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Scholars across different disciplines use Twitter to promote research and to communicate with society. Most conferences nowadays have their unique hashtag in which participants can communicate in real time. Previous research has reported on conference participants’ use of Twitter, but no such studies are available in the field of mental health nursing. Thus, the explicit aim of the present study was to examine conference participants’ use of Twitter during the 42nd International Mental Health Nursing Conference. Freely-accessible data were mined via a social media platform under the hashtag #acmhn2016. The total dataset consisted of 1973 tweets, and was analysed with descriptive statistics and a directed content analysis. The results demonstrated that 37% of the tweets were original posts, and 63% were engagements. In total, 184 individual accounts engaged in Twitter during the conference, and 16.4 tweets were posted hourly. Most tweets were categorized as conference/session-related content, but Twitter was also used for socializing with other participants. The most frequently-used words mirror a clear connection to a person-centred approach, and deviate from the biomedical terminology. However, not all of the conference participants engaged on Twitter, and might thereby risk being excluded from this backchannel.

While there has been a growing body of work in child-robot interaction, we still have very little knowledge regarding young children's speaking and listening dynamics and how a robot companion should decode these behaviors and encode its own in a way children can understand. In developing a backchannel prediction model based on observed nonverbal behaviors of 4-6 year-old children, we investigate the effects of an attentive listening robot on a child's storytelling. We provide an extensive analysis of young children's nonverbal behavior with respect to how they encode and decode listener responses and speaker cues. Through a collected video corpus of peer-to-peer storytelling interactions, we identify attention-related listener behaviors as well as speaker cues that prompt opportunities for listener backchannels. Based on our findings, we developed a backchannel opportunity prediction (BOP) model that detects four main speaker cue events based on prosodic features in a child's speech. This rule-based model is capable of accurately predicting backchanneling opportunities in our corpora. We further evaluate this model in a human-subjects experiment where children told stories to an audience of two robots, each with a different backchanneling strategy. We find that our BOP model produces contingent backchannel responses that conveys an increased perception of an attentive listener, and children prefer telling stories to the BOP model robot., National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF grant IIS-1523118)

The purpose of this paper is to understand student interaction and learning in microblogging-based peer feedback sessions. The researcher examined through a case study how students interacted and provided peer feedback for each other when Twitter was enabled as a backchannel; students were also asked to report how they perceived their experience. The findings suggested that students participated actively in the microblogging-based peer feedback sessions. Although Twitter supported cognitive and corrective feedback, affective feedback was dominant. Student interaction on Twitter tended to be brief and involve low-level cognitive thinking in unguided, naturalistic learning contexts. Overall, students had a positive attitude towards using Twitter for peer feedback. Problems such as distraction and information overload were also identified.

Social media is being increasingly utilized in disaster relief work to identify safety issues, locate displaced-victims, and seek or provide support for those who need help. The presence of social media in disaster management has changed significantly in recent years, as it was not prevalent in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, but had become a powerful force in the 2013 Ya'an earthquake. This paper discusses the development of social media in disaster management via making a comparison between how it functioned in the two earthquakes. It examines the following aspects: who are the stakeholders that use social media in the earthquake management; how do they adopt this means in response to the earthquakes; and what are the outcomes of adopting social media with regards to public engagement and collaboration in an emergency event. As Sina Weibo acts as the equivalent of China's Twitter, the methodology relies on an analysis of posts in Weibo. The outcomes primarily show that: (1) authorities, celebrities and the public actively adopted social media for the purpose of information dissemination and resource mobilization; and (2) social media users are both content consumers and content generators in the times of earthquakes. The study concludes that social media as a backchannel communication tool is helpful for government institutions, corporations, and nonprofit organizations to build relationships with their stakeholders in the disaster management cycle. The result will interest academics and emergency management practitioners who are concerned with improving disaster communication.

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.

