordecks? (0.4)
A: three six five from bordoh? (.) yeah (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.68))
Elements which appear to be repair initiations, both self- and other-, can be used for purposes other than repair, as we find in an extended flaming sequence in Business Ethics. Unmitigated other-initiated repair can appear hostile, and perhaps it is not surprising that the long flaming exchange in Business Ethics has several examples of this. These include a request for clarification in BE30 which is almost certainly ironic. David L asks:
Tim, did I miss something?
Although Tim responds in the adjacent message, BE31, he does not carry out a repair, confirming that he too did not interpret this as a genuine NTRI requesting clarification.
In BE40 there is a prototypical NTRI "Huh?" as in the example from ten Have (1999, p.116) above:
Huh? Jon makes a comment worthy of a 13-year old and I'm to feel shame? And this from somebody who collects far more tax money (as a professor and a businessman) than I do? Please help me to understand.
Although the "Huh?" is followed by the plea, "Please help me to understand", it is again not a genuine NTRI and it receives no repair, indeed no response.
There are also apparent self-initiated self-repairs in which the original speaker says the second speaker has misinterpreted something. Thus in the original message, BE6, Jon gives an assessment of Tim's website:
With all due respect about your intentions, Timothy, your website mentioned below reads like a compendium of some of the worst cliches of the myths of the 'socially responsible' business fiasco. It seems you have a difficult time distinguishing between social MARKETING and corporate social responsibility.
I would hope that this list is more sophisticated than just a place for New Age corporate bashing. Frankly, the two citations you give are of that genre...
In BE7, Tim refers to this as a "vitriolic response", but Jon treats this as a misinterpretation, and carries out an apparent self-initiated self-repair in BE9:
That's funny. My words were rather measured…
However, BE6 was clearly rather "vitriolic", so Jon is doing something other than repair here - perhaps suggesting that in fact he was being more restrained than he might have been, and thus emphasising his attack.
Similarly, in BE21 John comes into the fray with comments such as:
I have been following Tim's rather inconsiderate and intemperate exchange with Jon and David, and had decided that there was more emotion than fact in Tim's posts...
It is sad that some academics have bought into the shallow and largely unfounded perspective that Tim and other business-bashers continue to broadcast to anyone who is niave [sic] enough to listen...
Jon and David, I applaud your position and persistence, but I suspect that Tim isn't listening.
In BE23 Tim describes the content of John's message as "emotional attacks", but John frames this as a misunderstanding in an apparent self-initiated self-repair in the following turn, BE24:
Tim, if I were to attack you "emotionally" I would certainly use words other than "inconsiderate" and "intemperate."
There are suggestions from one participant that another participant has not been reading the contributions (contrast the genuine repair on this theme in Section 5.1.1 above). In BE23 Timothy writes:
Jeez Professor, at least I can be reasonably sure that Jon actually READS my posts! Why not take a look through them again and reconsider your emotional attacks....
Similarly in BE33 David says:
Tim, read the rest of that message.
These are apparently NTRIs prompting the other speaker to repair a turn-taking error and attend to the content of previous turns. However, in the context of flaming they do not seem to be genuine NTRIs, and this is confirmed by the fact that no repair actually takes place.
Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.66) demonstrate the importance of carrying out a repair "in close proximity to the trouble source" and cite an example where failure to repair a misunderstanding led to disagreement followed by serious hostility. In general, despite the "disrupted turn adjacency" (Herring (1999, p.3), italics in the original) the email repairs do occur very close to the trouble source - a surprising number actually occur in the adjacent turn, which is difficult to achieve in an email discussion.
While trouble sources in spoken conversation are commonly items such as interruptions and simultaneous speech, and attempts to produce an appropriate lexical item or construction, in the email discussion data by far the most common sources of trouble are turns which a participant perceives to be inappropriate in tone or content, especially messages which are excessively hostile, or messages whose content is considered not relevant to the list. However, as Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.59) note, the repair system can be used to deal with a range of trouble sources, and "repair operations may be motivated by interactional and interpersonal considerations" (Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998, p.60)) as well as error correction. In spoken conversation, instances of inappropriate tone or content can be handled like any other repair (e.g. self-initiated self-repair as in the repair of a swear word, or bigoted statement, etc.; or other-initiated self-repair as in the hypothetical, "You can't say things like that in here" - "Oops, sorry, [rewording]"). Alternatively, instances of inappropriate tone or content can be handled outside the turn-taking system (e.g. the offended party walks out, slaps the speaker's face, etc.).
In email discussions there are several courses of action open to a participant who finds a message inappropriate in some way. Again, they can be handled either inside or outside the turn-taking system, though the options available outside the turn-taking system are different from those available to co-present participants.
