Backchanneling 5가지 기능 - Subtypes of Back channels

[Dio Jin 교수]

In linguistics, a backchannel 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.

These functions of back channels can be categorized into five main types, including continuers, acknowledgement tokens, newsmarkers, change-of-activity tokens, and markers of dispreference.

Each sub-type of the back channels will be briefly illustrated by their definitions and functions as follows:

1. Continuers perform a function of encouraging the current speakers to continue with their talks (Schegloff 1982). A continuer token, for example ‘uh huh’, ‘mm hm’ and ‘yes’, shows a low degree of speakership incipiency; this utterance automatically returns the floor to the current speaker.

2. Acknowledgement tokens include ‘mm’ and ‘yeah’ (Gardner 1994).
- Gardner (1994) reminds that ‘mm’ is categorized as the listener has nothing substantial to add to the topic of the talk.
- ‘yeah’ is the most frequently used of all response tokens in ordinary conversation (Gardner 2001). ‘yeah’ occurred hundreds of times in an hour of conversation. Drummond and Hopper (1993b) also pointed out that ‘yeah’ tokens were more frequent than ‘mm hm and uh huh’ tokens.

3. Newsmarkers mark the current speaker’s turn as newsworthy in some way (Fries 1952). Jefferson (1980) also described the effect of oh as a ‘sudden remembering’. Examples of Newsmarkers include ‘really’, ‘oh’, ‘yer kidding’, ‘did you?’ ‘right’ and ‘I see’. ‘oh’ is traditionally used as an exclamation or interjection to indicate emotional states (Fries 1952).

4. Change-of-activity tokens, for example ‘okay’ and ‘alright’, mark a transition to a new activity or a new topic in the talk (Gardner 1994:2). ‘alright’ is similar, but appears to propose a stronger and higher level movement to a new topic or activity (Gardner 2001).

5. Markers of dispreference reflect a lack of interest and impatience which are spoken by a listener of the talk (Levinson 1983; Stenström 1994). Examples include ‘well’, ‘yes but’ , ‘gosh’ and ‘hell’.


——- 또는 다른 분류도 가능

Due to research development in recent years, backchannel responses have been expanded to include sentence completions, requests for clarification, brief statements, and non-verbal responses and now fall into three categories: non-lexical, phrasal, and substantive.

1. 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-huhand hmm serve this role. Non-lexical backchannels generally come from a limited set of sounds not otherwise widely used in contentful 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.

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.

2. 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.