such as lengthy pauses, circumlocution, place holders (uh; uhm), substitutions,
repetitions and empty words (Best, 2005; German, 1992). Furthermore, high
processing demands are reported to exacerbate the search behaviours (Dockrell et al.,
1998). In clinical settings, one of the aims of speech and language therapy may be to
reduce search behaviours because they potentially interfere with the flow of discourse.
Taking a different perspective, what is of interest to the author of this paper is how
search behaviours operate for the child within the sequence of interaction. For
example, do they assist the child during a solitary search or do they mobilise the
cooperation of others in the search?
Word searches in adult face-to-face interactions have been explored by conversation
analysts. International studies detail the routine deployment of both verbal and non-
verbal practices used by English and Japanese speakers (Schegloff, Jefferson and
Sacks, 1977; Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986; Hayashi, 2003). In terms of verbal
techniques, the wh-question format is common. A speaker breaks from a current
message in order to make a search explicit through use of a phrase such as What is it?
(Schegloff et al., 1977) or nan da(tta) kke (What is/was it) (Hayashi, 2003). The wh-
question format may be either self-directed, in order to gain time for self-repair, or
directed at the conversational partner as a self-initiated other-repair to seek
collaboration in production of the missing word. There are other orderly grammatical
designs during collaborative searches. In collaborative completions the person
searching for a word constructs the turn grammatically so that only the searched-for
item can be produced by the partner (Lerner, 1996).