Backchannel (linguistics)

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In linguistics, a backchanneling during a conversation occurs when one participant is speaking and another participant interjects responses to the speaker. A backchannel response can be verbal, non-verbal, or both. Backchannel responses are often phatic expressions, primarily serving a social or meta-conversational purpose, such as signifying the listener's attention, understanding, sympathy, or agreement, rather than conveying significant information. Examples of backchanneling in English include such expressions as "yeah", "OK", "uh-huh", "hmm", "right", and "I see".

Contents

Definition and use

The term was coined by Victor Yngve in 1970, in the following passage: "In fact, both the person who has the turn and his partner are simultaneously engaged in both speaking and listening. This is because of the existence of what I call the back channel, over which the person who has the turn receives short messages such as 'yes' and 'uh-huh' without relinquishing the turn." [1] Backchannel responses are a part of basic human interaction because to have a productive or meaningful person-person interaction humans must cooperate with one another when participating in a conversation. Meaning, when two people are involved in a conversation, at any given moment only one person is primarily speaking and the other is primarily listening, yet the listener is often giving minor messages through backchannel responses. [2]

The term "backchannel" was designed to imply that there are two channels of communication operating simultaneously during a conversation. [3] The predominant channel is that of the speaker who directs primary speech flow. The secondary channel of communication (or backchannel) is that of the listener which functions to provide continuers or assessments, [4] defining a listener's comprehension and/or interest. In other words the term "backchannel" is used to differentiate between the roles of the people involved in a conversation. The person doing the speaking is thought to be communicating through the "front channel" while the person doing the listening is thought to be communicating through the "backchannel." The term "backchannel" does not necessarily define the listener's role in the conversation but helps us to understand how the person that is taking on the role of the listener responds to the person taking on the role of the speaker. [5] Recent research, which can be seen below, has also suggested new terms for these two functions. They have proposed the term generic in place of continuers and specific in place of assessments. [6]

Usually, the way backchannel is used would be a person telling a story or explaining something to one or more individuals, involved in a conversation, who would respond to him with short verbal messages or non-verbal body language. In order to indicate that they are listening and paying attention to the speaker, they might produce sounds as "right", "yeah", etc. or give a nod. Such acknowledgments or small gestures help the speaker understand that the listeners are interested and he should go on with his story. [22]

In recent years, scholars have challenged the mainstream definition by adding the "optionality" in the definition of "backchannel". The use of backchannel is never necessary and is always a supplement to a pre-existing conversation. [7]

Applicability

Backchannel responses can show that the listener understands, agrees, is surprised by, is angered by, and more by what the speaker is saying. Backchannel communication is present in all cultures and languages, though frequency and use may vary. For example, backchannel responses are not only a key component of oral languages but they are also important in sign languages. [8] Another example is Germans produce smaller backchannel responses and use back channel responses less frequently. [2] Confusion or distraction can occur during an intercultural encounter if participants from both parties are not accustomed to the same backchannel norms. [9] Studies have shown that when people learn a second language they learn or adapt to how people that are native speakers of that language use backchannel responses. This may occur in terms of the frequency that a person produces backchannel responses or what those responses sound like. [2]

Types

Research in recent years [10] [11] has expanded the set of recognized backchannel responses to include sentence completions, requests for clarification, brief statements, and non-verbal responses. These have been categorised as non-lexical, phrasal, or substantive. [12]

Non-lexical backchannels

A non-lexical backchannel is a vocalized sound that has little or no referential meaning but still verbalizes the listener's attention, and that frequently co-occurs with gestures. In English, sounds like uh-huh and hmm serve this role. Non-lexical backchannels generally come from a limited set of sounds not otherwise widely used in content-bearing conversational speech; as a result, they can be used to express support, surprise, or a need for clarification at the same time as someone else's conversational turn without causing confusion or interference. [13]

English allows for the reduplication, or repetition, of syllables within a non-lexical backchannel, such as in responses like uh-huh, mm-hm, or um-hm, as well as for single-syllable backchanneling. In a study examining the use of two-syllable backchannels that focused on mm and mm-hm, Gardner found that the two tokens are generally not identical in function, with mm being used more productively as a continuer, a weak acknowledgment token, and a weak assessment marker. In contrast, mm-hm is generally used as a backchannel to signal that the speaker is yielding their conversational turn and allowing the other speaker to maintain control of the conversational floor. [14]

