Smith & Seuren (2022)
Smith, M.S. & Seuren, L.M. (2022). Re-apprehending misapprehensions: A practice for disclosing troubles in understanding in talk-in-interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 193, 43-58, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.02.018.
We go about fixing misunderstanding in talk-in-interaction in systematic ways. Troubles are dealt with as soon as possible: speakers edit their own talk within turns (self-repair), or the problem is flagged by the recipient in the very next turn (other-initiated repair, e.g. “huh?”). Delayed repair requires a little more interactional work. In this paper, Smith & Seuren (2022) use every day conversations recorded in English and Dutch to illustrate how speakers “re-apprehend” their own misapprehension of some prior action.
The analysis deals with a very specific type of repair practice where the speaker explicitly marks that misunderstanding has taken place. In this data set, the expression “I thought (that) X” (or the Dutch “ik dacht dat”) is used not only to correct the misunderstanding, but simultaneously provides an account for what was initially/incorrectly understood. Often accompanied by a change-of-state token at the beginning of the turn — “oh” — which marks a change or shift in the speakers understanding, “I thought that” also frames the prior talk as oriented to the misunderstanding. In other words, “what I was saying was going along with what I (mistakenly) thought you meant”.
Smith & Seuren found that these “I thought that” markers of misapprehension were used in one of two ways, either after repair had been done, or to initiate repair.
In the first case, misunderstanding had already been resolved, and the “I thought that” turn provides some account for why the misunderstanding took place in the first place. This explicit commentary or self-correction from the recipient explains why their previous responses may have been off the mark.
When used to repair, “I thought that” -prefaced turns specify the troublesource earlier in the interaction. Here, while there may be “numerous repairs on prior talk, the trouble lies, not in mishearing, or mis-interpreting the prior talk, but in a presupposition used while making sense of that talk.” (p. 52). The authors note that when the problem lies in misremembering something that the other speaker shared on another occasion, we are accountable for failing to remember. The re-apprehension in this case might be accompanied by an apology.
A helpful summary is provided by Smith and Leuren:
“When interactants initiate repair, they not only indicate that there is a trouble, but more importantly, locate it for their interlocutor (cf. Drew, 1997). Oh… ik dacht/I thought X serve the same purpose: In expanding the repair sequence with the account, the recipient of the trouble-source locates the trouble, not in what the speaker said or did, but how the recipient had (mis)apprehended it. The practice in turn provides for ‘full disclosure’ of the misapprehension, withdrawing any action predicated on the misapprehension, and finally, allowing for either the resumption of the prior sequence, or the start of a new sequence.”
This paper shows us how speakers use “oh, I thought that X” as a resource for managing and maintaining intersubjectivity in interaction.
