1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Conversation, as a most fundamental mode of human verbal communicationsystem, refers to a dynamic progress of language communication between two ormore participants who continually change the role of speakers and listeners, whichresults from the cooperation of speakers and listeners. After the instruction ofconversation analysis which is a branch of discourse analysis, plenty of researches onconversation structures, conversation rules and conversation strategies are conductedby many scholars. The development and implement of conversation are realized bythe interlocutors’ communication means, such as turn-taking, self-repair andbackchannels etc. In the progress of conversation, interlocutors continually change therole of listeners and speakers. This exchange of their roles is called “turns”. Sack et al.defined “turn” as “everything one speaker utters before another speaker begins to say”(as cited in Tsui, 2000, p.7). Listeners make short responses to speakers but do notchange the current speakers’ floor while speakers are talking. This phenomenon isregarded as backchannels, such as “yeah”, “uh-huh” etc. The term “backchannel”(Yngve, 1970) refers to verbal and non-verbal listener feedback in spoken interactionthat does not involve a speaker shift, but functions as a turn-continuer (Schegloff,1982). Backchannels not only maintain the smoothness of conversation, but also theuse of backchannels is an important strategy. Since 1950s, scholars have investigatedthis phenomenon from different perspectives of linguistics, psychology andintercultural communication. Backchannels created by Yngve (1970) are widely usedin this kind of researches.
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1.2 Research Significance
The significance of this study lies in two aspects. Firstly, theoretically speaking,the present study will provide rich ground for the theoretical investigation andanalysis of backchannels, enriching existing studies and deepening understanding ofdifferent features of backchannels used in different contexts. In addition, this studybenefits to researches of intercultural communication as well. Secondly, practicallyspeaking, since the academic conversation materials used in the present study are allreal English learning materials from native speakers to the EFL learners and theappropriate use of backchannels is an important conversation skill, this study isbeneficial to the improvement of EFL learners’ oral English and the promotion of theircommunicative competence. What’s more, as the research materials of the presentstudy are chosen from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, Englishteachers can learn how to use backchannels appropriately to present their attention,interests, support and approbation to students. As an emotional education, thisbehavior boosts students’ confidence and mobilizes their enthusiasm for the classactivities, which in turn will improve the effectiveness of English education.
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2 Literature Review
2.1 The Introduction of Backchannels
To put it simply, backchannels are verbal or non-verbal signals that listenersmake to speakers in order to sustain the communication in face-to-face and telephonecommunication. However, there is still no agreement on the definition ofbackchannels. Many terms are used to define this phenomenon, such as feedbacks andreactive tokens. Charles Fries (1952) who has found backchannels in telephonecommunication called them “listener responses” which do not interrupt the speaker’sfloor. Some simple expressions such as “yes”, “uh huh”, “yeah”, and “I see” can beused to express listeners’ constant attention (p.49). According to Kendon (1960),backchannels are “accompaniment signals”. In his article “On Getting a Word inEdgewise”, Victor Yngve (1970) names this phenomenon “back-channelcommunication”. He points out that when two interlocutors are talking, theycontinually change their turns and the speaker and the listener are busy listening andspeaking at the same time; just because of backchannels such as “uh-huh” and “yes”from the listener, the speaker does not give out his or her turn. (p.568). Later, Brunner(1979) regards laughter as backchannels, because laughter often appears at the similarplace like other backchannels. Schegloff (1982) calls backchannels “continuers”(p.73).
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2.2 Previous Studies on Backchannels
According to He (2011), the researches of backchannels mainly fall into twotypes: one is the researches of illustrating and analyzing the definition, features andfunctions of backchannels and the forms of backchannels (e.g. Fries, 1952; Yngve,1970; Goodwin, 1986; Duncan & Fiske, 1997; Bj rge, 2010); the other is theresearches on the similarities and differences of backchannels under different culturesand language contexts in recent years (Tao and Thompson, 1991; Clancy et al., 1996;Heinz, 2003;Cutrone, 2005; Li, 2006, 2010).According to the author’s consulting of the journals and books available, thereare not so many profound researches on backchannels. restr m (1983) proposes that backchannels belong to the turn-taking systemand divides utterances into turns and backchannel items which include lexical andnon-lexical items. He suggests that neither lexical nor non-lexical backchannel itemschange any turn, and the function of them is that “the listener informs the speaker thathis message has been received, understood, and agreed to” (p.23). He indicates someparalinguistic features of backchannels as well. His study of ten conversations fromthe London-Lund corpus shows that the most frequently used backchannels are“mhm” (50%), “yes” (34%), and “yeah” (4%).
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3.理论框架....12
3.1会话分析........12
4.研究方法....17
4.1研究问题........17
4.2数据收集........17
4.3分析方法........18
4.4分析工具........19
5结果与讨论.......20
5.1反馈语形式....20
5.2分布特点........36
5.3语用功能........44
5 Results and Discussions
5.1 The Forms of Backchannels
As no consensus on the definition and classification of backchannels has beenreached, backchannels in the current study are classified in the light of Duncan andFiske (1985). Duncan and Fiske (1985) adopted Yngve’s term “backchannel” andexpanded the extension of backchannels. They divided backchannels into six types:vocalization and lexical items, sentence completion, request for clarification, briefstatement, head nodding and laughter (p. 58-59). Inspired by them, the forms of verbalbackchannels are categorized into six groups in this study: vocalizations, lexical items,sentence completion, repetition, brief statement and request for clarification. Vocalization in the current data includes many types which are “mhm”, “um”,“mm”, “hm”, “hmm”, and “uh”, “ah”, “oh”, “whoa”. What’s more, there are somecomplex types including “mhm hm”, “uhuh”, “uhhuh” and “mhmmhm”. In order tosimplify the statistic process, “mhm”, “um”, “mm”, “hm”, “hmm”, “mhm hm” and“mhmmhm” are classified into “mhm” category, “oh”, “ohoh”, and “ooh” belong to“oh” category, and “ah”, “uh” and “uhuh” are under “ah” category.
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Conclusion
As an important strategy of conversation, backchannels play an important role inmaintaining the smooth of conversations, which can be divided into two categories:nonverbal backchannels and verbal backchannels. Based on Duncan and Fiske’s (1985)classifications and Liu’s (2004) six properties of backchannels, the current researchconducts qualitative and quantitative analysis methods on verbal backchannels inacademic conversations to investigate the similarities and differences of the use ofverbal backchannels from the perspective of forms, distribution features amongdifferent disciplines and between genders and pragmatic functions are specificallyanalyzed.Academic conversation is an institutional conversation, which is different fromthe daily conversations. Six forms of verbal backchannels have been appeared in thestudy, including vocalizations, lexical items, repetition, sentence competition, briefstatement and request for clarification which function as listening, understanding,approval, appraisement or evaluation, confirmation or clarification, assistance andconcession. The distribution features of verbal backchannels are the same as dailyconversations, which turn up at turn-external and turn-internal places and overlap withthe speaker’s utterance of varying degrees.
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Reference (omitted)
