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Response signals (RS) have emerged as a powerful interaction tool, but they have yet to be fully understood. The current study analyzes 16 h of daily conversations using discourse-pragmatic frameworks to discuss certain aspects of the most prevalent primary and secondary Persian RSs. An RS is identified as a brief interactive response to a prior speaker's statement, typically expressing (dis)confirmation, (un)acceptance, or backchannel (including assessment and continuer feedback). The research also differentiates and compares the functional and distributional differences and similarities between confirmation and backchannel signals. Following that, it takes a semasiological approach and discusses how the emergence, overlap, and markedness of certain functions for an item can be determined by the persistence of its original propositional meaning as well as the item's grammaticalization and cooptation. The paper thus reviews the markedness of the backchannel function for na 'no' compared to this function's development for ɂāre 'yes'. Last but not least, cross-linguistic phonological tendencies, such as the integration of the phoneme /ɂ/ or /h/ in positive RSs and click sounds in negative ones, are supported by Persian RSs and their variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group work is a necessary element of engineering education and group members need information about one another, group process, shared attention and mutual understanding during group discussions. There are several important elements for establishing and maintaining a group discussion such as participant's role, seating arrangement, verbal and non-verbal cues, eye gaze, gestures etc. The present study investigates these elements for identifying the behavior of group members in a blend of traditional face-to-face discussion along with computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) setting. The results of this study have shown that, speaking duration is the key factor for identifying the leadership in a group and participants mostly used eye gazes for turn taking. Although this study is a mix of face-to-face and CSCW discussion setting, participants mostly behave like face-to-face group discussion. However, unlike the previous studies involving face-to-face discussion, the relation between seating arrangement and amount of attention is not apparent from the data during this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human–human interaction consists of various nonverbal behaviors that are often emotion-related. To establish rapport, it is essential that the listener respond to reactive emotion in a way that makes sense given the speaker's emotional state. However, human–robot interactions generally fail in this regard because most spoken dialogue systems play only a question-answer role. Aiming for natural conversation, we examine an emotion processing module that consists of a user emotion recognition function and a reactive emotion expression function for a spoken dialogue system to improve human–robot interaction. For the emotion recognition function, we propose a method that combines valence from prosody and sentiment from text by decision-level fusion, which considerably improves the performance. Moreover, this method reduces fatal recognition errors, thereby improving the user experience. For the reactive emotion expression function, the system's emotion is divided into emotion category and emotion level, which are predicted using the parameters estimated by the recognition function on the basis of distributions inferred from human–human dialogue data. As a result, the emotion processing module can recognize the user's emotion from his/her speech, and expresses a reactive emotion that matches. Evaluation with ten participants demonstrated that the system enhanced by this module is effective to conduct natural conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactional competence has been variously defined as turn-taking ability, paralinguistic features of communication such as eye contact, gesture, and gesticulation, and listener responses. In existing assessment systems such as the oral proficiency interview (OPI), interactional competence is only rarely explicitly factored into the holistic task-based rating system. The present article explores the potential relevance of a facet of interactional competence, listener response, in contrastive interviewers conducted structurally distinct languages, Japanese and English. The analytic focus through micro-analysis of the interview interaction aims to consider evidence of how the candidate's listener responses audible through backchannels might be consistently identified as distinct from existing rating criteria such as fluency, accuracy, and coherence, and whether listener responses as interactional competence might be distinct from, or subsumable under, these facets of speaker proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twitter usage (“tweeting”) at academic conferences is quickly gaining prevalence. This fast-growing practice is an example of the complexity of academic discourse communities and how digital interactions aid scholars in building meaningful working relationships. Graduate students, in their position as “peripheral participants” in their academic disciplines (Lave & Wenger, 1991), have a unique perspective on the process of building their academic identities and relationships that will last a career. This qualitative interview study examines the perspectives of five Ph.D. students at universities across the United States who used Twitter at the academic conference Computers and Writing in May 2015. Building on previous studies on digital communication among academics (Hyland, 2012; Leon & Pigg, 2011; Li & Greenhow, 2015), this study reveals the behind-the-scenes