Pursuing a question: Reinitiating IRE sequences as a method of

instruction
Alan Zemel
a,
*, Timothy Koschmann
b
a
University at Albany SUNY, Department of Communication SS351, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12222, United States
b
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Department of Medical Education, 913 N. Rutledge Street, Springeld, IL 62702, United States
1. Introduction
[W]ithout systematic provision for a world known and held in common by some collectivity of persons, one has not a
misunderstood world, but no conjoint reality at all (Schegloff, 1992: 1296).
Schegloff et al. (1977: 381) state that the organization of repair is the self-righting mechanism for the organization of
language use in social interaction. In a later work, Schegloff (1992: 1296) explores the relationship between repair and
intersubjectivity, suggesting that repair is the procedural basis for locating and dealing with breakdowns in intersubjectivity
andis wovenintotheverywarpandweft of ordinaryconversationand, byimplication, possiblyof anyorganizedconduct. The
foundational relationship between repair, especially third-position repair, and intersubjectivity establishes clear links among
interaction, socially shared forms of understanding and cognition, and the achievement and maintenance of a conjoint reality
(Schegloff, 1991). In our paper, we are concerned with how one form of repair, viz. correction, is used and its relations to
understanding as the achievement of intersubjectivity or cognitive order (Schegloff, 1992: 1296) in a particular episode of
instruction accomplished at an American medical school. Of specic interest is the way that a tutor uses self-correction as the
procedural basis for locating and dealing with breakdowns in intersubjectivity (ibid).
According to Mehan (1979), instructional interactions are overwhelmingly organized in terms of a three-part sequence of
interaction between a teacher and a student, referred to as the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequence. In an IRE
Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488
A R T I C L E I N F O
Article history:
Received 16 February 2009
Received in revised form 12 February 2010
Accepted 26 August 2010
Keywords:
Initiation-Repair-Evaluation
Repair
Correction
Instruction
Understanding
Conversation analysis
A B S T R A C T
When an instructor initiates an Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) instructional
sequence, problems may become evident in the recipients response to those questions
that suggest the source of the trouble may be with how recipients understand the
instructors question rather than the adequacy of the response. One strategy for attending
to this problem is for the instructor to pursue a correct response by withholding explicit
evaluation in the third slot of the IRE sequence and instead producing a revised version of
the sequence-initiating question. Question revision or correction on the part of the
instructor affords recipients the opportunity to produce revised responses as evidence that
they also properly understand what made the revised query relevant in the rst place. In
our analysis, we show that this strategy of pursuing a correct response by offering
successive corrections/revisions of an IRE-initiating query treats understanding as the
convergence between the doers of an action or bit of conduct and its recipients, as
coproducers of an increment of interactional and social reality (Schegloff, 1992: 1299).
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 518 442 4882; fax: +1 518 442 3884.
E-mail addresses: azemel@albany.edu (A. Zemel), tkoschmann@siumed.edu (T. Koschmann).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Pragmatics
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ pr agma
0378-2166/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.08.022
sequence, the instructor initiates (I) interaction in the rst position; a student responds (R) to the instructors question in the
second position; and the instructor offers some formof assessment or evaluation (E) in the third position. The primary focus
of most research on IRE sequences has been on the interactional work participants do to assess, repair and/or correct a
students response when its adequacy is treated as problematic (cf. Cazden, 1988; Macbeth, 2003, 2004; McHoul, 1978,
1990; Mehan, 1979, 1982; Waring, 2002b, 2008, 2009; Weeks, 1985).
Evidence suggests that there may be at least two sources of asymmetry between teacher initiation and student reply
(Mehan, 1979) when students produce responses to instructor queries that the instructor sees as inadequate. On the one
hand, a students response might be seen as inadequate by virtue of a deciency in the students knowledge or understanding
of the matter being queried. For example, a student may understand the instructors question but may not know the
correct answer. We call this circumstance an IRE with a second-position trouble (SPT) source. On the other hand, the
students response might be seen as inadequate because of a problemwith or deciency in the instructors query itself. When
the instructor sees his or her own initiating query as the source of the trouble, redesignof the question and re-initiationof the
IRE sequence in the third position becomes the relevant interactional trajectory. We call this circumstance an IRE sequence
with a rst-position trouble (FPT) source. While most work examines SPT sources, very little work has been done with regard
to FPT sources. IRE sequences with rst-position trouble sources have interactional trajectories that suggest logics of
classroom participation and instruction different from IRE sequences with second-position trouble sources (cf. Ende et al.,
1995; Pomerantz et al., 1995; Zemel et al., forthcoming). Most importantly for our interests, these trajectories represent
different ways of constituting and resolving problems of understanding in instructional interaction.
In the IRE sequence, it is the teacher that determines if a trouble source has occurred in the rst or second position of the
IRE based on the students second-position response. If the teacher recognizes a trouble source, the kind of trouble source he
or she recognizes is consequential for what the teacher will produce in the third position of the IRE, which could include a
delayed turn-initiation, explicit evaluation or correction of the student response, or even a re-initiation of the IRE sequence.
When a teacher offers an explicit assessment or evaluation, a repair-initiation or a correction in the third turn slot, this
implies that the trouble source is the students reply in the second position of the IRE. In this case, the teachers action is
founded on the presumption that there is intersubjective symmetry between the teacher and student with regard to the
teachers rst-position IRE initiation. This allows the student and the teacher to treat the teacher initiation as understood
by the student. The asymmetry between the rst-position IRE initiation and the second-position IRE reply is thus
accountably attributable to some problem with the students response only. Alternatively, the teacher can produce a third
position action, based on the students response, that implies the teachers initiating rst position action is somehow
inadequate and the source of interactional trouble. When a teacher reinitiates the IRE with a variant of the original IRE
initiating action, the teacher is displaying through the representation of an alternative version of the initiating actionthat the
trouble source is located in the rst position of the IRE with the original initiating action, making relevant its correction by
the teacher as a re-initiation of the IRE.
1
Thus, the nature, recognition and location of the trouble source are consequential at
the very least for determining what will be treated as the correctable matter (the IRE initiation or response) and any
constraints on the production of the correction.
When the trouble source is the students reply in the second position of the IRE, either the student or the teacher performs
repair-initiation and either the teacher or the student may, depending on the contingencies of the situation, produce the
actual repair or correction. Whether the student self-corrects or the teacher corrects the student, symmetry with the
teachers initiating IRE action is achieved with the production of the correct reply and the student stands corrected.
