Precluding and Abandoning Linguistic Repair in Dyadic Online Interactions for L2 Learning

This investigation uses conversation analysis (CA) to document, in very close detail, how participants-in-interaction manage and organize repair practices in moments when linguistic repair becomes conditionally relevant in conversational or ‘chatting’ phases of online dyadic L2-learning interactions between a tutor and tutee Specifically, this study focuses on the phenomena of precluding linguistic repair when it becomes relevant (by making it conditional on quick uptake and completion, and by deploying turn-taking devices to hold the turn when other-correction becomes or seems relevant) and abandoning it when it is in progress. Analysis framed these phenomena not as individual strategies, but as collaborative accomplishments realized through the interactional competence (IC) of the participants, and showed that participants oriented to both pedagogical and social concerns in moments of linguistic repair. Therefore, such moments were key sites for co-construction and configuration of the interactional space as primarily social or pedagogical, or as a complex and conditional interweaving of the two.