The Guidelines on the JISCmail web site give explicit directions about how to deal with inappropriate messages:
2.4 If someone sends a message that seems to be in questionable taste or of dubious relevance to the list, please do NOT send a complaint or comment to the whole list. Contact the list owner instead.
And if junk mail or hate mail should ever be sent to the list, don't reply and don't send a message to the list. Contact the list owner or the JISCmail helpline, and that person will be removed. (JISCmail 2001)
In some cases participants may indeed contact the list owner about inappropriate messages, but we cannot know this because such contact with the list owner would be sent privately.
Two other strategies are readily available, but yet not apparent to the observer. Probably the most common is for participants simply to delete the offending message. Participants can choose to delete the message they are currently reading; alternatively, because the subject headings and senders' names are displayed on the contents of the mailbox they can delete without reading messages on a particular topic or from a particular participant. We cannot observe this happening, but there is a reference to it in PP3 where, in response to a previous complaint the speaker suggests:
Try using the delete key on my mails next time prior to opening them.
A more drastic response is to leave the discussion altogether and unsubscribe from the mailing list. This is done by sending a message directly to the software, with the result that if a participant carries out this operation correctly the other participants will not be aware that it has happened. Thus although unsubscribing is the virtual equivalent to walking away from a spoken discussion, it has less impact on the remaining participants than similar action in a face-to-face discussion We hear of participants leaving the list only when they mistakenly send their leaving message to participants rather than to the software, or when they choose to send a final message to the list. This last method is occasionally used by dissatisfied participants to express their objections and make the other participants aware that they are leaving, for example after the long and hostile flaming sequence in Business Ethics, there is in BE39 a complaint followed by:
I, for one, have no desire to be a party to the on-going useless debate. I therefore wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this list. Thank you.
There is also a reference to this strategy when after an argument one participant sarcastically suggests to another in BE18:
This is a voluntary group, please feel free to quit the discussion at any time...
When they encounter an inappropriate message, participants may not wish to leave the list, but may instead wish to make their objections known in order to try to modify an unsatisfactory discussion and bring about a repair. Initiating a repair is in keeping with the interactional nature and local management of email discussions, and so the JISCmail Guidelines on this matter are frequently ignored and there are numerous instances of repair initiations relating to inappropriate tone or content in the data.
The following example illustrates an objection to content. HR47 is a response to a petition for women's rights in Afghanistan which was sent to the Humour Research list. Here the participant roundly condemns the content of a message which was entirely unrelated to the purpose of the list:
Political notices of any kind are absolutely inappropriate on this list.
This gets no response in the data, but the offending message was a one-off message (a petition) and not the start of a debate. The sender of the offending message sends no more messages, but it is likely that this would have been the case in any event, so it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of this repair.
An irrelevant message on the Probation Practice list, PP30 Invest small - Reap LARGE, received no response at all in the data, and may therefore have been dealt with as the Guidelines suggest.
The two offending messages above are clearly irrelevant to the purpose of the lists as set out on the web site. On other occasions, a participant might object to a message where the content does seem to be relevant, but seems to be in some way inadequate, as in BE9:
This is such knee-jerk gibberish that it is a challenge to respond.
Particularly frequent are complaints about messages whose content is in some way relevant to the list, but whose tone is not, in the opinion of the complainant, quite appropriate. A plentiful source of comments about the tone of messages is the flaming exchange in the Business Ethics list. Here there are complaints, both from participants engaged in the flaming who object to the tone of remarks from other participants in the flaming, and from participants not engaged in the flaming who attempt to initiate a repair. The following two complaints come from the flamers themselves:
BE26:
Seriously, I'm all for ending the personal attacks (and the patronizing comments like that one) and calmly debating the issues, as I've said from the beginning....
BE36:
Now Jon, that's immature and uncalled for. Is that what you call "calm and reasoned" debate? If you're unwilling or unable to respond to my specific points, I'd be happy to conclude our discussion. Let me know.
It is possible for a speaker to refuse NTRIs or other-repair, although no studies have been found which discuss this. In conversation it could take the form of, for example, the second speaker questioning the first speaker's word or usage and the first speaker affirming that their choice was correct. There are refusals to repair in the Business Ethics flaming sequence, as in the three exchanges below. The first two are made by the flaming participants. An NTRI occurs in BE14:
Let's get beyond the cheap sarcasm, OK?
This is followed by a response in BE18 which is a refusal to repair:
There is nothing cheap about my sarcasm.
Another NTRI is found in BE20:
You mentioned in one of your silly posts...
