Evolving from interactional troubles

Résumé fourni par la source

A noticeable phenomenon in the two guest-relations officers’ interaction with guests, especially the novice, was that communication breakdowns occurred often, and most of them involved a trouble-source in the officers’ turns. Resolving interactional troubles is crucial for successful task accomplishment as well as for competence development. This chapter focuses on how the novice (Xuân) recalibrated her interactional practices over time in the wake of other-initiated repair sequences stemming from trouble-sources she produced. We pay specific attention to three high-frequency actions: (a) topic initiation in small talk about guests’ duration of stay, (b) topic initiation and topic pursuit in small talk about guests’ trips, and (c) informings about the hotel’s Wi-Fi network. After tracing Xuân’s changes over time because of interactional troubles in these actions, we examine the experienced officer’s (Lành) management of a similar action—informings about the hotel’s Wi-Fi network—and suggest that her lower rate of interactional troubles and her less extended repair sequences indicate a higher level of competence. We will also examine a change by Lành that may have been triggered by interactional troubles in the management of small talk about the hotel’s history and architectural features and point out how she handled interactional troubles differently from Xuân. Before we present an analysis of the data, we will describe repair mechanisms in conversations and review previous findings on repair in interaction involving users of an L2.

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