Listenership (consisting of backchannel feedback) and its effect on intercultural communication were investigated in 30 dyadic conversations in English between Japanese and American participants. The findings of this study demonstrate several differences in how members of each culture used backchannels in terms of frequency, variability, placement, and function. This study also found evidence supporting the hypothesis that backchannel conventions that are not shared between cultures contribute to negative perceptions across cultures. Thus, the findings of this study support the conclusion that listenership warrants more attention in EFL classes in Japan. Further, toward creating a pedagogical framework, this study also provides EFL professionals with a comprehensive account of the listenership of Japanese EFL speakers. Finally, this study also offers potential insights into the linguistic variation of native English speakers. That is, the negative perceptions that the American native English speakers reported of their Japanese EFL speaking interlocutors' listener responses in this study were not as pronounced as those reported by the British native English speakers in a previous study conducted by the same researcher., Intercultural Pragmatics, 11(1), pp.83-120; 2014

The Switching Wizard of Oz (SWOZ) is a setup to evaluate human behavior synthesis algorithms in online face-to-face interactions. Conversational partners are represented to each other as virtual agents, whose animated behavior is either based on a synthesis algorithm, or driven by the actual behavior of the conversational partner. Human and algorithm have the same expression capabilities. The source is switched at random intervals, which means that the algorithm’s behavior can only be identified when it deviates from what is regarded as appropriate. The SWOZ approach is especially suitable for the controlled evaluation of synthesis algorithms that consider a limited set of behaviors. We evaluate a backchannel synthesis algorithm for speaker–listener dialogs using an asymmetric version of the framework. Human speakers talk to virtual listeners, that are either controlled by human listeners or by an algorithm. Speakers indicate when they feel they are no longer talking to a human listener. Analysis of these responses reveals patterns of inappropriate behavior in terms of quantity and timing of backchannels. These insights can be used to improve synthesis algorithms.

Social TV (STV) that utilizes social media to create an interactive backchannel for video viewing increasingly attracts social audiences. This national web survey in Singapore was conducted to investigate 600 social media users with online video discussion experiences. The STV model examines the relationships and mediation effects among social constructs (i.e. perceived sociability, perceived social presence, and bridging social capital), program commitment, and program loyalty. Structural equation modeling results show that bridging social capital is positively associated with commitment and loyalty to programs. In addition, perceived social presence increases program commitment, but perceived sociability has no effect. Perceived sociability, as a predictor of social presence, and social presence itself are positive factors affecting bridging social capital. Moreover, bridging social capital significantly mediates the relationships between perceived sociability and program loyalty. Theoretical and practical implications for STV’s social constructs and program loyalty are discussed.

Marcada pela convergência da experiência televisiva com as novas mídias, a social TV se refere ao compartilhamento de conteúdos feito através das redes sociais e dos aplicativos de segunda tela de maneira síncrona ao fluxo televisivo. O fenômeno possibilita novas apropriações, subversões e amplificações do watercooler, isto é, a intermediação da conversação por plataformas digitais permite a interação em tempo real entre os telespectadores interagentes, ressignificando a experiência compartilhada. A partir deste contexto, este artigo tem o objetivo de refletir de que forma a social TV reforça o conceito de laço social de Wolton (1996) e engendra novas possibilidades à experiência televisiva. Para a discussão dessa questão, analisamos os conteúdos compartilhados pelo público no Twitter durante a exibição da décima temporada da série The X-Files. Concluímos que o fenômeno propicia a colaboração, o aprofundamento e a expansão em torno do universo ficcional.

This research focuses on pauses, overlaps, and backchannels based on conversation in vlog of Nessie Judge with title tips in speaking English. The duration the vlog is 7:32 minutes posted on November 27, 2016 on Nessie’s youtube account. When the speaker is speaking will occur in the conversation, become a reason the resercher to anlyze pauses, overlaps, and backchannels. The purpose of this research is to find out what the types of pauses, overlaps, and backchannels and how the pauses, overlaps, and backchannels in the conversation between Nessie and her partner. This research used qualitative method. To collect the data the researcher watched the vlog of Nessie. After the data collected, the data was classified into types of pauses, overlaps, and backchannels. Then, the reasercher analyzed the reason behind of it. The result of this research showed that there are two types of pauses in conversations. Filler and unfiller pause. And also there are two types of backchannels. Vocal backchannel and non vocal backchannel. And the last is overlaps which only once during the duration of the vlog.Keywords: conversation analysis, pauses, overlaps, backchannels, vlog