2
When
the trouble source is located in the rst position of the IRE, it is up to the teacher to performthe repair, thereby recalibrating
and reinitiating the IRE sequence itself. In this manner, the teacher can avoid (a) the issue of whether the students initial
reply is correct or incorrect and (b) any implication of disagreement with the student by leaving the students initial reply
unevaluated and creating an opportunity for the student to produce another reply.
2. The data
In the following analysis, we examine how a tutor engages in an extended interaction with an ensemble
3
of students to
elicit from them a proper description of the way a particular antibiotic works. Our data consist of video recordings of a
problem-based learning (PBL) tutorial, conducted in an American medical school. PBL is an organization of instructional
activity that incorporates elements of learner-directed, case-based, and collaborative instruction (Koschmann et al., 1996:
716). Nominally, PBL is organized to allowlearners to discover and recognize (a) what they do not knowbut (b) need to know
to properly address issues relevant to the case materials on which they are working. Tutors routinely participate in PBL
sessions since it is acknowledged that recognizing a decit in what one knows or understands can be difcult if not locally
impossible to achieve without some kind of guidance from someone whose competence or expertise exceeds that of the
students (Barrows, 1994; Koschmann et al., 1996). In our data a highly qualied medical doctor serves as the tutor. The task
1
For example, this would be the circumstance in which a teacher asks a different version of an initial question to the same student rather than the
circumstance in which a teacher recycles an initiating question by asking the same question of a different recipient.
2
Other-repair and other-correction are systematically related to disagreement (Schegloff et al., 1977).
3
According to Lerner (1993). All associations are constituted by the relevance of, or opportunity for conjoined participation. Ensembles (i.e. ensemble-
type associations) are constituted by a distinguishable form of conjoined participationthe coordinated participation of a team (214-215).
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 476
of the tutor is to engage with the students in ways that allow them to recognize that something about their own actions
requires correction without explicitly engaging in such correction work (Barrows, 1994).
4
In the segment we examine, the
tutor queries the students about the action of an antibiotic referred to as Doxicillin. We examine the work that the students
and the tutor do to extend and redesign tutor questions in ways that make it possible for the students to collaboratively
produce what ultimately becomes a correct description of the action of Doxicillin. By examining how the tutor and the
students attend to the tutors questions in the tutorial, it is possible to identify those constitutive practices by which an
agreed-upon and properly constituted understanding, in the form of a description of the action of Doxicillin, is achieved.
3. Analysis
3.1. Initiating the IRE Sequence: Round 1
Transcript Segment 1
1 Tutor: Movin right along before we fo:llow he:r
2 -> (.) do you all know the action of Doxicillin?
3 -> How it uh how it affects the organism?
4 Jackie: <Doxi-cil-lin.>
5 -> Tutor: What it's mode of action is?
6 Melissa: Doxicillin.
7 Joel: S-similar to Erythromycin (.) isn't it?
8 |((Joel looking toward Jackie))
9 Jackie: Doxycycline?
10 (Laura): Doxicillin.
11 Brenda: Itsa Tetracycline ( ) 30S subunit (.)
12 Laura: It's a Tetracycline
13 Joel: Is it? O:h
14 Okay ((Joel looking at Brenda))
15 Brenda: inhibitor,
In lines 1, 2, 3 and 5, the tutor suspends further consideration of the patient and the case materials and calls for an
understanding check. The understanding check is called for in lines 2, 3 and 5 where the tutor asks a question of the
assembled students: do you all know the action of Doxicillin? How it uh how it affects the organism? What its mode of
action is? The rst part of this portion of the tutors utterance, Do you all know the action of Doxicillin? is
grammatically organized as a yes/no question is followed by clausal extensions, How it uh how it affects the organism?
What its mode of action is?
5
Though the tutors interrogative (lines 2, 3 and 5), is produced as a yes/no inquiry (cf.
Koshik, 2005b; Raymond, 2003), it is asking for more than a yes or a no from the students. It is produced and heard as a
call for an understanding check by which the tutor requests that the assembled students produce a description of the
action of Doxicillin (Fig. 1).
The students treat the tutors utterance as an unambiguous and unproblematic request for a description of the action of
Doxicillin. Structurally, the tutors question prefers some form of an afrmative response; interactionally, its elaborate and
expanded design authored by the tutor in an instructional setting anticipates and projects that students produce at least a
minimal account or description of what they know rather than a simple yes or no. The students conjointly produced
response (in lines 10 through 15) is such a description, thereby constituting the tutors query as a request for a description of
what they as a class knowabout Doxicillin. This treatment of the question also implies that the students are treating the tutor
as someone who already knows how Doxicillin acts and is in a position to assess the adequacy of whatever description they
might produce, thus making relevant the production of such a description as a response.
6
Additionally, the tutors question is not addressed to any student in particular but is addressed to the students as an
association or collectivity (Lerner, 1993). For Lerner, All associations are constituted by the relevance of, or opportunity
for conjoined participation (214-215). Addressing a collectivity is consequentially different in interactional terms from
addressing a single actor because it calls for an organization of participation different fromordinary conversation (cf. Lerner,
1993: 219). Thus, the way the tutors question is addressed serves as evidence that the tutor is orienting to the ongoing
interaction as an instructional sequence different fromordinary conversation. Specically, he is calling on the students as an
ensemble to produce an adequate and appropriate description of the action of the drug.
4
See Ende et al. (1995) for a discussion of similar work done by preceptors when correcting residents in ambulatory care settings.
5
Grammatically and indexically, these two clausal extensions elaborate and expand the sense of the queried referent the action of Doxicillin and thus
are not self-corrections in the strict sense.
6
In instructional circumstance, questions produced by an instructor as part of the work of instruction, especially questions whose answers are presumed
to be already known to the instructor, are routinely treated as initiating Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences (cf. Cazden, 1988; Lemke, 1990;
Mehan, 1979; Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Wells, 1999).
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 477
Though the tutors question may seem to be a relatively straightforward request for a description, the students face the
problemof howto properly produce what is for themthe called-for object of interest, a description of the actionof Doxicillin,
given the resources provided by the tutors query. The tutors initiating question, while providing certain resources for
constituting a student reply, does not indicate(a) what a correct or proper descriptionmight beor (b) whoamongthe recipients
should respond. As a result, the tutor projects the nature of recipient participation by making themresponsible for identifying,
organizing and producing what they as a collectivity (Lerner, 1993) would take to be an adequate description of Doxicillins
action.
In building a response, the students rst conferred among themselves to sort out a bit of confusion over the tutors use of
the term Doxicillin in his initiating utterance at line 2. At lines 4 and again at line 6, students repeat, the tutors term,
Doxicillin. At line 7, Joel asks Se-similar to Erythro"mycin (.) #isnt it? This candidate position, formulated as an assertion
with an interrogative tag, employs the notion of family resemblance (Jayyusi, 1984: 62) with respect to a category of drugs.
