Correcting Others in Other-Initiated Other-Repair Sequences

Repair organization is a system of practices for dealing with problems of hearing, speaking, and understanding and a central mechanism for maintaining intersubjectivity in conversation. Among the different types of repair, other-initiated other-repair—that is, repair initiated and resolved by a recipient of a trouble source—is the least understood. In other-initiated other-repair sequences, an interactant self-selects to enact "other-correction" of some problematic aspect of another's talk. What occasions other-correction? How are such corrections carried out? What is accomplished by correcting others? To answer these questions, I draw on a large dataset of ordinary conversational materials in the English and Russian languages and explore "practices and actions" of other-correction. I show how the activity of correcting others is shaped by participants' orientations to positionality, intersubjectivity, and normativity. Data are in American/British English and Russian.