Does voice chat generate more repair moves?

In the class, Wienie asked the class: Do you agree that that voice chat would generate more repair moves? Why or why not? After recalling back my experience both in voice chat and text chat, I agree that voice chat will generate more repair moves.
In voice chat, due to lack of visual aids, people have to respond to the other based on what they have heard. However, there are several factors which will influence the communication in voice chat. The linguistic factors (e.g. diverse accent, volume, fast rate of speaking, information gap, and incorrectness of pronunciation and language usage), the mechanical factors (e.g. bad connection and interruption), and the mental factors (e.g. distraction and absence of mind) will all confuse the listener and thus break off the conversation. In order to continue the conversation, most people will use repair moves such as confirmation, clarification, clarification check, self-repetition, or paraphrases in order to receive the correct information.


In the text chat, on the other hand, people use less repair moves. With the help of visual aids, people have less problems of linguistic factors. Besides, if they encounter the vocabulary they do not understand, text chat allows people to have more time for thinking, guessing and even looking up the dictionary instead of asking for repair moves.


In the paper Conversations—and Negotiated Interaction– in Text and Voice, the study also suggests that voice chat would generate more repair moves than text chat. Next time if you are in voice chat, you can take notice if you are using repair moves during the conversation.