Confirming understanding and acknowledging assistance: Managing trouble responsibility in response to understanding check in Japanese talk-in-interaction

When a recipient of a turn-at-talk has a problem in hearing/understanding, one way for initiating repair is to offer a “candidate understanding” of that turn for confirmation/disconfirmation. This practice is, however, sometimes open to being regarded by the trouble-source speaker as providing a ‘better’ alternative for his/her formulation in the prior turn, because a candidate understanding contains different words than those used in the prior turn. Through an analysis of Japanese talk-in-interaction, this study argues that: (1) the practice of offering a candidate understanding is not only recognizable as checking understanding but can also be contingently recognizable as assisting the trouble-source speaker in formulating what s/he wanted/wants to say. (2) Among the two types of confirmation tokens in Japanese, a nn-type token is a resource for simply confirming the repair-initiating speaker's understanding, whereas a soo-type token is a resource for acknowledging his/her assistance in reformulating the trouble-source speaker's turn. (3) By responding with a soo-type token in response to an offer of a candidate understanding, the trouble-source speaker can display his/her stance to the fact that the recipient has assisted in solving a trouble in speaking and that s/he (the speaker) is responsible for the trouble.

► I examined two types of confirmatory responses to an offer of a candidate understanding in Japanese. ► A nn-type token simply confirms understanding. ► A soo-type token acknowledges assistance in speaking as well as confirms understanding. ► An offer of a candidate understanding is contingently recognizable as assistance. ► The trouble-source speaker manages trouble responsibility in responding to it.