Interestingly, Joels query is addressed to no-one-in-particular, thereby treating the students as a collectivity. This is
followed by a query by Jackie using an alternate formulation of the term at line 8, Doxycycline? and another repetition of
the tutors term by Laura, 8Doxicillin8 at line 9. This brief exchange demonstrates what Lerner (1993) has called a
conference sequence or what Jefferson and Schenkein (1978) call a conference pass that is produced in response to an
inquiry that makes relevant shared, but independent opportunities to participate (Lerner, 1993: 234-235). As it turns out,
the tutor had misnamed the drug in question and the conference sequence (lines 4 through 14) displays the students
sensitivity to the fact that the tutor had used what appears to be an incorrect term.
7
In producing the conference sequence
(lines 4 through 14), the students also articulate an initial description of the action of Doxicillin. As the data show, the
students (a) conferred among themselves to try to resolve a problemof reference and then (b) produced an initial description
of the matter raised by the tutor by attempting to address this the referential trouble. In this way, the students acknowledged
and oriented to the tutora initiating query and each other as a collectivity and produced a description as the work of that
collectivity (Lerner, 1993).
The constitutive procedures by which the students organize their participation in the production of their response, i.e.,
conferring to produce a description in terms of a family resemblance of drugs, allows their description to be treated as a
recognizable object: the collectively endorsed description of the action of Doxicillin. By describing the action of
Doxicillin in terms of a set of family resemblances of drugs (Itsa Tetracy#cline 30S sub#unit inhibitor), the students are
relying on the fact that individual drugs can be classied as members of drug families based on various ways that drugs work.
In other words, all drugs in a drug family work in the same basic way. Thus, the claimthe Doxicillin is a Tetracyline is treated
as a provisionally appropriate and proper description of the action of Doxicillin.

Fig. 1. The PBL Tutorial.
7
The method recipients used to construct their response to the tutors query involved producing a description of the action of Doxicillin that located it in a
family of drugs that share similar properties. A reader with a working knowledge of clinical pharmacology might be somewhat puzzled by the participants
use of the label Doxicillin. As a medical school faculty member informed us, Doxycycline is used for the treatment of C. trachomatis infections. As far as I
know there is no drug known as doxycillin although there are drugs with similar sounding names oxacillin, cloxicillin and dicloxicillin. Doxycycline is
related to the bacteriostatic tetracycline class which inhibits bacterial protein synthesis while oxacillin, cloxicillin and dicloxicillin are bacteriocidal beta
lactams related to penicillin and inhibit bacterial cell wall (peptidoglycan) synthesis. (P. Borgia, personal communication). Indeed, Jackie calls the name
into question in line 7. Despite their use of what might appear to be an improper label, the groups subsequent discussion of Doxicillin is largely consistent
with this description. What is being worked out in this discussion is just howa practicing physician, when prescribing an antibiotic, needs to understand its
mode of action. The label, and whatever actual pharmaceutical product it might portend, are just placeholders, therefore, within a broader discussion that
seeks to address this aspect of professional competency.
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 478
At this point, it should be remarked that whether or not the response represents what all the students actually knowor
really understand in the sense of some internal cognitive resources are not the concerns of this analysis. Macbeth (2004:
704) describes classrooms as local cultures of knowledge production, and furthermore argues that producing correct
answers, and thus correction, is . . . a prevailing task and orientation in the practical life of classrooms, for students and
teachers alike. This locally relevant concern with the production of an assessably correct description of Doxicillin allows all
participants, students and tutor alike, to treat the called-for student description of the action of Doxicillin as their
assessable and defeasible understanding of the matter.
3.2. Reinitiating the IRE Sequence: Round 2
While under certainorganizations of interaction, the production of a description would be sufcient for actors to move onto
other things, part of the constitutive procedures that make this aninstructional interactionfor the participants is what the tutor,
upon receipt of this description, elects to do in the third and next turn. What the tutor might choose to do in the third turn
depends on
Whether or not the tutor recognizes a trouble source in the initiation-response (question-answer) sequence,
If a trouble source is recognized, whether the trouble is with:
The initiating action of the tutor, or
The reply action of the student, and
Whether or not the trouble warrants a correction or a correction-initiation.
The interaction between the tutor and the students will be identiable to the students and to the tutor as an instructional
interaction if, in the next turn, the tutor:
Explicitly evaluates the students response as correct or incorrect.
Produces a correction or acts in ways that prompt the students to produce a correction.
Recycles an alternative version of the initiating query as a way of demonstrating another route to a correct answer
8
(Drew, 1981: 260)
If this were an unremarkable and routine IRE sequence, a projected relevant next activity for the tutor to perform would
be to evaluate in some way the students proffered description. As we see in Transcript Segment 2, the tutor does not produce
such an evaluation, does not engage in correction-initiation work, does not offer any correction. Instead, the tutor offers up
another question: So whats it #do (0.8) to the poor little chlamydia? (lines 16 and 18).
Transcript Segment 2
-> Tutor: So what's it do
(0.8)
-> to the poor little chlamydia
Melissa: It interrupts the (.) protein synthesis.
Laura: Right. There's 30S's along the sub-
unit of the ribosome, and it's th- the
bacteria have different (.) like size
sub units to the ribosome, so that's
why it's selected.
Melissa: Except, the mitochon- except
-> Tutor: She could sure fool me. Is that
-> is that right?
Patrick: Hm mm
Melissa: It's true=
-> Tutor: =Okay
Melissa: ((Pointing finger)) but the mitochondria
are similar to the (0.8) are sim- our
mitochondria are similar to the
bacterialmitochondria so if
Laura: Only because once they were
bacteria.
Melissa: Right so if you have high concentrations
you can get or in (.) hhh young ((hand
gesture)) children or (.) fetal you
can have um (.) a toxi?city
Joel: (mm right)
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
8
Drew (1981) argues that producing an alternative query as a correction demonstrating another route to a possibly correct response displays the
speakers prior knowledge of the answer and thus serves to identify the speakers work as instructional (1981: 260).
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 479
The analytical question of interest here is whether or not the tutors query at lines 16 and 18 is an information-seeking
question, or is designed to be seen as a correction of his initial query in lines 2, 3 and 5. When the adequacy of the initial
question is an issue, then both the tutors question and the students reply become potential correctables in a subsequent
turn. Thus, a new or altered question may be called for by the tutors understanding of the students response, and the
production of a tutor-initiated student correction or expansion of the prior description may be called for as well. The way
that the question in lines 16 and 18 is produced suggests that was produced as a tutor self-correction of his initial question
for the following reasons:
First, the second question is a version of the rst question.