perspectives of graduate students who used Twitter at this academic conference. Findings include a look into the intentionality these graduate students bring to their conference tweeting, explanations of their efforts to connect with others and build name- and face-recognition in the academic discourse community, and other useful insights into graduate students’ conference tweeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher preparation programs have historically experienced logistical and epistemological struggles in implementing earlier clinical experiences, despite the value placed on reflective practice in early clinical experiences. To address this issue, the author, a university faculty member, partnered with a Professional Development School (PDS) to design a new PDS practice before the clinical experience. The new practice grounds itself in the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model (CAM) and backchannel technology in order to emphasize the implementation of this teaching theory into practice. The practice uses a field-based social studies methods course to co-observe in-service teachers. Students observe with their classmates and their methods instructor, who serves as a teaching coach to the pre-service teachers. The coach uses backchannel chat technology (group text discussions) to orient, in real-time, the pre-service teachers' attention to the in-service teachers' pedagogical choices. This encourages pre-service teachers to embark in metacognition, reflective practice, and a real-time conversation surrounding clinical practices. After the observation period, the in-service teachers attend the methods course with the pre-service teachers and engage in the class discussion to further explicate their practice. This innovative use of technology, observation, and cooperation between the Institute of Higher Education (IHE) and the PDS facilitates scaffolded experiences of clinical practice through authentic learning in the PDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twitter, the micro-blogging social media tool, has established a critical role in facilitating social engagement. Its low technical and economic barriers to uptake provide a readily accessible forum for public engagement with events such as televised political debates, and in this context provides a ‘backchannel’ to mainstream media, allowing users to comment on and engage in debates. Most recently during the 2014 Scottish Referendum, Twitter was used extensively by both ‘Better Together’ (pro-Unionist) and ‘Yes’ (pro-independence) campaigners. The aim of this research was to develop an understanding of the linked content present in tweets sent during three televised debates on the issue of Scottish Independence. Analysis of the linked content shows a broad subject proximity to the topics under discussion during the debates, but highlights the lack of specificity in relation to the peaks and troughs of Twitter traffic during the debates. The paper also highlights the use made of links to a variety of resources such as the mainstream media as well as more informal sources including user-generated image and video content to support political viewpoints, and argues that, while the use of such content is beneficial in terms of unifying perspectives, supporter activism and the gratification of the social need for connectivity, it does not act to convert political opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploratory studies have started to demonstrate the potential value of digital backchannels for enhancing interaction in university lectures. The present study was conducted in a third year engineering course and involved the use of specialised backchannel software with the following features: students could anonymously post questions, vote on questions, give the lecturer feedback regarding the pace of the lecture or simply alert the lecturer that they were ‘lost’. The study used a mixed-method data analysis design that, in addition to data automatically logged through the backchannel, included the use of observations, surveys, lecturer interviews and student focus groups. It was found that students used all features of the backchannel, with especial use of the ‘like’ feature, not currently available in most commercial backchannel packages. The backchannel increased the number of questions asked in class, and also resulted in a broader range of students participating in such interactions. There was limited evidence of the backchannel proving a distraction; on the contrary some students said that it helped them to focus more in class. From the lecturers' perspective the backchannel did require some modification of their lecturing style but they felt that the additional feedback that they achieved was valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Events create a new kind of setting for the computer-mediated chat, characterized by physically co-located participants. We set out to investigate the features of chat messages in this particular kind of environment, assessing the amount of threading, defined in terms of message content contributing to one topic, and conversation, based on patterns in informational and emotional functions of subsequent messages. We observe that our cases are characterized with a high level of threading, even while the application did not technically support it. Furthermore, we observe patterns that demonstrate these threads were conversations, based on the types of responses in each thread. Based on our findings, we propose that technical tools for public event-based chats can support conversations and suggest that better tools for this should be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developments in technology, including the use of synchronous telecollaborative tools, promise to address the challenge of providing opportunities for interaction