Students’ engagement is widely believed to be the single most significant predictor of persistence in learning process. It is generally reflected in active participation such as listening to presentation, expressing opinions, asking questions, and working on assignment. However, the idea of being embarrassed in front of peers and the feeling of being reluctant to disturb others can often be intimidating for many students and might prevent them to ask questions during class discussion. As the consequence, meaningful discussion that is expected to happen during the lesson oftentimes takes another form of side conversation such as whispering, note passing, and text messaging, the so-called backchanneling. In addition to this, the class size has also been generating another problem. The larger the class is, the greater challenges the teachers face to engage students in their learning. To address this issue, this research investigates how TodaysMeet, a digital backchannel chat platform, promotes students engagement in an Indonesian EFL large class and transfers the side conversation to the forefront. A number of 41 college students took part in this single-case study approach. The research data were taken from interviews, classroom observations, and students' task submission. The degree of students’ engagement was measured in 3 types of engagement i.e. emotional, behavioral and cognitive engagement. Research findings suggest that the digital backchannel promotes students engagement with learning activity, and enables lecturers to provide immediate feedback on the students understanding over the lesson material.

Artificial listeners are virtual agents that can listen attentively to a human speaker in a dialog. In this paper, we present two experiments where we investigate the perception of rule-based backchannel strategies for artificial listeners. In both, we collect subjective judgements of humans who observe a video of a speaker together with a corresponding animation of an artificial listener. In the first experiment, we evaluate six rule-based strategies that differ in the types of features (e.g. prosody, gaze) they consider. The ratings are given at the level of a speech turn and can be considered a measure for how human-like the generated listening behavior is perceived. In the second experiment, we systematically investigate the effect of the quantity, type and timing of backchannels within the discourse of the speaker. Additionally, we asked human observers to press a button whenever they thought a generated backchannel occurrence was inappropriate. Both experiments together give insights in the factors, both from an observation and generation point-of-view, that influence the perception of backchannel strategies for artificial listeners.

Amongst the most prominent uses of Twitter at present is its role in the discussion of widely televised events: Twitter’s own statistics for 2011, for example, list major entertainment spectacles (the MTV Music Awards, the BET Awards) and sports matches (the UEFA Champions League final, the FIFA Women’s World Cup final) amongst the events generating the most tweets per second during the year (Twitter, 2011). User activities during such televised events constitute a specific, unique category of Twitter use, which differs clearly from the other major events which generate a high rate of tweets per second (such as crises and breaking news, from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami to the death of Steve Jobs), as preliminary research has shown. During such major media events, by contrast, Twitter is used most predominantly as a technology of fandom instead: it serves in the first place as a backchannel to television and other streaming audiovisual media, enabling users offer their own running commentary on the universally shared media text of the event broadcast as it unfolds live. Centrally, this communion of fans around the shared text is facilitated by the use of Twitter hashtags – unifying textual markers which are now often promoted to prospective audiences by the broadcasters well in advance of the live event itself. This paper examines the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest. It constitutes a highly publicised, highly choreographed media spectacle whose eventual outcomes are unknown ahead of time and attracts a diverse international audience. Our analysis draws on comprehensive datasets for the ‘official’ event hashtags, #eurovision, #esc, and #sbseurovision. Using innovative methods which combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of Twitter datasets containing several hundreds of thousands, we examine overall patterns of participation to discover how audiences express their fandom throughout the event. Minute-by-minute tracking of Twitter activity during the live broadcasts enables us to identify the most resonant moments during each event; we also examine the networks of interaction between participants to detect thematically or geographically determined clusters of interaction, and to identify the most visible and influential participants in each network. Such analysis is able to provide a unique insight into the use of Twitter as a technology for fandom and for what in cultural studies research is called ‘audiencing’: the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a shared media event. Our work thus contributes to the examination of fandom practices led by Henry Jenkins (2006) and other scholars, and points to Twitter as an important new medium facilitating the connection and communion of such fans.