It is syntactically different.
It is not a yes/no question like the rst query.
It is a so-prefaced query that, like the rst version, calls for a description of how Doxicillin affects chlamydia, a
previously unspecied kind of organism.
Second, it is indexically linked to the initial query through the use of the pronoun it without a respecication of the
pronominal referent.
The pronoun it serves as an indexical tie to the initial appearance of the term Doxicillin in the rst question.
Elements of the rst query remain relevant for the intelligibility of the subsequent question.
Third, the second question differs from the rst in that it not only indexes a new referent, viz. chlamydia, the referent also
provides an explicit resource for students to use as an alternative way of understanding the query in order to produce an
alternate description of the action of Doxicillin as an adequate response.
The tutors second query is prefaced with the conjunction so. While so-prefaced questions are occasionally used to do
understanding checks (cf. Beun, 2000; Jurafsky et al., 1997; Jurafsky and Martin, 2000; Waring, 2002a), they are also used to
do what Waring (2002a) called extensive corrections, which involves stretching out a prior explication or assertion . . . to
ensure the full development of such explication or assertion (Waring, 2002a: 464). However, unlike reformulation, which
is oriented to with some sort of delay or weakened acceptance, extending is produced and oriented to as an afliative move
that maintains the continuity of the prior speakers perspective (Waring, 2002a: 466). From this view, the tutor attaches
the students description to his second query in lines 16 and 18 with the conjunction so. In doing so, the tutor treats the
students initial description as a coordinate clausal structure, attached to his second query, to suggest that the prior
description was only part of an as-yet-to-be-completed description, a description that must take up the question of the effect
of Doxicillin on chlamydia.
By introducing the newterm, chlamydia, and only making pronominal reference to Doxicillin(So whats it do. . .), the tutor
indicates that the description he is looking for has to specically address howDoxicillin acts on chlamydia. Also, correcting by
extending his rst question with a second question that incorporates the students initial description implies that the tutors
initial query did not adequately provide students with adequate resources for producing an initial description, or was in some
other manner problematic. The newversionof the tutors questionSowhats it #do(0.8) tothe poor littlechlamydia? (lines 16
through 18) explicitly calls for recipients to produce another description. By asking about the poor little chlamydia, the tutor
provides the students with a clue as to what an adequate response might need to address.
This extensive correction of the initial query is not without its problems. On the one hand, the tutors query design leaves
it to the students once again to work out what an adequate response might be. Furthermore, the pause at the end of the rst
part of the tutors utterance, So whats it #do introduces interactional issues by projecting a turn transition space that
makes it relevant for students to offer responses at that point. What in fact occurs is a continuation of the query at line 18 in
overlap with Melissas utterance in line 19 as a response to the rst part of the tutors query. Melissas response is taken up
and expanded by Laura at lines 20 through 24. While Laura and Melissa recognize the tutors utterance at line 16 as a query
calling for a response, there seems to be some difculty in properly marking the completion of the tutors query. Both as an
analytical and a practical matter, this raises the question of whether Melissa and Laura are responding to the rst part of the
tutors question (line 16 only) or to the tutors full question (lines 1618). Both students use the prior student response as a
resource and expand on one element of that response, that Doxicillin disrupts a bacteriums mechanismof protein synthesis
9
(lines 19 through 24). Presumably this applies to chlamydia as well as other bacteria. However, though the tutor makes
explicit reference to chlamydia in the production of his query, there is no such reference made in any of the students
responses. Because they do not explicitly address the matter of the chlamydia raised in the second part of the tutors query, it
remains indeterminate whether or not the answer they do offer addresses the concerns of the tutors question.
Another interesting feature of student response to the corrected question is that it expands on elements introduced in the
prior response. This suggests that, in the absence of any explicit action that calls into question the propriety or correctness of
currently deployed constitutive practices for producing a response, actors will continue to work with those constitutive
9
The antibiotic works by selectively binding to the bacteriums 30S ribosomal subunit to disrupt the bacteriums protein synthesis. Protein synthesis in
human cells also uses similar mechanisms. However the ribosome involved in mammalian cell protein synthesis is quite different than the ribosome found
in the bacterium. Doxycycline only binds to the 30S bacterial ribosome unit; it does not bind to the human ribosome unit (N. Young, personal
communication).
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 480
practices when they are called upon to expand on prior answers. In other words, if a follow-up question is asked in response
to a previously offered answer, respondents will assume the initial answer:
Is not incorrect,
May need repair, correction, expansion, elaboration, etc., and/or,
May be used along with the constitutive practices of its production as a way of producing subsequent responses.
At line 25, Melissa begins to offer an exception to Lauras prior version of an answer to the tutors question (lines 20
through 24). At lines 26 and 27, the tutor assesses Lauras response She could sure fool me, and then asks a yes/no question
as part of the same utterance, Is that is that "right? In the video, the tutors gaze is at rst directed at Laura as she speaks.
Then he directs his gaze at Patrick as he asks, Is that is that "right? The tutor used his gaze to address the question to Patrick
who had not yet weighed in on the topic. By asking a yes/no question that called on Patrick to assess Lauras description, the
tutor adjusted his participation in the scene such that the query can be seen as eliciting what, in members terms, could be
eliciting an endorsement fromother students. Doing so is a way that the tutor can transforman intervention that might have
been seen as a way of bringing the IRE to a close into a side bar to Melissas ongoing work of qualifying Lauras
description.
10
Furthermore, by addressing a query to Patrick in what might be heard as the third position of the IRE sequence
where an evaluation would be expected, the tutor is inviting others to participate in the production of responses and is
indicating that the response phase may not be over yet.
11
Patrick rst attests to the veracity of Lauras remarks at line 28. This displays that Patrick recognizes the tutors utterance
as a question calling for an answer fromhim. Patricks answer is followed immediately at line 29 by Melissas endorsement of
what Laura has said At this point the tutor accepts the students afrmations, allowing Melissa to continue her ongoing
elaboration of Lauras explanation (see lines 31 through 34, and 36). Melissa expands Lauras initial candidate explanation by
proposing that there are potential problems with the use of this antibiotic, i.e. that high concentrations of the antibiotic could
be toxic to young children and fetuses.
12
Again, we are confronted with the analytical and members concern with regard to
the situated adequacy of the work Melissa and Laura are doing. The tutors proffered assessment She could sure fool me at
line 26 calls into question in a specic and local way the work that Melissa and Laura have been doing up to that point to
produce a more elaborate version of their responses to his queries. At line 30, the tutor accepts Patricks endorsement at line
28 and Melissas declaration, Its "true at line 29. The tutor thus continues to treat the adequacy of their answers as a matter
of interactional relevance to the students themselves. It is at this point that the tutor reinitiates the IRE by asking a kind of
question as a correction of his Round 2 question that is very different from the kinds of questions he has asked up to that
point.
