The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics

Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 20
[Paper List] [Goto Volume List]

[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 257-281
Abbreviation: KASELL
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print)
Received 09 Jun 2020 Revised 08 Aug 2020 Accepted 31 Aug 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.20..202008.257

Backchannels as a Cooperative Strategy in ELF Communications
Kanghee Lee
University of Seoul


Copyright 2020 KASELL
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how backchannels are used in ELF communication and which kinds of backchannels are frequently employed by ELF speakers. The data was based on naturally occurring ELF conversations among the international students in the UK university and analysed with the Conversation Analysis (CA) approach. The results showed that the participants frequently and actively produced backchannel responses, and the types were identified as agreement-oriented, rapport-oriented, and participation-oriented backchannels. The most frequent forms were the short response tokens as in other ELF studies, and the ELF speakers also employed echoing repetition and utterance completion, which are more active forms of backchannels to display participation and support. The findings confirmed that ELF speakers attempt to avoid silence and gap between turns by showing their participatory listenership and the understanding of the interlocutors and participate in active involvement and co-construction of turn-takings through backchannel responses.

Keywords: backchannel, ELF, cooperation, involvement, listenership, rapport-building
References
1. Baker, W. and C. Sangiamchit. 2019. Transcultural communication: Language, communication and culture through English as a lingua franca in a social network community. Language and Intercultural Communication 19(6), 471-487.
2. Bavelas, J. B., L. Coates and T. Johnson. 2002. Listener responses as a collaborative process: The role of gaze. Journal of Communication 52(3), 566-580.
3. Bjørge, A. K. 2010. Conflict or cooperation: The use of backchannelling in ELF negotiations. English for Specific Purposes 29(3), 191-203.
4. Brunner, Lawrence J. 1979. Smiles can be back channels. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37(5), 728–734.
5. Cogdill, S., T. Fanderclai, J. Kilborn and M. Williams. 2001. Backchannel: Whispering in digital conversation. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE, 1-8.
6. Cogo, A. and M. Dewey. 2012. Analysing English as a Lingua Franca. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
7. Antaki, C., F. Díaz and A. F. Collins. 1996. Keeping your footing: Conversational completion in three-part sequences. Journal of Pragmatics 25(2), 151-171.
8. Dittman, T. and G. Llewellyn. 1968. Relationship between vocalizations and head nods as listener responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9(1), 79–84.
9. Drummond, K. and R. Hopper. 1993. Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26(2), 157–177.
10. Farley, S. D. 2008. Attaining status at the expense of likeability: Pilfering power through conversational interruption. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour 32, 241-260.
11. Fujie, S., K. Fukushima and T. Kobayashi. 2005. Back-channel feedback generation using linguistic and nonlinguistic information and its application to spoken dialogue system. In Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, 889-892.
12. Gallois, C., T. Ogay and H. Giles. 2005. Communication accommodation theory: A look back and a look ahead . In W. B. Gudykunst ed., Theorising about Intercultural Communication, 121-148. Michigan: Sage.
13. Gardner, R. 1997. The conversation object mm: A weak and variable acknowledging token. Research on Language and Social Interaction 30(2), 131-156.
14. Gardner, R. 1998. Between speaking and listening: The vocalisation of understandings. Applied Linguistics 19, 204–224.
15. Gardner, R. 2005. Acknowledging strong ties between utterances in talk: Connections through ‘Right’ as a response token. In Proceeding of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 1-12.
16. Giles, H. and T. Ogay. 2007. Communication accommodation theory. In B. B. Whaley and W. Samter, eds., Explaining Communication: Contemporary Theories and Exemplars, 325-344. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
17. Heo, S. 2015. Backchanneling in a small group interaction: An analysis of a free discussion in a Korean university classroom. Studies in Linguistics 37, 381-405.
18. Jandt, F. 1995. Intercultural Communication: An Introduction. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
19. Jefferson, G. 1993. Caveat speaker: Preliminary notes on recipient topic-shift implicature. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26, 1–30.
20. Jenkins, J. 2018. The future of English as a Lingua Franca? In J. Jenkins, W. Baker and M. Dewey, eds., The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca, 594–605. Abingdon: Routledge.
21. Jenkins, J., A. Cogo and M. Dewey. 2011. Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching 44(3), 281-315.
22. Johnstone, B. 2008. Discourse Analysis (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
23. Jurafsky, D., E. Shriberg, B. Fox and T. Curl. 1998. Lexical, prosodic, and syntactic cues for dialog acts. In Proceedings of Discourse Relations and Discourse Markers, 114-120.
24. Kaur, J. 2011. Doing being a language expert: The case of the ELF speaker. In A. Archibald, A. Cogo and J. Jenkins, eds., Latest Trends in ELF research, 53-76. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
25. Kaur, J. 2016. Conversation analysis and ELF. In M. L. Pitzl and R. Osimk-Teasdale, eds., English as a Lingua Franca: Perspectives and Prospects: Contributions in Honour of Barbara Seidlhofer (Vol. 24), 161-171. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
26. Kim, Y. K. 2010. Attending to what the other is saying: Korean EFL learners’ use of backchannels in conversation. Discourse and Cognition 17(3), 39-61.
