Repair strategies in the Oprah's podcast: focus on gender differences

This thesis scrutinizes repair strategies used in four episodes of Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1977) and combine it with language and gender. Three research problems need to be answered in this research: (1) What are the types of repair used by female participants in some episodes of Oprah’s podcast? (2) What are the types of repair used by male participants in some episodes of Oprah’s podcast? and (3) What are the differences in types of repair used among female and male participants in some episodes of Oprah’s podcast?. This research used a qualitative-descriptive method. It meant that the data in this research were gathered by interpreting words. The data were taken from participants’ and host’s utterances in the selected episodes of Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations. The two episodes’ transcripts were collected from YouTube subtitles, and the researcher herself transcribed the others. Afterward, the researcher gathered the data by highlighting each type of repair strategies in different colors and giving timestamps to each type of repair strategy. Then, the researcher classified each type of repair into some tables based on gender by writing the timestamp. After that, the researcher put the whole data on the chart to see the different types of repair among female and male participants. Finally, the researcher discusses and gives a conclusion to answer the research problems. The result shows that four types of repair strategies (self-initiated self-repair, self-initiated other-repair, other-initiated other-repair, and other-initiated other-repair) appear in female and male participants. In female participants, self-initiated self-repair found 91 times, self-initiated other repair occurred 2 times, while other-initiated other-repair and other-initiated other-repair only appeared 1 time per type. While in male participants, self-initiated self-repair emerged 146 times, other-initiated other-repair appeared 7 times, and self-initiated other-repair and other-initiated self-repair only appeared 1 type per type. The underlying reason of conversation strategies can affect the used repair strategy among female and male participants. Females tend to feel inferior because of the claim from the society that women need to talk perfectly to show their power and social status. While males tend to see conversation as a tool for showing their power, they did not want to rely upon their opinions or ways to talk to the interlocutors.