This article addresses a current issue in the field of conversation analysis. Presently, there is little consistency among researchers in the types of speech units used to analyze spoken discourse, which hinders the comparability and replication of findings across studies. This stems from the lack of transparency and authenticity in the literature regarding how speech units are defined and exemplified. Using the specific example of how the primary discourse context attracting backchannels in English, the clausal boundary, is identified in dynamic, emerging and spontaneous oral exchanges, this paper provides a comprehensive and replicable model for future studies to follow. Pedagogical implications are also briefly discussed., この論文は、会話分析の分野において現在抱えている問題の一つを取り上げる。現在、研究者の間では、会話を分析するために使用されるスピーチの（構成）単位となるものに一貫性が見られない。そのために取り扱われる研究論文を比較したり利用したりするときの妨げとなっている。この問題は、取り上げられている文献のスピーチの（構成）単位がどのように定義され、またどのように実例として挙げられているのかという観点から見ると、透明性や真正性に欠けていることから生じていると思われる。人と人との会話は、必然的に次々と絶え間なく変化しながら繰り出される。従って、この論文では、backchannel（あいづち）を引き出そうとしている主たる話し手の具体例を挙げながら、その会話のやり取りの中での語と語、あるいは節と節の境界はどのように提示されているのかを明示する。この研究は、広範囲の明確なモデルを提示することを目指す。また、ここでは教授法に関しても論じる。, 長崎大学言語教育研究センター紀要, 1, pp.25-46; 2013

In this paper, we introduce a new model called Latent Mixture of Discriminative Experts which can automatically learn the temporal relationship between different modalities. Since, we train separate experts for each modality, LMDE is capable of improving the prediction performance even with limited amount of data. For model interpretation, we present a sparse feature ranking algorithm that exploits L1 regularization. An empirical evaluation is provided on the task of listener backchannel prediction (i.e., head nod). We introduce a new error evaluation metric called User-adaptive Prediction Accuracy that takes into account the difference in people's backchannel responses. Our results confirm the importance of combining five types of multimodal features: lexical, syntactic structure, part-of-speech, visual and prosody. Latent Mixture of Discriminative Experts model outperforms previous approaches.

Previous models of turn-taking have mostly been trained for specific turn-taking decisions, such as discriminating between turn shifts and turn retention in pauses. In this paper, we present a predictive, continuous model of turn-taking using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). The model is trained on human-human dialogue data to predict upcoming speech activity in a future time window. We show how this general model can be applied to two different tasks that it was not specifically trained for. First, to predict whether a turn-shift will occur or not in pauses, where the model achieves a better performance than human observers, and better than results achieved with more traditional models. Second, to make a prediction at speech onset whether the utterance will be a short backchannel or a longer utterance. Finally, we show how the hidden layer in the network can be used as a feature vector for turn-taking decisions in a human-robot interaction scenario. QC 20210927

Online discussion has become one of the important strategies for the teacher to teach the students to think critically when conveying their ideas and become more proactive and creative. In this paper, padlet online discussion communication was conducted to examine its effectiveness in enhancing critical thinking. In this study, there are two types of critical thinking: macro and micro critical thinking. A total of 70 Universiti Utara Malaysia Management Foundation Programme students involved in this experimental research design. The students in treatment class are divided to few groups. Every group uses padlet online discussion to discuss the topic given. All the group members discuss and write their ideas in padlet. Ideas that are posted in padlet will be displayed in front of the class so that the entire group in the treatment class could see the given ideas. Paul’s (1993) model was used to analyze student’s macro and micro critical thinking in padlet online discussion and communication. The finding shows that students who used padlet online discussion backchannel communication have greater macro and micro critical thinking level than students who do not use online discussion.

