French Face-to-Face Interaction: Repetition as a Multimodal Resource - Coverbal Synchrony in Human-Machine Interaction - page 152

3.3 Verbal other-repetition
Verbal other-repetitions (henceforth OR) consist in repeating a word
or a sequence of words that have been previously uttered by another
interactant. This process leads to a lexical similarity of the participants'
speech that can be analyzed as a means to align with the interlocutor.
OR have been identified as forming an important mechanism in face-to-
face conversation through their discursive or communicative functions
(Norrick, 1987; Tannen, 1989, 2007; Perrin et al., 2003). According to
Tannen (2007), participants notably use lexical repetition to show their
involvement in the interaction. She argues that repetition is useful at
several levels of verbal communication: production (easier encoding),
understanding (easier decoding), connection (better cohesion in
discourse), and interaction (repetition maintains the link between
participants). Repetition can also be considered as a specific form of
feedback (in the sense of Bavelas et al., 2000). Perrin (2003) proposes
a four-function typology for other-repetitions, nearly corresponding
to backchannel functions: taking into account, confirmation request,
positive reply and negative reply. More largely, repetition functions
as a device for getting or keeping the floor (Norrick, 1987).
3.4 Prosodic repetition
In a similar way to the verbal or gestural level, the main issue raised
by prosodic repetition is to know when one speaker's repetition of
a prosodic pattern can be considered as mimicry (Couper-Kuhlen
and Selting, 1996:366). More recently, this question is addressed by
Szczepek Reed (2006) through the notion of prosodic orientation
that refers to the “interactional orientation whereby (…) speakers
display in their sequentially “next” turns an understanding of
what the “prior” turn was about” (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998:15).
Szczepek Reed defines several types of prosodic orientation such
as the prosodic matching (copy) of the previous speaker's prosodic
design, the complementation of a prior turn with a second structurally
related prosodic design or a continuation of the previously unfinished
prosodic pattern. Gorisch et al. (2012) report some works on pitch
matching and interactional purpose. To the authors' credit, they
provide precise definitions of different terms often used in the same
way. They propose to consider that prosodic matching is used for
continuing the project in hand, aligning or affiliating with the previous
speaker. In line with Stivers (2008) and Barth-Weingarten (2011), they
distinguish between the terms alignment and affiliation that have been