Choosing Not to Repair: Sorry as a Warrant for Interactional Progress.

Problems in conversation with those who suffer from aphasia often result in long sequences of repair, hindering progress. This article identifies an aphasic speaker's creative adaptation of a familiar linguistic resource to try and get around the problem. He uses the lexical apologysorryas a resource to close down collaborative word searching and to move the conversation forward. The analysis shows how he mobilizes the linguistic properties of the word to render it interpretable by the coparticipant in the interaction. We also see how his use ofsorryto move the conversation on depends for its effect on epistemic authority—what both parties to the interaction know about the topic under discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]