Abstract
The qualitative content analysis paper examined the conversational repair strategies of three main characters to resolve interactional gaps and overlaps in Sidney Sheldon’s novel If Tomorrow Comes. In particular, the analysis was based on the conversations of Tracy Whitney, Charles Stanhope, and Jeff Stevens, which were evaluated with the Conversation Analysis (CA) framework by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974). An inspection of selected conversations in chapters 1-5 and 30-34 demonstrated that the sources of trouble were mainly pragmatic non-cooperation and control of information. Information gaps (34.00%) were the most common, followed by comprehension gaps (32.00%). Interpretation overlaps (38.24%) were the most common type of overlap. The primary type was other-initiated other-repairs (OIOR). Self-initiated other-repairs (SIOR) were absent. The strategies of turn-taking shifted from imposing interactional control on the character under emotional stress in Chapter 1 to more sophisticated management in Chapter 34. These results indicate that conversational repair is employed as a stylistic feature to represent character interaction, power dynamics, and plot progression. The coding demonstrated high inter-coder reliability with 90% agreement for both gaps and overlaps. Overall, the analysis showed that conversational repairs are key to the novel’s depiction of interaction, power, and narrative progression.
Keywords: Conversation analysis, strategic communication, repair strategies, conversational gaps and overlaps, self-initiated, self-repair (sisr), self-initiated, other-repair (sior), other-initiated self-repair (oisr), other-initiated other-repair (oior).