From failed repair to successful humor in mockumentary sitcoms: The Office (US), Parks and Recreation and Abbott Elementary as case studies
Résumé
Conversational repair is the process by which speakers handle problems, also known as “repairables”, in interaction—whether the problem in question (which may or may not be an ‘error’) is related to speaking, hearing or understanding. As such, repair sequences are instrumental in defending intersubjectivity in interaction (Schegloff 1992, Robinson 2014). This defense of intersubjectivity is dependent on all the interactants involved in the conversation. Repair can be initiated by the speaker who uttered the repairable or their interlocutor(s); in other words, there can be self- or other-initiation of repair. Additionally, the repair proper may be undertaken by the speaker who uttered the repairable (in which case it will be a case of self-repair), or by their interlocutor(s) (in which case it will be a case of other-repair). Conversation analysts have noted that while the possibility of failure cannot be ignored, repair is overwhelmingly successful and quick (Schegloff, Jefferson, Sacks, 1977, 363). When the first repair-attempt is not successful, other repair-attempts follow, which generally reach a successful outcome (Tzanne 2000, 165; Wilkinson 2007, 546). In the fictional interactions under analysis though, I will show that repair-attempts not infrequently fail on the level of character-to-character interactions (called Communication Level 2 by Brock 2015), because 1) the repair-attempt is aborted and does not reestablish intersubjectivity, 2) the repair-attempt is rejected either by the character who has initiated repair in the case of self-repair or by the character who receives the repair-attempt, and 3) the repair-attempt drifts off and derails the conversation instead of mending the rift in shared understanding. Thanks to a multimodal analysis (Wildfeuer 2014, Schubert 2019, Gironzetti 2022) of failed repair sequences in The Office (US), Parks and Recreation and Abbott Elementary, I will argue that while intersubjectivity may be at times threatened on Communicative Level 2, intersubjectivity is defended on Communicative Level 1 (the level of the collective sender’s communication with the audience). “Multimodality in characters” and “multimodality in the product” guide the recipient in their humorous reframing of the failed repair sequences. Cameras zooming in on characters non-verbally expressing doubt on the efficiency of the repair, inclusions of bystanders providing templates of reactions for the audience, cuts to scenes undercutting the repair undertaken by a character are examples of multimodal strategies designed to turn failed repair sequences into successfully humorous scenes.