The response in BE22 is a refusal to repair together with a counter attack:
I hate to see our debate deteriorate even further. However, you're continuing to put absurd words in my mouth ("corporations are evil", "the Body Shop is my hero") and continuing the ad hominem attacks you apparently deplore ("mindless", "silly"). From my perspective, I've agreed with you on several points and tried to be as open-minded and even-keeled as possible. I prefer "debate" rather than "trading attacks back and forth". I can only ignore your overreactions and try to reply as best I can to your unprovoked personal attacks.
Instead of calling me "stupid", why not provide information to counter the avalanche of evidence implicating Shell in kickbacks to the corrupt Nigerian government? ...
I really expect better of an "Emmy award-winning journalist", and I hope we can continue our debate in a more calm and reasoned manner.
In BE27 a participant who has not been involved in the flaming objects to the tone of preceding messages and refers to the purpose of the list in an attempt to put an end to the series of abusive messages:
In any forum which purports to examine the nature of ethics applied to business surely there is no room for personal vituperation.
This participant goes on to recommend what he sees as a more appropriate form of contribution:
bandying expletives serves no useful purope [sic] except to indicate smallmindedness and pique. Lets hear sensible debate leavened with humour.
It seems likely that this is a genuine attempt to bring about a repair, but it is unsuccessful. The response to this message (BE29) makes reference to the nature of the list and refuses to repair, calling on the right to freedom of speech:
Some good thoughts. However, one might ask who determines the rules of debate in a free & open forum such as this? You, I, someone in the UK who provides the server?
Also, I am reminded of an ole' saying that goes something like this: I may not agree with what you say (or how you say it) however, I will defend to the death your right to say it (or how you say it). I might add: and I am just as free to stop listening anytime I find it disagreeable. Perhaps I have been around too long but I find this to be a rather rough and tumble world (especially in the academic area) and am used to worse---just don't use them cuss words (see I am trying to set a rule).
There is a fine distinction between the (unsuccessful) NTRI found in BE27 above, where the participant objects to the tone of the discussion in an attempt to bring about a repair, and dissatisfaction which takes the form of a complaint, as in BE39, below, from another participant who is alienated by the flaming sequence:
When I first subscribed to this list, I did so with the impression that I would be learning something about business and ethics and the like. Instead, this seems to be a list for immature, vitriolic, sarcastic diatribes and snipes between a few people who purport to be academics!
The writer of BE39 then demonstrates that this is not an attempt to bring about a repair by requesting an unsubscribe from the list. The above are individual comments about tone or content. Such comments can themselves provoke responses and this can very easily lead to discussion about the purpose of the list itself (see Section 5.3 below). In a context where participants are ready to discuss both the appropriateness of individual messages and the purpose of the list, it is not surprising that some participants are sensitive to the reactions that their own contributions might generate, for example, the writer of WD27 anticipates a critical response:
I'm going to be told I'm being rude here
and the writer of BE9 expects other list members to grow "weary" of the personal exchange.
The awareness of other participants' reactions and the knowledge that these can become quite heated might deter some list members from contributing, and there is evidence in the data that this is happening. Two participants from Probation Practice, discussing why people lurk rather than participate, express the anxiety they themselves feel about the reception of their messages. The first is found in PP26:
I can only speak for myself - I'm a bit nervous about making a fool of myself by saying something/stating an opinion which will be read by lots of people I don't know and who might respond with dismissive comments.
The second is a response to PP26 in PP28:
I agree about being nervous about people openly disagreeing with something I may say... I think that's only natural especially when some people are far from polite when expressing their opinions, which I believe is a nasty side effect of mailing lists, i.e. you can say anything without having to "face" your 'opponent'.
The final method of dealing with inappropriate tone or content is for the list owner to take action. Although messages can be vetted by the list owner before distribution, all of the data in this study are from unmoderated lists, and are therefore not subject to screening. List owners on unmoderated lists have two courses of action available. Firstly, they can, like other participants, state their view on the tone or content of messages, as in the following message, BE43, from the list owner of Business Ethics after a long and vitriolic exchange between a small number of participants. This is a similar NTRI to HR44 above:
May I ask please to use this list for the purposes mentioned in its web-site? Several members have left the list because of the personal content of some personal messages that should have been privately exchanged by the members, if they were at to be communicated.
May I ask the members to think of the relevance of their messages to this list before they share them with other members?
At issue is the long flaming exchange which has taken place on the Business Ethics list. However, in BE41, six days before BE43 was sent, Timothy, one of the main perpetrators of the flaming, called for an end to it. For the six days preceding the list owner's message there had been no further messages in the flaming exchange. Previously, there had been several messages a day, and the whole exchange lasted for only eight days. Therefore, it is unlikely that the list owner's message had any part in ending the exchange. It was not sent close to the source of the trouble, and by the time it was sent, it had become irrelevant.
