The phenomenon of misunderstanding is a recurrent feature of everyday life—sometimes a
source of frustration, sometimes a site of blame. But misunderstandings can also be seen as
getting interactants out of (as well as into) trouble. For example, misunderstandings may be
produced to deal with disaffiliative implications of ‘not being on the same page,’ and as such
they may be deployed as a resource for avoiding trouble. This paper examines misunderstanding
as a pragmatic accomplishment, focusing on the uses to which it is put in interactions as a
practice for dealing with threats to intersubjectivity: the extent to which persons are aligned in
terms of a current referent, activity, assessment, etc. A multimodal discourse analysis of audio
and video recordings of naturally-occurring talk inspects moments in which misunderstandings
are purported or displayed (rather than overtly invoked) as well as how such misunderstandings
are oriented to as simply-repairable references, versus inferential matters more misaligned and
potentially fraught. Rather than being a straightforward reflection of an experience of trouble
with understanding, misunderstanding may also be collaboratively produced to manage practical
challenges to intersubjectivity.
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Pragmatics: quarterly publication of the International Pragmatics Association
Citation
ROBLES, J., 2017. Misunderstanding as a resource in interaction. Pragmatics, 27 (1), pp. 57-86.
This is the author accepted manuscript version of an article subsequently published in the journal Pragmatics. The definitive version is available here: https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.27.1.03rob.This article is under copyright and the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form.