This paper investigates how a robot that can produce contingent listener response, i.e., backchannel, can deeply engage children as a storyteller. We propose a backchannel opportunity prediction (BOP) model trained from a dataset of children's dyad storytelling and listening activities. Using this dataset, we gain better understanding of what speaker cues children can decode to find backchannel timing, and what type of nonverbal behaviors they produce to indicate engagement status as a listener. Applying our BOP model, we conducted two studies, within- and between-subjects, using our social robot platform, Tega. Behavioral and self-reported analyses from the two studies consistently suggest that children are more engaged with a contingent backchanneling robot listener. Children perceived the contingent robot as more attentive and more interested in their story compared to a non-contingent robot. We find that children significantly gaze more at the contingent robot while storytelling and speak more with higher energy to a contingent robot.

In this video, we provide an overview of the analyses, design, and evaluation of a backchannel opportunity prediction (BOP) model for a social robot listener.

Natural human interaction is characterized by interpersonal coordination: interlocutors converge in their speech rates, smoothly switch speaking turns with virtually no delay, provide their interlocutors with verbal and nonverbal backchannel feedback, wait for and react to such feedback, execute physical tasks in tight synchrony, etc. If virtual humans are to achieve such interpersonal coordination they require very flexible behavior plans that are adjustable on-the-fly. In this paper we discuss how such plans are represented, maintained and constructed in our BML realizer Elckerlyc. We argue that behavior scheduling for Virtual Humans can be viewed as a constraint satisfaction problem, and show how Elckerlyc uses this view in its flexible behavior plan representation that allows one to make on-the-fly adjustments to behaviors while keeping the specified constraints between them intact.

This study investigates the effect of native language (Mandarin Chinese) on the use of English discourse markers by L1 Chinese speakers of English. Few previous studies have been conducted on this area. Data for the study were gathered using individual sociolinguistic interviews with five native English speakers and ten L1 Chinese speakers. Results show that three Chinese discourse markers were found to have some influence on their corresponding English expressions. The L1 Chinese speakers using the deliberative function of I think in medial or final position (while the native English speakers did not) may have transferred their use of I think from their L1 wo juede because wo juede can mark the deliberative meaning in medial or final position. Second, the L1 Chinese speakers used yeah/yes as a backchannel after the interlocutor's reaction “uh huh” or “ok” while the native English speakers did not. This use may be transferred from the corresponding Chinese expression dui because dui was found to have the same use in the data. Finally, ah was found to perform a clause-medial function (followed by self-correction) by the L1 Chinese speakers; however, the native English speakers did not use ah for that function. The corresponding Chinese expression a was found to have the same correction function.

Tactile signing among persons with deaf-blindness is not homogenous; rather, like other forms of language, it exhibits variation, especially in turn taking. Early analyses of tactile Swedish Sign Language, tactile Norwegian Sign Language, and tactile French Sign Language focused on tactile communication with four hands, in which partially blind or functionally blind signers use both hands for production and perception in the conversation dyad. In this article, I add to this body of research by focusing on tactile one-handed perception in Swedish Sign Language, in which a signer uses the left hand to produce and receive signs, and an addressee uses the right hand not only to receive but also to produce signs after taking a turn. As part of this discussion, I also look at issues of conversation regulation, hand movement during the turn change, and variation in the backchannel signals. The study shows that in tactile signing, interlocutors must change hand position when taking turns.

This study explores presentation techniques for a chat-based virtual human that communicates engagingly with users. Interactions with the virtual human occur via a smartphone outside of the lab in natural settings. Our work compares the responses of users who interact with an animated virtual character as opposed to a real human video character capable of displaying realistic backchannel behaviors. An audio-only interface is compared additionally with the two types of characters. The findings of our study suggest that people are socially attracted to a 3D animated character that does not display backchannel behaviors more than a real human video character that presents realistic backchannel behaviors. People engage in conversation more by talking for a longer amount of time when they interact with a 3D animated virtual human that exhibits realistic backchannel behaviors, compared to communicating with a real human video character that does not display backchannel behaviors.

This study investigates presentation techniques for a chatbased virtual human that communicates engagingly with users via a smartphone outside of the lab in natural settings. Our work compares the responses of users who interact with an animated 3D virtual character as opposed to a real human video character capable of displaying backchannel behaviors. The findings of our study demonstrate that people are socially attracted to a 3D animated character that does not display backchannel behaviors more than a real human video character that presents realistic backchannel behaviors. People engage in conversation more by talking for a longer amount of time when they interact with a 3D animated virtual human that exhibits backchannel behaviors, compared to communicating with a real human video character that does not display backchannel behaviors.