27. Kirkpatrick, A. 2010. English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model (Vol. 1). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
28. Kordon, K. 2006. You are very good. Establishing rapport in English as a lingua franca: The case of agreement tokens. Vienna English Working Papers 15(2), 58-82.
29. Lee, K. 2013. Accommodation in ELF communication among East Asian speakers of English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
30. Lee, K. 2016. Promoting cooperativeness through utterance completion in English as a lingua franca. Korean Journal of Applied Linguistics 32(2), 59-86.
31. Levow, G. A. 2005. Turn-taking in Mandarin dialogue: Interactions of tone and intonation. In Proceedings of the Fourth SIGHAN Workshop on Chinese Language Processing, 72-78.
32. Li, H. Z. 2006. Backchannel responses as misleading feedback in intercultural discourse. Journal of intercultural communication research 35(2), 99-116.
33. Li, H. Z., Y. Cui and Z. Wang. 2010. Backchannel responses and enjoyment of the conversation: The more does not necessarily mean the better. International Journal of Psychological Studies 2(1), 25-37.
34. Lichtkoppler, J. 2007. Male, Male.’ - ‘Male?’- ‘The sex is male.’- The role of repetition in English as a lingua franca conversations. Vienna English Working Papers 16(1), 39-65.
35. Mauranen, A. 2006. Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication. International Journal of Sociology of Languages 177, 123-150.
36. Mauranen, A. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37. Maynard, S. K. 1986. On back-channel behavior in Japanese and English casual conversations. Linguistics 24, 1079–1108.
38. Maynard, S. K. 1997. Analyzing interactional management in native/non-native English conversation: A case of listener response. IRAL: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 35(1), 37-60.
39. McCarthy, M. 2002. Good listenership made plain. In R. Reppen, S. M. Fitzmaurice and D. Biber, eds., Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation, 49–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
40. McCarthy, M. 2003. Talking back: “Small” interactional response tokens in everyday conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36(1), 33-63.
41. Meierkord, C. 2002. ‘Language stripped bare’ or ‘linguistic masala’: Culture in lingua franca communication. In K. Knapp and C. Meierkord, eds., Lingua Franca Communication, 109–133. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
42. Murata, K. 1994. Intrusive or co-operative? A cross-cultural study of interruption. Journal of Pragmatics 21, 385-400.
43. Oreström, B. 1983. Turn-Taking in English Conversation: Lund Studies in English 66. Lund: Lund University Press.
44. Park, Y. 2004. Nonnative speakers’ use of ‘yeah’ in English spoken discourse. Discourse and Cognition 11(3), 85-105.
45. Pietikäinen, K. 2020. Analysing multilingual/lingua franca interactions using conversation analysis: Notes on transcription and representability. In K. Murata, ed, ELF Research Methods and Approaches to Data and Analyses: Theoretical and Methodological Underpinnings, 179-196. London: Routledge.
46. Planken, B. 2005. Managing rapport in lingua franca sales negotiations: A comparison of professional and aspiring negotiators. English for Specific Purposes 24(4), 381–400.
47. Sacks, H. and G. Jefferson. 1992. Harvey Sacks: Lectures on Conversation. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
48. Sawir, E. 2004. Keeping up with native speakers: The many and positive roles of repetition in the conversations of EFL learners. Asian EFL Journal 6(4), 1-32.
49. Schegloff, A. 1982. Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen, ed., Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk, 71–93. Washington, DC.: Georgetown University Press
50. Schneider, P. 1988. Small Talk. Analysing Phatic Discourse. Marburg: Hitzeroth.
51. Seedhouse, P. 2004. Conversation analysis methodology. Language Learning 54(1), 1-54.
52. Seidlhofer, B. 2001. Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11, 133-158.
53. Seidlhofer, B. 2009. Accommodation and the idiom principle in English as a Lingua Franca. Intercultural Pragmatics 6(2), 195-215.
54. Seidlhofer, B. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
55. Spencer-Oatey, H. (Ed.). 2000. Culturally Speaking. London: Continuum.
56. Stenström, A. B. 1994. An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. London: Longman.
57. Szczepek, B. 2000. Functional aspects of collaborative productions in English conversation. InList 21, 1-36.
58. Tottie, G. 1991. Conversational style in British and American English: The case of backchannels. In K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg, eds., English Corpus Linguistics, 254–271. London: Longman.
59. White, R. 1997. Back channelling, repair, pausing, and private speech. Applied linguistics 18(3), 314-344.
60. Xudong, D. 2008. The use of listener responses in Mandarin Chinese and Australian English conversations: Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 18(2), 303-328.
61. Yngve, H. 1970. On getting a word in edgewise. In Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, 567–578.
62. Yun, J. 2013. Research on learners’ responsive repetition strategies of English conversation and inspirations on oral English teaching. Journal of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University 4, 34-54.
63. Zimmerman, H. and W. Candace. 1975. Sex roles, interruptions and silences. In B. Thorne and N. Henley, eds., Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, 105-129. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
64. Zimmerman, D. H. 1993. Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency revisited. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26(2), 179-194.

Lee, Kanghee, ProfessorUniversity of SeoulDivision of General English163 Soeoulsiripdaero, Dongdaemun-guSeoul, KoreaTel: 82-2-6490-5224E-mail: kangheelee0919@gmail.com