Abstract

Applying an interactional perspective, in line with the work of Francesco Straniero Sergio, this article focuses on the conversational mechanism of repair in prototypical examples of repair initiatives found in three interpreter-mediated asylum interviews. The discourse data is drawn from a corpus of eight longer asylum interviews and is part of the Swedish-based research project Asylum narratives – on co-construction and recontextualization. The interviews, involving talk in Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian and English, were audio recorded and transcribed in their entirety. For the presentation and analyses of data in the article, transcribed talk in Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian was translated into English. The examples demonstrate how repair initiatives can work in interpreter-mediated encounters. Most importantly, they show that in interpreter-mediated encounters, some basic functions of repair initiatives found in monolingual encounters, tend to be put out of play, partly due to the non-standard turn organization, which characterizes mediated interaction.

Keywords: repair, repair initiatives, asylum interview, social order, discourse of reporting

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