While many spoken dialog systems are recently developed, users need to summarize and convey what they want the system to do clearly. However, in a human dialog, a speaker often summarize what to say incrementally, provided that there is a good listener who responds to the speaker's utterances at appropriate timing. We consider that generating backchannel responses, where appropriate, overlapped with the user's utterances is crucial for an artificial listener system that can promote user's utterances since such overlaps are the norm in human dialogs. Toward the goal to realize such a listener system, in this paper, we propose a voting-based algorithm of predicting the end of utterances early (i.e., before the utterances end) using audio-visual information. In the evaluation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of using audio-visual information and the applicability of the voting-based prediction algorithm with some early results.

Purpose This paper is concerned with the use of overlap as a conversational strategy. Specifically, the aim of the researcher is to investigate overlap types and the locations at which they occur in 'dispute', an Iranian live TV program. Design/methodology/approach The two hour Iranian live TV program “dispute” was video-taped. 10 minutes of this program was chosen randomly. The distinctive feature of this program was that it occurred naturally and was broadcasted on November 28, 2014. The minutes/seconds in which the technique, overlap, occurred were noted for detailed analysis. Finally, the selected excerpts were transcribed based on Jefferson’s (1983) transcription conventions. These transcriptions which include showing the overlaps, pauses, immediate turn taking, etc are shown in both Farsi and English versions of the data based on Jefferson. The transcribed data, was analyzed for determining instances of overlaps and their function. Findings the analysis found four functions for overlap as floor-taking, objection, confirming, and continuing. The last two functions, confirming and continuing, are somewhat similar. This similarity may be due to their similar roles in saving face (i.e. both of them are FSAs). What the present analysis shows, is that ‘continuing’ function has some degrees of ‘confirming’ firstly. Another understanding is drawn from the confirmatory function of overlap and its close relation with backchannel functions. Backchannels are functions in which listeners send signals of agreement (also confirming) and enthusiasm in what is being said by the speaker. Research limitations/implications One difficulty was the transcription of overlapped utterances, because in some cases, more than two persons talked simultaneously and it needed to be listened so many times with concentrated and focused attention. Practical implications The implications concern three areas of research: communicating with other cultures, media studies, and journalistic English. Most overlaps were as a result of impatience, haste, and the need to be approved of. This kind of behavior may be rooted in cultural matters of Iranians. There are implications, thus, for raising cultural differences matters conducting comparative studies. Issues like word choice, participants’ way of looking and gazes to each other, their pauses, tone, intonation, hedges, etc. may be of interest to delicate journalistic studies. Originality/value There are many studies in the field of discourse and conversation analysis which focus specifically on overlaps, but not any one of them focused on a 'dispute', as their data. This study with its focus on a specific type of discourse, that is dispute, is an original one which, to the knowledge of the researcher, has not been carried out in any other study. The results of this study which is the identification of four types of overlaps were also original and not have been encountered elsewhere by the researcher.

This paper analyzes the functions of the Japanese "Hai" and the Korean "Ne" used both as backchannels and as fillers. The findings are as follows: (i) the "Hai" and the "Ne" used as backchannels function as markers expressing both the listener's "understanding/accepting" of the speaker's utterance and the listener's "agreeing" with the speaker's utterance, while the "Hai" and the "Ne" used as fillers share the functions that express "discoursive border", "listener's agreement with the speaker's utterance", "listener's understanding of the speaker's utterance" and "speaker's understanding of her own utterance" , (ii) the "Hai" used as filler has a function of expressing the beginning of an utterance, but the "Ne" used as filler does not have such a function. From above, it is recognized that the "Hai" and the "Ne" used as both backchannels and fillers share the function of expressing an "agreement". This "agreement" is divided into two classes. When used as backchannels, they express the "listener's" agreement with the spoken content, while when used as fillers, they can also express the "speaker's" agreement with her own utterance. On the other hand, their function of expressing "discoursive border" does not relate to any of the functions of them being used as backchannels.