3.3. Reinitiating the IRE Sequence: Round 3
So far, the students in our data continue to produce increasingly detailed responses based on the deployment of their
initial family resemblance description of the antibiotic. Because the tutor consistently withholds explicit evaluation of
student responses upon receipt of their description andinstead elects to reinitiate the IRE with tutor-correctedquestions, the
students treat the tutors queries as evidence that their descriptions are (a) not incorrect, but (b) are somehow decient in
the level of their detail. They treat the tutors corrections as calling for renement of their prior responses. Thus the students
can and do maintain and expand upon their use of family resemblances among antibiotics as the constitutive practice by
which they organize and build their description.
A possible alternative viewmight suggest that the tutor is withholding assessment (cf. Koschmann et al., 2000), because a
response organized in terms of family resemblances among antibiotics, while not strictly incorrect, is not the kind of
description fo r which the tutor is looking. Offering a corrected IRE-initiating question as an alternative to a prior IRE-
initiating question can also indicate to recipients that the then current response strategy is either incomplete or that it is
inappropriate, making relevant a very different kind of response.
13
However, rather than treat the repeated queries as
opportunities to frame a different kind of description, the students produce increasingly detailed expansions of their initial
description based on the constitutive practices to which they are apparently committed.
It is at this point that the tutor changes the design of his question to display explicitly that he wants the students to
consider an alternative way of constituting their description of the action of Doxicillin. Specically, the tutors next round
of questions are designed with candidate answers embedded within them (Pomerantz, 1988). When candidate answers are
built into the question, the questioner is specifying the organization of relevancies displayed in the candidate answers as
resources with which a response nominally should be built (Pomerantz and Zemel, 2003). The tutors use of candidate
10
The uses of addressing procedures to manage the organization of participation and the sense of utterances are worthy of a separate study.
11
We wish to thank an unnamed reviewer for pointing this out.
12
Mitochondria are structures in human cells that produce energy units called ATP. In addition, mitochondria are double cell-walled structures that bear
some similarity to bacteria. Mitochondria have their own protein synthesizing mechanism, using ribosomal units that are very similar to 30S bacterial
ribosomes. Doxycycline can also reversibly bind to the ribosome in human mitochondria, however, it does not cause any substantial human toxicity.
Whether this is due to poor binding to human mitochondrial ribosome or due to lower concentration of the antibiotic in the human mitochondria is unclear.
In this instance, Melissas claim that a high dosage of doxycycline is toxic to the human fetus because of this mechanism is incorrect.
13
This view of the tutors actions is consistent with what might be called learner-directed instruction (Koschmann et al., 1996).
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 481
answers in the design and construction of his question explicitly invokes and projects particular categorical relevancies and
directs the students to the kind of response for which he is looking. This is demonstrated in lines 42 and 43:
Transcript Segment 3
42 -> Tutor: Does it kill off the bacteria or does it
43 -> just >hold them still.<
44 Melissa: It kil- it's bactericidal.
45 -> Tutor: It's bactericidal. So how long do you
46 -> havta give it.
47 (1.5)((sound of flipping pages))
48 Jackie: Seven days, isn't it
49 Brenda: U::mm((looking at book))
50 (1.0)
51 Jackie: Or is it two weeks ((looking at book))
52 Laura: Ten to fourteen days ((reading from book))
53 Jackie: Oh.
54 Laura: I was just looking right here hhh huh
55 Brenda: I know I just looked it up
56 ((Brenda pointing to book))
57 -> Tutor: And it is bactericidal
Lines 42 and 43 mark a distinct shift in the constitutive organization of the questions that the tutor addressed to the group.
While prior formulations left it to the students to respond in terms of specic categories of relevance to them, this formulation
incorporates candidate answers that display to recipients the specic categories that are of relevance to the tutor. As such, the
change in the constitutive organization of the question embodies a different preference organization,
14
calling on students to
construct a description interms of particular relevancies explicitly incorporatedin the design of the question. This most recent
query calls on the students to respond in terms of the particular candidate answers provided in the query itself.
The alternative constitutive organization of the tutors third question-correction serves to display that prior student
responses were produced according to a set of constitutive practices that were not consistent with the way this query (lines
42 and 43) constitutes the object, the action of Doxicillin. In other words, whatever the students had offered previously
may have been correct but was in some important way not relevant to the tutors interests. A different kind of response is
called for, given the change in the constitutive organization of the tutors question. Two alternative candidate answers are
built into the question, i.e. kill "off the bacteria and hold them still. While this does not preclude the possibility that
students might offer other responses, it (a) serves to make relevant particular categories for the students in the production of
a response
15
and (b) provides a resource of accountability such that any response to the query can be assessed in terms of the
category relevancies established by the candidate answers. Organized as it is, the query lays out the possibilities for response
in terms of a set of members categories that they understand to be and treat as denitive. In other words, any and all
antibiotics are designed to either kill off bacteria or hold them still. The problem posed by the tutors question is to select
which applies to Doxicillin. In making this selection, the students effectively produce a description of the action of
Doxicillin in accord with the constitutive organization of the tutors question.
Melissas response, It kil- its bactericidal (line 44), is notable for a number of reasons. First of all and without hesitation,
Melissa answers in accord with the constitutive organization of the tutors question. Additionally, Melissa takes up the tutors
initial formulationof the alternatives embeddedinhis query, It kil-, performs a self-repair to nishher response using proper
medicinal terminology, its bactericidal. Withthis repair, Melissa properlymedicalizes her response, acknowledgingthat the
tutors question is not only an invitation to select an appropriate alternative, but to do so in the proper manner. Selecting an
appropriate alternative from the list provided by the question itself displays that Melissa not only recognizes the changed
constitutive organization of the tutors query but that a different constitutive organization of response is implicated as well.
After Melissa produces a response to the tutors question at lines 42 and 43, the tutor appears to endorse her response at
line 45 with Its bactericidal which is also latched to another question, So how long do you havta give it. The rst part of
the tutors response to Melissas second-positionIRE reply could be seen as an evaluative move occupying the third slot of the
current IRE sequence. But the tutors latched query, So howlong do you havta give it, serves not to initiate a newIRE per se.
Instead, it highlights the relationship between the mode of action(bacteriostatic vs. bacteriocidal) and durationof treatment.
