An "organization of repair" operates in conversation, addressed to recurrent problems in speaking, hearing, and understanding. Several features of that organization are introduced to explicate the mechanism producing a skewing in which self-repair predominates over other-repair, and to show the operation of a preference for self-repair.…

Expanded version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, December 1970, in Washington, D.C. Work supported by a Grace W. Drake Scholarship, a University of California graduate scholarship, and a National Science Foundation grant to the Phonology Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. (VM)