This article looks at the backchannel dialogue that took place between the Provisional IRA and the British government from 1972 to 1975, a time when violence was at its peak. Interest in this notoriously murky subject has grown in recent years. Articles, several book-length narrative histories and a biography have covered its various aspects. But, using new archival and oral sources (including an exclusive interview with a member of the British 1975 talks-team), a narrative of the backchannels is presented before a new interpretation is given. Above all this study concludes that, behind its hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising violence, a significant element of the Provisional IRA was interested in, and actively explored, a political solution to the conflict within months of the start of the Troubles.

This study analyzes the ways in which 2011 POD HBCUFDN Conference participants used Twitter to communicate about the annual meeting. Many messages mapped onto key faculty development priorities that were established in a prior large survey of faculty developers. However, important distinctions also arose, namely emphasis among tweeters on how faculty and students learn, faculty roles and rewards, and approaches to effectively engage in educational development work. We suggest that the conference backchannel served an important communicative function through development of social networks and resource sharing.

Contemporary higher education with its large audiences suffers from passivity of students. Enhancing the classroom with a digital backchannel can contribute to establishing and fostering active participation of and collaboration among students in the lecture. Therefore, we conceived the digital backchannel Backstage specifically tailored for the use in large classes. At an early phase of development we tested its core functionalities in a small-scale user study. The aim of the study was to gain first impressions of its adoption, and also to form a basis for further steps in the conception of Backstage. Regarding adoption we particularly focused on how Backstage influences the participants? questioning behavior, a salient aspect in learning. We observed that during the study much more questions were uttered on Backstage than being asked without backchannel support. Regarding the further development of Backstage we capitalized on the participants? usability feedback. The key of the refinement is the integration of presentation slides in Backstage, which leads to an interesting reconsideration of the user interactions of Backstage.

Cumulative cultural evolution requires that information is faithfully transmitted from generation to generation. The present study examines the role of agent interaction as a social learning mechanism through which information is transmitted across multiple generations. The performance of two types of linear transmission chains was compared: noninteractive (agents in adjacent chain positions were not permitted to interact) and interactive (adjacent agents freely interacted with one another). In both conditions, information (details of a narrative text) was lost as it was passed along the transmission chain. However, interactive transmission chains promoted more accurate recall of information than noninteractive chains. A content analysis revealed that most listeners actively participated in the information transfer process by seeking clarification and providing backchannel feedback to the narrator. Furthermore, the extent to which listeners engaged with the narrator was associated with narrator recall accuracy. Our results indicate that bidirectional agent interaction is an important consideration for studies of cultural transmission and cumulative cultural evolution.

PurposeThis paper seeks to report on the conception of a novel digital backchannel, Backstage, dedicated to large classes, aiming at empowering not only the audience but also the speaker, at promoting the awareness of both audience and speaker, and at promoting an active participation of students in the lecture. In learning settings with a large and typically passive audience, the goal of Backstage is to foster active participation and facilitate collaboration akin to small‐learning groups.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present the concept of a novel kind of digital backchannel that supports different forms of inter‐student communication via short microblog messages, social evaluation, and ranking of messages by the audience. The backchannel further supports immediate concise feedback to the lecturer of selected and aggregated students' opinions, making it possible to strengthen the lecturer's awareness of students' difficulties.FindingsThe concept is the outcome of a joint effort between computer scientists and educational scientists, and unifies technical and usability aspects with educational claims.Originality/valueThe concept combines computer‐mediated communication with elements of social media that not only foster active participation and collaboration among a large and otherwise passive audience, but also provide social means to self‐regulation and management of the backchannel discourse. The design of the backchannel is strongly influenced by findings of educational sciences.

