Conversational Repairs in Persian Dramatic Discourse: Akbar Radi's Pellekân (The Steps)

The present study is an attempt to investigate conversational repair phenomenon in Persian dramatic discourse and it tries to check the presence of any predominant preference for employing a specific type of repair rather than the others in the context of Persian drama. To reach the aforementioned purpose, Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks’s (1977) framework has been adopted and applied to Akbar Radi's (1989) five-act play called Pellekân (The Steps). The results of the study indicated different applications of repair in each act and the findings of Schegloff, et al. (1977) regarding this phenomenon were also recognized in the current investigation of Persian dramatic discourse. As a systematic sample of a real talk, the characters of Pellekân preferred to have self-correction as their repair strategy rather than using other-correction in their conversations and negotiations of meaning. Furthermore, a tendency toward self-repair and more specifically, other-initiated self-repair was seen through the whole play. These findings indicate that the playwright has had a tendency to portray the acts in a way quite similar to real-life context. The current findings suggest that Persian drama as a representative of an ordinary talk has a similar preference toward self-correction. It is highly recommended that the interested researchers study other Persian plays to ensure whether they are also in line with the findings of the current study.