The students responses (lines 4855), however, display considerable uncertainty. Jackie initially suggests seven days, but
then admits that it could also be two weeks. Jackie, Laura, and Brenda all consult written references. This represents a shift in
14
In discussing adjacency pair phenomena, Schegloff (2007) observed the alternative types of second pair part which a rst pair part makes relevant are
not equivalent, or equally valued. They are not symmetrical alternatives (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973: 314). Sequences are the vehicle for getting some
activity accomplished, and that response to the rst pair part with embodies or favors furthering or the accomplishment of the activity is the favoredor, as
we shall term it, the preferredsecond pair part (Schegloff, 2007: 59). In this case, the changed organization of the query produces an alternative
organization of preference and participation.
15
Though the tutor presented two alternatives, he left it to the students to provide the appropriate medical terms, thereby leaving it to themto use topic-
appropriate terminology. The alternatives he presented were vernacular glosses for the accepted Latin-based medical terms bactericidal (kill "off) and
bacteriostatic (hold them still.), which are appropriate and constitutive of their talk as medical talk.
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 482
their epistemic position withregardto the matters under discussion. Where previously they were condent intheir ability as a
group to address the tutors question, they now treated it as a matter that needs to be checked, thereby calling their prior
answers into doubt.
The tutors And it is bactericidal (lines 57), operates as what Koshik (2005b) described as a reverse polarity question
(RPQ). Koshik describes how certain declaratives can be treated as questions in that they make relevant a conrmation of
disconrmation (Koshik, 2005b: 1). The emphasis placed on the verb is, in this case, facilitates hearing the tutors
statement as a query. Koshik notes further that RPQs are not asked, andare not understood, as ordinary information-seeking
questions but as making some kind of claim, or assertion, an assertion of the opposite polarity to that of the question
(2005b: 2). The tutors and-prefaced assertion operates as a composite declarative (cf. Beun, 1990; 2000). It couples the
students confused collective answer concerning the duration of treatment with their prior answer pertaining to mode of
action. Problematizing the matter in this way displays the tutors position that the students as a collectivity ought to know
the duration of treatment with certainty, if they know the mode of action since one implies the other.
16
Thetutors skillful useof aRPQat this point intheinteractiondisplays tothestudents that their understandingof themodeof
action of Doxicillin is not consistent with the understanding of a competent practitioner and constitutes what Garnkel (1963,
1967) describes as a possiblebreachinthenormativeandconstitutive order of their interaction. The tutors querycalls uponthe
group to repair the breach. At its heart, the tutors RPQ inquires into what it means to be a bactericidal antibiotic.
3.4. Resolving the IRE Sequence
Melissa recognizes that the tutor has problematized the status of Doxicillin she has advocated, as is evidenced in her
accounting work(lines 58, 61through65). The tutors declarativereversepolarity yes/noqueryat line 57calls into questionthe
constitutive procedures by which the students description of the drug as bactericidal had been locally produced. Since the
students now recognize that they do not know what they should know with regard to the relationship between treatment
durations and the status of the antibiotic, they nd it necessary to more closely and accurately review this relationship.
17
Transcript Segment 4
57 -> Tutor: And it is bactericidal.
58 Melissa: I thought that (.)
59 >I thought that I thought that<
60 Laura: (Have you ever looked it up? uh huh)
61 Melissa: I thought interrupting the protein, (1.8)
62 synthesis was >bacteria- because I thought
63 it made more sense that it< was
64 bacteriostatic an- and it wasn't it was
65 cidal instead.
66 Brenda: I think that all the different um protein
67 Laura: (previously) ((yawning)) H-hhh
68 Brenda: >like the Tetracycline and the
69 Erythromycins< are static
70 Melissa: I thought they were cidal, like
71 Brenda: I always
72 forget
73 (1.0)
74 Melissa: ( )=
75 Brenda: My first instinct
76 ((Jackie reaches for and begins to
77 consult a manual))
78 -> Tutor: Who i::s sure.
79 Brenda: i::s
80 Melissa: Would be static
81 Jackie: This book is sure
82 Brenda: We'll look it up.
83 Patrick: Id love to be be sure but I:: (0.4)
16
A colleague in microbiology informed us, The biggest difference between cidal and static agents is that cidal agents, as their name implies kill
microorganisms while static agents only inhibit the growth and multiplication of the agent. For that reason the host immune system is needed to kill the
organism (for static drugs) and thereby clear the infection. Consequently, the length of time necessary to completely kill an organism using a static drug
would be dependent on the immune status of the patient. The weaker the immune status, the longer the treatment would need to be. (P. Borgia, personal
communication, 2/9/2010) .
17
In an online medical reference, we nd: Doxycycline is generally bacteriostatic against a wide variety of organisms, both gram-positive and gram-
negative (clinicalpharmacology-ip.com, accessed January 4, 2007). The same reference in describing Declomycin, however, reports: Tetracyclines can be
bacteriostatic or bactericidal depending on the concentration at the site of action or the organism being treated. The upshot is that terms bacteriostatic
and bactericidal can be used in quite nuanced and complex ways and there is no simple answer to the question, is doxicillin/doxycycline bactericidal?
What this group is effectively doing is exploring what such a question might mean.
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 483
84 I'm not sure I (got it)
85 Brenda: We'll look it up.
86 Melissa: Well I'd be sure-
87 I'm sure that I've h-h-h-re:ad th:at.
88 Patrick: right
89 Tutor: Well moving right alo::ng
90 Patrick: (Can I see)
91 Laura: Pregnancy te:st
92 (0.7)
93 Tutor: khmm >sorry<
94 Laura: Ees Ee one sixteen. It's a like an( )
95 (thing) >But (.) I don't know if that's
96 th'right
97 Joel: Ee one sixteen?=
98 Tutor: Tee one sixteen.
99 Laura: Ee-
100 Jackie: They're bacteriostatic
101 Laura: Ee-
102 Tutor: Ee one sixteen no that's in the-uh
103 examination yeah you ( )
104 Jackie: They're bacteriostatic
105 you guys.
106 (0.6)
107 Brenda: They're s:tati::c?
108 Melissa: Theyre static?
109 Brenda: Okay.
110 (0.4)
111 Brenda: It's (0.4) good to know
112 Joel: Negative.
113 (0.8)
114 Joel: Tee ( ) for pregnancy test ( )
115 Brenda: Oh that's good.
116 Patrick: An- and they'd obviously be more
117 active during (0.9) metabolically active
118 bacteria.