Phrasal and substantive backchannels

Phrasal backchannels most commonly assess or acknowledge a speaker's communication with simple words or phrases (for example, "Really?" or "Wow!" in English). Substantive backchannels consist of more substantial turn-taking by the listener and usually manifest as asking for clarification or repetitions.[ citation needed ]

One of the conversational functions of phrasal backchannels is to assess or appraise a previous utterance. Goodwin argues that this is the case for the phrasal backchannel oh wow, where use of the backchannel requires a specific conversational context where something unexpected or surprising was said. Similarly, more substantive backchannels such as oh come on, are you serious? require a context where the speaker is responding to something exasperating or frustrating. In both of these cases, Goodwin argues that the backchannels focus only on addressing some aspect of the immediately proceeding utterance rather than the larger conversation itself. [15] As a result, they have a broad conversational distribution, appearing both in the middle of extended talk as well as at the end of longer conversational turns.[ citation needed ]

Recent research

Research in 2000 has pushed back on the notion of backchannels, in which the listener's role is merely to receive information provided by the speaker. Bavelas, Coates, and Johnson [16] put forth evidence that listeners' responses help shape the content of the speaker's utterances. They grouped acknowledgment tokens into two categories: generic and specific. Generic responses could be considered backchannels and would include mm hm and yeah, while specific responses would involve a reaction to the given content. Examples might include Oh! or a facial display of concern. [16]

They transcribed students telling a fellow participant about a close call experience that they had had. With one group of participants, they had the listener perform another task to distract them from the story being told. The researchers asked independent reviewers to code the verbal and visual responses of the narration events as generic or specific. They also asked other independent reviewers to gauge the quality of the narration in each case. [16]

They concluded that the responses from the distracted listeners included significantly fewer specific responses than from the undistracted listeners. In addition, they found that the quality of the narration was dramatically lower when the listener was distracted. Their basic contention was that listeners are co-narrators and help the storyteller in his or her narration. In other words, a storyteller tells a better story with an audience that is engaged than one that is not. [16]

Tolins and Foxtree have also published research demonstrating how backchannel communication influences speakers. Their research was specifically looking at how speakers respond to generic responses compared to specific responses. [17]

In 2017, Kyoto University's Graduate program of Informatics began developing a robot to assist individuals, more specifically the elderly, with mental health through the use of attentive listening. They utilized backchannel generation as a method for the robot to have some form of feedback to feel like a real conversation. Further research is being conducted to be more practical. [18]

In 1997 there was a study on 205,000 telephone utterances that showed 19% of those constituted a "backchannel". [19] This study was a part of a new method of "discourse detection" and "statistical modeling" that allowed them to have such a large sample size, giving the possibility of generalizing this data to larger communities.

See also

Related Research Articles

In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Utterance</span> Smallest unit of speech

In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, by one person, before or after which there is silence on the part of the person. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written language; only their representations do. They can be represented and delineated in written language in many ways.

An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations (ouch!, wow!), curses (damn!), greetings, response particles, hesitation markers, and other words. Due to its diverse nature, the category of interjections partly overlaps with a few other categories like profanities, discourse markers, and fillers. The use and linguistic discussion of interjections can be traced historically through the Greek and Latin Modistae over many centuries.

A backchannel is a real-time online conversation using networked computers that takes place alongside live spoken remarks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conversation analysis</span> Approach to the study of social interaction

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media, and focus on multimodal and nonverbal activity in interaction, including gaze, body movement and gesture. As a consequence, the term conversation analysis has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of interactions. CA and ethnomethodology are sometimes considered one field and referred to as EMCA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gesture</span> Form of non-verbal/non-vocal communication

A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body. Gestures differ from physical non-verbal communication that does not communicate specific messages, such as purely expressive displays, proxemics, or displays of joint attention. Gestures allow individuals to communicate a variety of feelings and thoughts, from contempt and hostility to approval and affection, often together with body language in addition to words when they speak. Gesticulation and speech work independently of each other, but join to provide emphasis and meaning.

Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously.

