Repair organization in Chinantec whistled speech

2016/06/01 by Mark A. Sicoli · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Discourse Analysis in Language Studies #Language, Metaphor, and Cognition

paper · doi:10.1353/lan.2016.0028

openalex publication_date 2016/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21

Abstract

This article examines how conversational repair is organized in the reduced communicative channel of whistled speech in San Pedro Sochiapam Chinantec of Oaxaca, Mexico. It argues that studies oflanguage channeled through different modalities affect our understanding of human language more generally. While repair in whistled speech shares the same universal sequence organization as repair in spoken speech, there are noteworthy differences in the preference organization and the typology of repair in whistled speech: a reduction in the types of repair initiations; a lack of preference for self-initiated repair; and an inversion of the frequency relation of OPEN and RESTRICTED repairs to favor open formats. I propose that these patterned differences are motivated by a reduced semiotic carrying capacity of the whistled channel.

Citations

• Universal Principles in the Repair of Communication Problems
• Other-initiated repair across languages: towards a typology of conversational structures
• Other-initiated repair in Siwu
• Organizing a remote state of incipient talk: Push-to-talk mobile radio interaction
• Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding Is a Token of Affiliation
• A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation
• Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation
• A Coding Scheme for Other-initiated RepairAcross Languages

Discussions

• There's a parallel here to work on Chinantec whistled speech by @masicoli, which showed the same relative ordering of strategies (OR > RO > RR) http://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2016.0028; and I think the in [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]