Re-apprehending misapprehensions : A practice for disclosing troubles in understanding in talk-in-interaction

• The potential for misunderstanding is ever-present in interaction, making it necessary that interactants have means for identifying and remediating troubles in understanding should they appear. These include not only practices for remediating others misunderstandings, but also for remediating ones own misunderstandings. Using English and Dutch data, we analyse a practice that participants use for remediating misapprehensions on their part of some prior talk or given state-of-affairs, where the speaker first indexes a change-of-state and then explicates their misapprehension with "I thought (that) X" or "ik dacht dat X". In doing so the speakers disclose themselves to have misapprehended some talk or state-of-affairs and by so doing re-apprehended the actual talk or correct state-of-affairs, while also accounting for any action or conduct predicated on that misapprehension.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Repair; Remedial practices; Troubles in understanding; Intelligibility; Accountability; Intersubjectivity

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)