In linguistics, a phatic expression is a communication which primarily serves to establish or maintain social relationships. In other words, phatic expressions have mostly socio-pragmatic rather than semantic functions. They can be observed in everyday conversational exchanges, as in, for instance, exchanges of social pleasantries that do not seek or offer information of intrinsic value but rather signal willingness to observe conventional local expectations for politeness.

A speech disfluency, also spelled speech dysfluency, is any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables which occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include "false starts", i.e. words and sentences that are cut off mid-utterance; phrases that are restarted or repeated, and repeated syllables; "fillers", i.e. grunts, and non-lexical or semiarticulate utterances such as huh, uh, erm, um, and hmm, and, in English, well, so, I mean, and like; and "repaired" utterances, i.e. instances of speakers correcting their own slips of the tongue or mispronunciations. Huh is claimed to be a universal syllable.

In linguistics, prosody is the study of elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments but which are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such elements are known as suprasegmentals.

In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people achieve effective conversational communication in common social situations—that is, how listeners and speakers act cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way.

Backchannel is the use of networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks. The term was coined from the linguistics term to describe listeners' behaviours during verbal communication.

In the Japanese language, aizuchi are interjections during a conversation that indicate the listener is paying attention or understands the speaker (backchanneling). In linguistic terms, these are a form of phatic expression. Aizuchi are considered reassuring to the speaker, indicating that the listener is active and involved in the discussion.

Formulaic language is a linguistic term for verbal expressions that are fixed in form, often non-literal in meaning with attitudinal nuances, and closely related to communicative-pragmatic context. Along with idioms, expletives and proverbs, formulaic language includes pause fillers and conversational speech formulas.

A turn construction unit (TCU) is the fundamental segment of speech in a conversation, as analysed in conversation analysis.

In linguistics, an adjacency pair is an example of conversational turn-taking. An adjacency pair is composed of two utterances by two speakers, one after the other. The speaking of the first utterance provokes a responding utterance. Adjacency pairs are a component of pragmatic variation in the study of linguistics, and are considered primarily to be evident in the "interactional" function of pragmatics. Adjacency pairs exist in every language and vary in context and content among each, based on the cultural values held by speakers of the respective language. Oftentimes, they are contributed by speakers in an unconscious way, as they are an intrinsic part of the language spoken at-hand and are therefore embedded in speakers' understanding and use of the language. Thus, adjacency pairs may present their challenges when a person begins learning a language not native to them, as the cultural context and significance behind the adjacency pairs may not be evident to a speaker outside of the primary culture associated with the language.

Information Manipulation Theory (IMT) & is a theory of deceptive discourse production, rooted in H. Paul Grice's theory of conversational implicature. IMT argues that, rather than communicators producing "truths" and "lies," the vast majority of everyday deceptive discourse involves complicated combinations of elements that fall somewhere in between these polar opposites; with the most common form of deception being the editing-out of contextually problematic information. More specifically, individuals have available to them four different ways of misleading others: playing with the amount of relevant information that is shared, including false information, presenting irrelevant information, and/or presenting information in an overly vague fashion. As long as such manipulations remain covert - that is, undetected by recipients - deception will succeed. Two of the most important practical implications of IMT are that deceivers commonly use messages that are composed entirely of truthful information to deceive; and that because this is the case, our ability to detect deception in real-world environments is extremely limited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turn-taking</span> Type of organization in conversation and discourse

Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning to a different speaker, using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues.

In linguistics, a co-construction is a single syntactic entity in conversation and discourse that is uttered by more than two or more speakers. Other names for this concept include collaboratively built sentences, sentences-in-progress, and joint utterance constructions. Used in this specific linguistic context, co-construction is not to be confused with the broader social interactional sense of the same name. Co-construction is studied across several linguistic sub-disciplines, including applied linguistics, conversation analysis, linguistic anthropology, and language acquisition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English interjections</span> Interjections in the English language

English interjections are a category of English words – such as yeah, ouch, Jesus, oh, mercy, yuck, etc. – whose defining features are the infrequency with which they combine with other words to form phrases, their loose connection to other elements in clauses, and their tendency to express emotive meaning. These features separate English interjections from the language's other lexical categories, such as nouns and verbs. Though English interjections, like interjections in general, are often overlooked in descriptions of the language, English grammars do offer minimal descriptions of the category.