Secondly, list owners can remove offending participants from the list. This action would be taken as a last resort, and would not be apparent to other participants unless specific mention of it was made by the list owner. There is no mention of this happening in the data.
From the above, it is clear that there are several options available to participants in email discussions who believe that the tone or content of a message is inappropriate. The process is, however, somewhat cumbersome. It is difficult to make a light objection early in the process, both because the objection has to take place in writing and because each email message usually takes the discourse further than a turn in face-to-face conversation (see Harrison (1998, p.12) for a discussion of how the accumulation of primary acts within individual turns in email discourse can lead to flaming).
Comments about the tone and content of messages may occur in one-off comments like those discussed above. However, an individual comment about the inappropriate tone or content of a message may in itself spark a whole metadiscussion about what is appropriate, and this may extend into a metadiscussion about the purpose of the list itself. An extended example of a metadiscussion is found in Probation Practice, Topic T2. The metadiscussion begins like a conventional repair with a specific trouble source in a single utterance, PP1 from Mark, which is followed by an NTRI in PP2 from Stephen. The NTRI is an extended objection to the previous message (much longer than would be normal in spoken conversation). It is followed by a refusal to repair in PP3, and this in turn is followed by a discussion among several list members about whether the list should confine itself to "scholarly" discussion, as Stephen argues in PP2.
Stephen's initial objection in PP2 to the "quality" of Mark's message leads to a metadiscussion, setting up two interlinked threads, the original topic, T1, and the topic about the appropriateness of that topic, T2. Some messages deal with just T1, some with just T2, and some with both. The only fully developed metadiscussion in our data is this sequence from Probation Practice, but it has been recognised elsewhere as a phenomenon in relation to email discussions: Kolb (1996, p.17-18) describes a metadiscussion on an email discussion list about the topics on the list, also a "meta-metadiscussion (about the rules for deciding the topics)" and a "meta-meta-metadiscussion (about the process for deciding the rules about deciding the topics to discuss)." The Probation Practice sequence begins when Stephen objects to the tone and content of Mark's messages, an objection which is sparked off by Mark's message in PP1. Stephen supports his argument by referring to the list information on the web site:
I am writing about the quality of the contributions posted to this list by one of its members (Mark [lastname]) which I feel are starting to get get beyond a joke. Let me start my email with a statement (taken from the masthead of the probation-practice web page) of the purposes of this list.
"This list is dedicated to the exploration of the role of the probation service within the criminal justice system. It acts as a forum for the exchange of ideas, research, training and practice developments and will function as a network for those academics working in the field of probation practice." ...
Whilst criticism of and reflection upon the workings of institutions such as the HO is to be encouraged (or at least not discouraged), it has to be fair, well reasoned and 'scholarly' in nature. Most of what I have read lately from Mark appears to fall far short of this...
Stephen objects to Mark's message, which he sees as unsubstantiated "gossip". This leads to a flurry of support for Mark, for example, in PP7:
I don't think I agree with Stephen [lastname]'s view about the appropriate form of contributions to the list. There is a place for reasoned argument (although I am not sanguine that it has much effect - decisions don't often seem to be taken or changed on the basis of reason ) and I wouldn't support personal abuse of other list members. But is there really anything wrong with using the list to sound off a bit about probation issues sometimes?
One participant uses the original citation from the web site to back up his support for Mark in PP9:
I appreciate Stephen [lastname]'s view, but if our list is "dedicated to the exploration of the role of the probation service within the criminal justice system", while acting "as a forum for the exchange of ideas, research, training and practice development", then Mark [lastname] is doing a lot to stimulate this process. Plus, his disarmingly frank dissection of events, notably devoid of spin, has certainly made me laugh.
This reference to the list information on the web site is unusual but shows that at least some of the participants are aware of the material on the site. Comments on the purpose of the list range from an account of how one participant uses the discussion in PP14:
the forum so far has been useful to keep me in touch with what is going on... The forum is also useful for checking out information...
to a firm endorsement of Mark's message in PP10:
Mark [lastname]'s email on CRAMS was forwarded to me by a colleague and has led me to join the probation practice mail-list. I believe his forthright comments are entirely appropriate...
while other participants are eager to shape the discussion in ways that seem appropriate to them e.g. PP12:
...In the meantime I would hope that this forum will continue be used 'mindfully' as a place where not only measured comment about empirical research but also critical discussion of the future of the probation service and its current crises can be debated. Criticism after all is central to 'the growth of knowledge' and debate without a degree of exaggerated comment is very dull indeed!