in the foreign language classroom. The present study investigates how learners and native speakers (NS) of English co-construct small talk in the opening phase of a voice-based Skype telecollaboration. Specifically, learner and NS self-oriented and other-oriented topic shifts, topic replies and verbal listenership behaviour are analysed. The focus is on the English interactions of two learner-NS dyads, each made up of a German NS and an Irish English NS. One dyad includes a learner who exhibits a high level of interactional competence while in the other dyad the learner shows no active participation. Specifically, she reveals a low use of topic shifts, a high use of equivocal short-form topic replies, few long-form replies and a very limited use of backchannels/backchannel forms, leaving the interactional burden on the Irish English NS. The analysis illuminates small talk construction in the voice-based telecollaborative context and highlights the possibilities it offers for developing interactive competencies. It also sheds light on the roles played by NS and learners in topic management and adds to our understanding of individual differences in small talk construction in the foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how Twitter is used as a political backchannel and potential agenda setter during two televised political debates during the Norwegian election in 2011. The paper engages with current debates about the role of social media in audience participation and traditional media's changing role as gatekeepers and agenda setter. Design/methodology/approach – A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. By introducing and using the IMSC multiple step analysis model on the Twitter datasets, the authors are able to analyse the flow of thousands of tweets and compare them with topics discussed in the televised debates. Findings – The paper finds that the same topics are discussed on Twitter as on TV, but “the debate about the debate” or Meta talk tweets reveal critical scrutiny of the agenda. The paper identifies a clear pattern of political fandom and media criticism in the “debate about the debate”, indicating that Meta talk in social media can function as a critical public sphere, also in real time, which has not been identified in existing studies of Twitter and political TV shows. Originality/value – The analysis is unique in the sense that the paper analyses a smaller, national Twitter population in deeper detail than what is common in larger Twitter studies related to political televised debates. The IMSC model can be used in future Twitter studies to uncover layers in the data material and structure the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article offers a theoretical framework for ‘digital underlife’: the distal and potentially transgressive discursive activities proliferated by emerging technologies. Digital underlife is an adaptation of sociologist Erving Goffman''s concept of underlife, which figured centrally in Robert Brooke''s well-known study of writing activity in 1988. As emerging digital technologies fray the communicative bounds of traditional sites for teaching and learning, such as the classroom and the conference hall, we are confronted anew with a complex array of possibilities for giving and getting attention. Drawing on the work of Charles Moran and Richard Lanham, this article calls for a more receptive disposition toward the productive dimensions of digital underlife. The article promotes a stance that imagines productive digital underlife to be intrinsic to curricula that combine digital writing activity and rhetorical education, rather than short-selling digital underlife as mere distraction, as an impediment to learning, or worse, attempting to banish it altogether. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper investigates a sample of ‘backchannels’, a kind of response item, in the Cobuild Corpus. Its object is to chart the occurrence of backchannels in modern English speech, and especially to find out if they can indicate how much of a language sequence is needed for a listener to understand the intended message. The sequences into which backchannels are inserted and their insertion points are therefore classified, and the fairly numerous sequences where backchannels “interrupt” a linguistic unit are singled out for special study. A general conclusion is that in the cases where there is no explicit information about the part of the message following the inserted backchannel, the message will nevertheless mostly be understood even at the backchannel insertion point. A comparison between male and female speakers shows that women use backchannels more than men and that, unlike men, they prefer unemphatic backchannels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The oral proficiency interview (OPI) is often used in the domain of business English as a criterion for access to overseas assignments and job promotions. Little, however, is known about variation in interaction style across interviewers, which motivates in this study a contrastive analysis of two oral proficiency interviews used for gatekeeping purposes. The two interviews were conducted with the same candidate three months apart, and provide a rare glimpse of contrastive interviewer strategies with a single candidate. The analysis examines evidence that the candidate backslid from an earlier successful interview to a categorically lower level of performance in the second interview. Analyses of the candidate''s differential establishment of footing in the interview, misalignments to the tone of the interviewer, and differential tendencies of the two interviewers to accommodate to the candidate are featured. Interviewer differences in proclivity to backchannel indicate how facilitative accommodation in scaffolding the interaction may influence the initial rating. The micro-analyses of interview discourse suggest that differences in interviewer style potentially lead to divergent outcomes in the two interviews. In spite of considerable variation in the interaction styles of the two interviewers, consistency in the outcomes of five repeated second ratings of the candidate''s performance suggest a rating system robust against even large differences in interviewer style. