Conversation analysis approach to the study of speech failures (based on an interview with the First President of Russian Federation B. N. Yeltsin)

Abstract

The paper approaches the problem of determining the communicative-linguistic significance of speech failures and discusses related theoretical and methodological issues. The relevance is due to opposing approaches in this area and practically complete cessation of research following the decline in scientific interest in these linguistic phenomena. For the first time, conversation analysis is used to study the problems considered. The interview with the first President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, is taken as empirical material. The cognitive capabilities of conversation analysis and its general methodological principles are identified, explaining how the latter allow disclosing the specifics of conversation structure and determining the rules of organizing the exchange of replicas. The basic technology of conversion analysis - transcribing - is introduced. The author analyzes repetitions, pauses, hesitations, clippings of phrases, and expressive intonation selections caused by internal problems of planning and articulation of the speech plan. The conversation analysis of the interview fragments showed how speech disruptions enter into the formation of one of the local contexts - the topic of political confrontation between Yeltsin and Gorbachev. As a result, a conclusion is made that speech failures cannot be considered to be solely speech drawbacks, as they implicitly indicate the goals of communication, are included in the process of forming the structure of the conversation, express the communicative competencies and cognitive attitudes of its participants. Also, further findings concern the possibility of integrating the methodology of conversation analysis with lexical-semantic analysis.