Participants who want to raise the academic standards of the discussion can be found in, for example, PP7 where the participant comments on the absence of academic debates on Probation Practice, and in PP13 below where the participant is seeking a higher standard of discussion:
I simply feel that a discussion group such as this (to which anyone in the world can potentially gain access) should try to maintain the highest of scholarly debates (which in my opinion does not include discussing "versions" of work or making public proncements [sic] about legal disputes between other parties).
In contrast, other participants, like the writer of PP14, do not want academic discussion of this type:
I would be very disappointed if the contributers [sic] to the forum were not forthright and practical in their comments as Mark [lastname] has been. I do not want the forum to 'maintain the highest level of scholarly debate' as this would be difficult for me to relate to my work and would probably inhibit the free flow of opinions and ideas that can be the substance of intelligent debate about practice developments.
Some participants are aware that there is advice about netiquette on the web-site, for example in PP15 the list owner refers to the recent discussion and comments:
I would not want to encourage flaming but have always taken the view that we ought to be able to conduct ourselves without the need for me to moderate... For those wishing to see the National Standards on this matter Etiquette Rules are on the mailbase web-site.
Although this metadiscussion began with a specific trouble source in a single utterance (PP1), this metadiscussion does not conform to the neat and immediate forms of repair discussed in CA publications. Metadiscussions are facilitated by email in that the written medium is enabling participants to review what has been said, and to reflect on and discuss it.
Email shows a range of repair from all four of the types identified by Hutchby and Wooffitt:
Self-initiated self-repair…
Other-initiated self-repair…
Self-initiated other-repair…
Other-initiated other-repair
(Hutchby and Wooffitt(1998, p.61))
This perhaps reflects the fact that in email discussions, as in spoken conversation, the interactions are locally managed and "interactionally managed" (Sacks et al (1974, p.725)) by the participants themselves.
The sources of trouble that necessitate the repair, while differing in some predictable ways from trouble sources in spoken conversation, are nevertheless quite varied and include technology-related turn-taking problems, elements requiring clarification, and factual errors. In relation to the pace of email discussions, these repairs are carried out very promptly and often occur in the turn adjacent to the trouble source or the NTRI, even though adjacency cannot be relied upon in these discussions.
Despite the explicit instruction to the contrary in Section 2.4 of the JISCmail Guidelines, a frequently occurring type of repair or NTRI in the email data takes the form of a comment on the appropriateness of the content or the tone of messages to the list. This is a particularly striking feature of the email data. Participants show an awareness of appropriate behaviour which is more than an adherence to the Guidelines, although they may cite the Guidelines to support their position.
The email discussion data have several instances of refusal to repair following an NTRI, a phenomenon which has not been discussed in publications relating to spoken conversation. The data also provide instances of pseudo-repair, where a participant uses an apparent repair or NTRI for a different purpose.
An initial NTRI can provoke an entire metadiscussion. The opportunity to conduct an extended metadiscussion about a discussion which is being conducted simultaneously with the metadiscussion is provided by the written medium of email discussions. The "persistent" nature of CMC (Erickson, 1999) facilitates reflection, both on the content of the discussion and on the way in which the discussion is carried out.
Repair is seen by CA as an important part of spoken interaction, but repair in CMC had not previously been investigated in any depth. Building on investigations of repair in spoken conversation, this research has been able to gain insights into the operation of repair in email discussions. Repair in email discussions differed from that found in spoken conversation where most of repair centres on the effects of real time spoken interaction, such as dealing with simultaneous speech and the self-repair of a term or construction as soon as it has been produced. But email discussions do have instances of all four types of self- and other-initiated self- and other-repair
.CA also offers us the concept of "deviant case analysis". The data included a clear example of a deviant case in the BE sample, and this provided a useful point of comparison with the rest of the email data, enabling us to identify features of refusal to repair and pseudo-repair, features which deserve research in spoken conversation.
CA offers a flexible approach for investigating spoken interaction. From the beginning it used multi-party data, and from the beginning Sacks et al (1974) set up an expectation that their work on conversation would be used for comparative purposes. Sacks et al believed that conversation was the basic form of spoken interaction and that other speech exchange systems would be transformations of this. By starting with the least controlled form of spoken interaction then available, conversation, they were able to devise an approach flexible enough to be transferable, both to other kinds of spoken interaction, of which they mention some in their paper, and to kinds of data not then available, such as CMC. This research has shown that it is indeed appropriate to investigate repair in email discussions using a framework based on CA, and suggests that the framework could usefully be used to investigate repair in other forms of CMC.
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