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Current methodologies in corpus linguistics have revolutionised the way in which we study language, allowing us to make accurate and retrievable observations and analyses using a range of written and spoken data from naturally occurring contexts. Yet, while current corpora allow us to explore multimillion word databases, they fail to represent language and communication beyond the word. This is problematic as social interactions are in fact multimodal, combining both verbal and non-verbal elements. This article reports on preliminary developments in this area carried out as part of an interdisciplinary project based at the University of Nottingham, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Sciences Research Council, which is exploring how we can utilise new textualities in order to develop the scope of what a corpus can reveal and provide the tools for exploring discourse in specific contexts of communication. The specific linguistic focus of this project is the exploration of the roles and nature of gesture-in-talk, with a specific focus on codifying and analysing backchannels. To manage the scale of the research challenge we explore a particular sub-set of gesture: head nods. The article discusses the development of multimodal corpora, using video data recorded from conversational exchanges that are to be streamed with the verbal data. We provide an exploration of the requirements that such a 'multimodal' corpus should look to fulfil, in order to lead to better descriptions of language and better applications of such descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Japanese backchannel signals (aizuchi) can be divided into two types, utterance-internal and utterance-final. While sentence-final aizuchi are comparable to English backchannel signals like “I see” or “really”, the utterance-internal aizuchi signal only continuation and understanding (“I listen”), but never agreement or empathy. Aizuchi exchange consists of a complementary pair of the aizuchi invitation by the speaker and the actual aizuchi delivered by the listener. Our present study focuses on the acquisition of aizuchi in a boy aged 1;5 to 3;1. We observed a developmental delay between utterance-final aizuchi, and utterance-internal aizuchi, which appeared about 6 months later than the utterance-final aizuchi. Also the invitations for utterance-final aizuchi appeared earlier than the invitations for utterance-internal aizuchi. We also observed an overuse of aizuchi invitations, while the number of aizuchi delivered was comparatively low. This overuse can be explained by the pragmatic value of aizuchi invitations which can be ideal for negotiating support for one''s turn and gaining time in order to organize thoughts into a well-formed sentence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Reactive tokens are conversational resources by which a listener co-constructs a speaker's turn at talk. The resources that are available include the forms of the reactive tokens themselves, their duration, and their placement by the listener in the current speaker's turn. The present paper is a contrastive study of the use of these resources by Americans in English, and by Koreans in their native language and in English, and in it we show the ecological relationship between the resources that a language provides and their use in constructing active listenership. Although previous research on English has found listeners use reactive tokens to pass up the opportunity for a full turn at talk, we show that, in Korean, reactive tokens are often elicited by the current speaker and the listener is obligated to provide them. We present evidence that Korean bilinguals transfer some conversational resources from their native language when they take part in conversation in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backchannel responses appear to be a universal behavior, but specific backchannel behaviors are particular to language and culture. As such, they offer themselves to test central assumptions of Communication Accommodation Theory, in particular, assumptions relating to the processes of convergence and divergence. Researchers have identified linguistic and cultural differences in regard to the frequency, type, and placement of backchannel responses. This study examines differences in American English and German backchannel behavior and investigates backchannel behavior in interactions between monolingual and bilingual Germans. Study 1 documents significant differences in the frequency and placement of backchannel responses among monolingual German speakers and monolingual American English speakers. Results show that Germans produce fewer backchannel responses and place these responses less frequently in overlapping positions than American speakers do. Study 2 finds that native Germans who have become equally proficient in American English, when they speak to other native Germans in German, produce a higher number of backchannel responses and more often in overlapping positions than do monolingual Germans. This pragmatic transfer, for which some evidence exists in cross-linguistic studies, contradicts basic assumptions of Communication Accommodation Theory. Implications of these findings for Communication Accommodation Theory, future research on backchannel responses, and pragmalinguistic research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]