119 (0.7)
120 Melissa: I thought they were ( )
121 Patrick: ( factor)
122 Tutor: So the::n (.) the::
123 the concern about (0.7) the patient taking
124 the antibiotic for the full length of time
125 becomes very real >if we're dealing with
126 a bacteriostatic<
127 (1.2)
128 Brenda: Yes.=
129 Tutor: =treatment right?
130 (1.3)
131 Brenda: Czzsn't bacteriostatic just to get things
132 Melissa: You want both
133 Brenda: under control so that the immune system can
134 Laura: It allows you to fight it off yourself.
135 (0.5)
136 Joel: You can handle it yourself.
137 Melissa: But even with bacteriocidal:: a-a lot of
138 that is (0.3) bringing down numbers in your
139 immune system.
140 (1.0)
In order to produce a response to the tutors challenging RPQ at line 57, the students appear to engage in two distinct but
related and coordinated activities, (a) reassignment of accountability for the initial claim that Doxicillin is bactericidal, and
(b) production of a supportable account of Doxicillin as bacteriostatic. Melissa, at lines 58 and 59, and 61 through 65, was the
rst to respond to tutors query. Melissa had been a strong advocate for the bactericidal nature of Doxicillin. Her rst move is
to produce an account to warrant her claim that Doxicillin is bactericidal.
As Melissa reasserts her position, Laura addresses a question and a response to Melissa, in overlap with Melissas own
remarks, 8Have you ever looked it up? uh huh8 (line 60). Lauras utterance calls into question the epistemic basis upon
which Melissa had made her prior claims. Brenda then offers an alternative description of Doxicillin as bacteriostatic based
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 484
on the family resemblance between Doxicillin and similar classes of drugs such as the Tetracyclines and the Erythromycins
(lines 66, 68 and 69). Melissa reasserts her position at line 70, I "thought they were #cidal, like as a counter to the argument
that Tetracyclines are bacteriostatic. The other students respond to the tutors RPQ at line 57 by developing alternative
accounts of the action of Doxicillin. Brenda then produces an afliative move at lines 71 and 72, I always for#get that
identies and serves to mitigate potential face issues Melissa might experience given that alternative accounts were being
put forward.
At lines 74 and 75 Melissa and Brenda continue their remarks, further indicating that they are not sure about the action
of Doxicillin, i.e. they do not have an appropriate epistemic basis for making or, for that matter, changing their claims
about Doxicillin. At this point, the tutor asks, Who i::s sure. (line 78). Where line 57 offers a question in the form of a
declaration, here we have a declaration in the syntactic formof a question. Rather than seeking the name of the member of
the group who is most condent in her/his answer, the tutors question operates as a blunt negative evaluation of their
collective response to his prior query. To counter such a challenge one must supply the basis or source for ones
understanding (Pomerantz, 1984). Prior to the tutors challenge, Jackie had already begun to consult anavailable reference.
Her response, tailored to the tutors challenge, 8This book is sure8 (line 81) asserts the authority of the text that she holds
in her hand.
While the matter is being researched, the tutor calls on recipients to identify and take up a next matter of relevance to
their work in the tutorial, Well moving right alo::ng (line 89). Laura announces a candidate next matter, i.e. Pregnancy te:
st and she, Joel and the tutor begin to identify a page reference in the case materials that will yield the appropriate
information regarding the pregnancy test for the case on which they are working. This invitation to move on is centrally
important at this point because it serves as a provisional, implicit assessment of the students description of the action of
Doxicillin, one that indicates they have nally got it right, or are about to get it right, without actually saying just so. Just as
the tutor has not topicalized the students description of the action of Doxicillin when they had it wrong, he did not
topicalize it when they had it right. Instead, with his call for a next topic, he projects that the issue is now a properly settled
matter.
As they work out where in their case materials the relevant materials on the pregnancy test are located,
18
Jackie makes a
rst attempt to announce the results of her review of the reference document (line 100), Theyre bacteriostatic. The
announcement does not seem to register with recipients, perhaps because it is in overlap with the ongoing discussion to
locate a page in the reference document. Jackie recycles her announcement at lines 104 and 105, Theyre bacteriostatic 8you
guys8. This was followed by a 0.6 second pause. Jackies announcement at lines 104 and 105 is designed and delivered in a
way that denitively conrms the implicit claim, indicated by the tutors challenge at line 57, that Doxicillin is bacteriostatic.
This elicits from Brenda and Melissa parallel expressions of surprise, also in query form (lines 107 and 108). Brendas
acceptance of Jackies announcement at line 109 is followed by a positive assessment of the information at line 111. While
Joel and Brenda work toward setting up consideration of the pregnancy test in lines 112 through 116, Patrick begins the work
of expanding on the position articulated by Jackie at line 116 through 119. At lines 122 through 129, the tutor takes the
students acceptance of Jackies announcement as warrant for extending the discussion to the consequences for the patient of
a bacteriostatic treatment .
Once the students have established that Doxicillin is bacteriostatic, the tutor then explores the consequentiality of this
properly produced and warranted description of the action of Doxicillin, by making it evident that for Doxicillin as a
bacteriostatic drug to be effective, the patient needed to follow the full course of treatment (lines 122 through 129). By
opening his remarks with So the::n (.) . . ., the tutors description of a medical concern is presented as a reasoned
consequence of the nature of antibiotic treatment, a concern that transcends the particulars of the antibiotic they are
discussing. This is an example of extension, which is treated as an afliative move that maintains the continuity of the prior
speakers perspective (Waring, 2002a: 466). Brenda conrms the consequentiality of the treatment at line 128 after a 1.2
second pause. However, after receiving this conrmation, the tutor adds an interrogative tag (line 128) that, like the initial
round of questions (lines 1 through 3, 5), indicates that this is nowmore than just a yes/no query calling for conrmation; it is
a call for students to produce an expansion or extension of the description of the reason for the consequentiality of the
treatment. It is at this point that Brenda, Melisa, Laura and Joel adequately describe the way a bacteriostatic treatment in
general is designed to work (lines 131 through 140).
Thus it seems that both the students and the tutor are working to achieve more than just the procedural achievement
of an acceptable description as a response to questions about the action of Doxicillin. Specically, the work the tutor
does with the students in exploring the consequentiality of what is taken as their correct response provides a clue that
more is at stake than just properly identifying the use of Doxicillin as a bacteriostatic antibiotic in the dosages and
durations prescribed. In the nal segment, the tutor and the students together expand the description beyond the
particulars of the case on which they are working. From lines 131 through 139, the students themselves discuss the
ways that antibiotics work in general, not specically the way that Doxicillin works. In orienting the students to these
concerns with respect to one antibiotic, the tutor makes available to the students the way that physicians reason about
antibiotics in general, inviting them to participate in a more membered way. The extended questioning sequence serves
18
The clinical case was simulated using a paper-based representation known as a PBLM (Distlehorst and Barrows, 1982). It is comprised of interview
question responses, exam ndings, and laboratory results for the case under discussion. To retrieve any particular item from the PBLM, users must consult
an external guide for the appropriate page number.