References

  1. ↑ Yngve, Victor. "On getting a word in edgewise," page 568. Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting [of the] Chicago Linguistic Society, 1970.
  2. 1 2 3 Heinz, Bettina (2002-11-20). "Backchannel responses as strategic responses in bilingual speakers' conversations". Journal of Pragmatics. 35 (7): 1113–1142. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00190-X.
  3. ↑ White, Sheida. "Backchannels across cultures: A study of Americans and Japanese ." Language in society (1989): 59-76.
  4. ↑ Li, Han. "Patterns of Backchannel Responses in Canadian-Chinese Conversations" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA, May 23, 2007 <Not Available>. 2009-02-04 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p169308_index.html>
  5. ↑ Arnold, Kyle (2013-10-31). "Humming Along: The Meaning of Mm-Hmm in Psychotherapeutic Communication". Contemporary Psychoanalysis. 48 (1): 100–117. doi:10.1080/00107530.2012.10746491. ISSN   0010-7530. S2CID   147330927.
  6. ↑ Bavelas, Janet B.; Coates, Linda; Johnson, Trudy (2000). "Listeners as Co-Narrators". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 79 (6): 941–952. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.941. PMID   11138763. S2CID   39770808.
  7. ↑ Tolins, Jackson (September 2014). "Addressee backchannels steer narrative development". Journal of Pragmatics. 70: 152–164. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.06.006 .
  8. ↑ Mesch, Johanna (2016-09-28). "Manual backchannel responses in signers' conversations in Swedish Sign Language". Language & Communication. 50: 22–41. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2016.08.011.
  9. ↑ Ward, Nigel G. and Yaffa Al Bayyari. "American and Arab Perceptions of an Arabic Turn-Taking Cue." Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (2010): 270-275.
  10. ↑ Iwasaki, S. (1997). "The Northridge earthquake conversations: The floor structure and the 'loop' sequence in Japanese conversation". Journal of Pragmatics. 28 (6): 661–693. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(97)00070-2. S2CID   143597292.
  11. ↑ Tottie, Gunnel (1991). Aijmer, Karin (ed.). English corpus linguistics: studies in honour of Jan Svartvik. London: Longman. pp. 254–271.
  12. ↑ Young, Richard F. and Jina Lee. "Identifying units in interaction: Reactive tokens in Korean and English conversations." Journal of Sociolinguistics (2004): 380-407.
  13. ↑ Ward, Nigel (2006). "Non-lexical conversational sounds in American English". Pragmatics & Cognition. 14 (1): 129–182. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.183.3523 . doi:10.1075/pc.14.1.08war.
  14. ↑ Gardner, Rod (1997). "The Conversation Object Mm: A Weak and Variable Acknowledging Token". Research on Language and Social Interaction. 30 (2): 131–156. doi:10.1207/s15327973rlsi3002_2.
  15. ↑ Goodwin, Charles (1986). "Between and within: Alternative sequential treatments of continuers and assessments". Human Studies. 9 (2–3): 205–217. doi:10.1007/BF00148127. S2CID   145355164.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Bavelas, Janet B.; Coates, Linda; Johnson, Trudy (2000). "Listeners as Co-Narrators". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 79 (6): 941–952. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.941. PMID   11138763. S2CID   39770808.
  17. ↑ Tolins, Jackson; Fox Tree, Jean E. (2014). "Addressee backchannels steer narrative development". Journal of Pragmatics. 70: 152–164. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.06.006 .
  18. ↑ Lala, Divesh; Milhorat, Pierrick; Inoue, Koji; Ishida, Masanari; Takanashi, Katsuya; Kawahara, Tatsuya (August 2017). "Attentive listening system with backchanneling, response generation and flexible turn-taking". aclweb.org. Kyoto University: 127–136. doi: 10.18653/v1/W17-5516 . S2CID   9862528.
  19. ↑ Jurafsky, Daniel; Bates, Rebecca; Coccaro, Noah; Martin, Rachel; Meteer, Marie; Ries, Klaus; Shriberg, Elizabeth; Stolcke, Andreas; Taylor, Paul; Van Ess-Dykema, Carol (1997). "Automatic detection of discourse structure for speech recognition and understanding" (PDF). IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding: 88–95.
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