Blurb:

In the preceding chapter we have shown that existing studies looking at the phonetics of dysarthria secondary to MS have focused largely on read words, read sentences and some elicited connected speech. In this study our focus lies instead on the manifestation of MS dysarthria in conversational speech, and in particular the social action we call repair. In this chapter we introduce the concept of repair in more detail as a phenomenon of naturally occurring conversation. We will show that repair is both common yet structurally complex. We outline a typology of repair and focus particularly on the concept of self-repair; the conversational act of addressing a problem with the understandability or intelligibility of some preceding talk. In section 13.4 we focus on repair in conversations where one or more participant has a communication difficulty, particularly in relation to intelligibility. Finally, we summarize what is known about the phonetics of repair, focusing mostly on conversations where the participants do not have a communication difficulty.