Reformulating place

This report examines what can be accomplished in conversation by reformulating a reference to a place using the practices of repair. It is based on an analysis of a collection of place references situated in second pair parts of adjacency pairs taken from a wide range of field recordings of talk-in interaction. Not surprisingly, place references are sometimes reformulated so as to indicate a misspeaking or in pursuit of recipient recognition. At other times, however, we show that place references can be reformulated to more adequately implement the action of a turn in prosecuting the course of action of which it is a part. In these cases repairing a place reference can target a source of trouble associated with implementing the action of a turn at talk,and thus reformulating place can serve as a practical resource for accomplishing a range of interactional tasks. We conclude with a more complex case in which two reformulations are deployed in responding to a so-called ‘double-barrelled’ initiating action.