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 485
to demonstrate that a practitioner must clearly understand the goal of treatment in order to competently prescribe an
antibiotic.
4. Discussion
When the tutor put forward his rst question as a request for a description of the action of Doxicillin, he initiated an IRE
instructional sequence. The students produced a description in a manner that preferred agreement, suggesting that the
description they had produced should be seen as proper and adequate. However, the tutor implicitly treated the description
as problematic, seeing in their description a problem with the initial version of his own question. The tutor did initiate
correction of the students description in an interesting way, not by identifying some problemwith the description itself, but
by revising his own sequence-initiating query in what would have been the third turn slot of the IRE (lines 17 and 18). The
students responded to the tutors self-correction of the IRE sequence-initiating query by expanding their description,
treating the initial description as appropriate but insufciently detailed. In this way, the students displayed the presumption
they understood of the tutors initial query and that the trouble source was, fromtheir perspective, with the level of detail of
the description as proffered.
However, not satised with the expanded student description, the tutor once again elected to produce a different kind of
question in the third turn of the IRE sequence (lines 42 and 43). This is evidence of his recognition that the students had not
yet understood the kind of description he wanted themto produce and thus did not properly understand the question he had
previously asked. The new, revised question no longer solicited a description in the way that the prior questions had but
instead offered two candidate answers that explicitly presented possibly appropriate descriptions of the action of Doxicillin.
Offering the students a list of possible responses fromwhich they were to select the correct response provided a warrant for
the students to abandon their prior description in favor of one of the offered alternatives.
Even though the students were now organizing descriptions in terms that were apparently appropriate, bactericidal
versus bacteriostatic, the students took the position that Doxicillin was bactericidal, which as it happens was incorrect. Once
again, the tutor produced a sequence-initiating query in the third position of an IRE sequence (line 56), again indicating that
the students had not properly understood the nature of his question. The students had not taken into consideration the
dosages and treatment durations specied in the case materials. The tutors query took the form of a declarative, reverse
polarity yes/no question. Such questions, as Koshik (2005b) and others have noted, act as opposite polarity assertions that
call for a response from recipients. Checking the ground for the apparently contradictory assertion of the tutor provided an
opportunity for the students to explore the consequences of their selection in terms of the kind of treatment recommended,
causing them to recognize that the description they had selected was inconsistent with the treatment recommendations
provided in the case materials. In this way, the tutor can be seen as having pursued a correct response by offering successive
expansions and revisions of an IRE initiating query.
Getting students to think in particular ways may not occur if a teacher just presents a version of the reasoning process
as a correction to student errors. Getting students to actually think in unfamiliar ways may require guidance and
manipulation of the students own reasoning as it is accomplished in situ. Questions provide a mechanism for doing just
this, for calling on students to check their thinking, for providing recipients with another route to a correct answer
(Drew, 1981: 260). This often involves shifting the indexical ground and repairing problems that arise with respect to the
participants intersubjective orientation to the matter at hand. We believe that these data display an artful and elegant set
of question-revisions that allow such a repair of intersubjective orientation to occur. At the end of this segment, the
students have actually done the work of reconciling treatment duration and dosage with the therapeutic action of an
antibiotic, thus learning howprofessional physicians see the relationship between treatment and action of antibiotics
(Goodwin, 1994).
We consider the production of understanding to be something like the sequential achievement of intersubjectivity, or as
Schegloff writes, the convergence between the doers of an action or bit of conduct and its recipients, as co-producers of an
increment of interactional and social reality (Schegloff, 1992: 1299). The coproduction of an increment of interactional and
social reality requires this convergence. In our analysis, we have shown how the tutor organized his ongoing engagement
with the students to encourage this convergence, allowing the students to discover for themselves what was required to
achieve a shared intersubjective orientation with respect to the action of Doxicillin in particular and of antibiotics in general.
The tutor achieved this convergence incrementally and interactionally with the students by avoiding explicit evaluation in
the third position of the IRE and instead reinitiating the sequence with new questions.
This is more than just a matter of conversational repair, though repair is a ubiquitous feature of talk-in-interaction. In fact,
conversation analysts routinely treat problems of understanding as occasions for conversational repair (cf. Jefferson, 1974,
1987, 2007; Macbeth, 2004; Schegloff, 1992; Schegloff et al., 1977). When problems emerge between doers of an action and
its recipients, Schegloff (1992) argues that repair is the self-righting mechanism that assures intersubjectivity and
understanding as a condition of interaction among interactants. While repair may act as the self-righting mechanism that
assures interactional t of actions, repair does not address the broader issue of howthe competence to achieve t is acquired
in the rst place. Macbeth (2004) addresses this issue, drawing an interesting and nuanced distinction between repair and
correction which has particular relevance with regard to the achievement of understanding. Macbeth argues that (a) there
are different orders of understanding and (b) these differences are evidenced by the different kinds of self-righting mechanisms
that are deployed in interaction. Specically, Macbeth (2004: 723 et passim) holds that repair and correction are distinct but
A. Zemel, T. Koschmann/ Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 475488 486
co-operating organizations of interaction (cf. Pomerantz, 1978). While repair works to assure the recurrent achievement of
proper t among actions in sequence (including correction),
19
correction addresses issues of competence and is thus of
particular relevance with respect to learning and instruction and the achievement of understanding. According to Macbeth,
issues of competence and correction are typically associated with the practical achievement of instruction: correction,
rather than repair, is routinely produced but certainly not only produced on occasions when we can say something like
instruction is going on, with the full entailments of task, identity, and relation that instruction implies (Macbeth, 2004:
726).
While Macbeth (2004) examines conventional classroom interactions in which the correction of an individual students
actions is routinely performed by a teacher, we have examined a very different set of interactional practices in which the
tutor does not explicitly correct student responses but instead corrects his own questions, leaving it to the students to
produce correct responses to each subsequent version of a prior question. Producing a correct response to a revised question
requires that question recipients, i.e. students, recognize the conceptual, factual and interactional bases for producing the
revised question in the rst place and what is required to produce a response that ts the question. When students actually
do produce a locally correct response, it is routinely treated as evidence that they also properly understand what made the
revised query relevant in the rst place. This complex, incremental effort to produce questions to which students can
properly respond and the students work to produce correct responses is a way of interactionally producing a conjoint and
proper understanding of the matter at hand. In terms of the intersubjective orientation of participants, it afrms the
incremental achievement of a locally shared social reality.
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