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Misunderstanding as a resource in interaction

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-09-08, 11:09 authored by Jessica RoblesJessica Robles
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.

Publisher

© John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Acceptance date

2016-06-21

Publication date

2017

Notes

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.

ISSN

1018-2101

Language

  • en