This study examines the communicative functions of the Arabic religious formula maasaallah in light of speech act theory, Gricean maxims, and Brown and Levinson's politeness model. Analysis of 500 instances of this formula in a variety of naturally occurring settings in colloquial Jordanian Arabic shows that the expression, as an extension of its semantic value of expressing divine will, is used as an invocation, a compliment, an expression of gladness, an expression of modesty, a marker of sarcasm, and as a conversational backchannel. The data suggest that this formula is also used as a mitigating device, whereby it is used to soften face threatening acts such as refusal, complaint and criticism. It is concluded that this formula serves as a membership marker whose use marks the speaker as a social insider who avoids acting in a way that would invite the “evil eye.”

Following conversation analytic procedures, this study examines the use of backchannels in conversations between Korean English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners to identify the patterns and functions found in the interactional practices. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the use of the backchannel tokens yes, yeah, uh huh, and mm hm occurring in turn-intial positions. The results show the learners’ use of backchannels coincides with performances found in talk of native speakers, yet at the same time, discloses distinct aspects arising from the not-yet-competent status as second language (L2) learners. The learners employed the tokens yes, yeah, uh huh, and mm hm as continuers to signal the listener's attention and assure the speaker of the speakership. In particular, yeah was used for systematically gaining speakership in ongoing talk. Contrastingly, the learners were also found to use first language (L1) vocalic forms as backchannels in their talk applying them in a disfluent manner for speakership incipiency. Such behaviors seem to arise from unfamiliarity with the prosodic features of the target language, English. The findings provide a closer understanding of Korean English learners' backchannel behaviors and of L2 interactional practices.

This study is designed to examine how the secondary/subordinate host under institutional obligations and restrictions employs the interruption mechanism to supplement the dominant host’s narrative and elicit an audience’s laughter. Ten episodes totaling 239 minutes of the popular Chinese TV talk show Jinxing Show were selected, focusing on the “monologue” narrative section in which the interruption mechanism is given its best play. The data encompass 288 interruption turns and 80 non-interruption turns. Conversation Analysis is used to analyse the type of interruptions and the relation between interruptions and laughter. It is found that interruptions adopted by the assistant host can be analysed according to two aspects: rapport and intrusion, with the former consisting of backchannel and progression, while the latter is characterized by tease, disagreement, and pick-up. Backchannel and pick-up scarcely produce laughter from the audience, while progression and disagreement result in around half of the interruption that embodies laughter, and tease causes the strongest reactions. It is also argued that the interruption-laughter correlation is determined by the role identification and institutional obligations, which are primarily aimed at complementing the storytelling of the dominant host and enliven the atmosphere in the studio. Through administering quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study is expected to develop studies of institutional interruption by displaying how the secondary characters in institutional contexts (talk shows) full of dominance and restrictions exert resistance (interruption), while also accomplishing institutional responsibilities. Helping the audience and viewers appreciate the discursive skills of the talk show hosts is also likely.

This study investigated backchannels, short verbal responses such as yeah, employed by Indonesian L2 speakers of English in the interactions with L1 speakers of Australian English in Australian academic setting. The naturally-occurring dyadic interactions were audiotaped and scrutinised in a sequential analysis of conversation analysis. The examination was aimed to scrutinise the pragmatic functions and the placement of backchannels within the sequential organisation of the interactions. The findings showed that they used backchannel responses involving non-lexical items, lexical items, and combinations of lexical and non-lexical items. Backchannel responses existed in different linguistic environments that may be culturally specific such as after you know. Backchannels were used to show attentiveness, agreement, and comprehension of the speaker’s talk. Besides, they also employed backchannels to express politeness to satisfy the supervisors’ positive face in the interactions. In this study, they appear to converge their linguistic devices to that of their supervisors.

Turn taking is simplest systematic for the organization of turn taking for conversation (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974). In conversation, sometimes the participant violate the rules as they begin to talk, meanwhile the other speakers are still speaking, and none of words and sentences to say in turn. Therefore, the writer was interested to analyze the violation of conversation rules in turn taking in order to investigate kinds of violation of conversation rules in turn taking that happened in the second step class of CEC Mataram, especially in debating activity by using a descriptive qualitative design. Then, the data were collected through video-recording from the second step class members of CEC Mataram. They were about 65 students and one teacher. Based on finding of this study, the writer found out five violation s, such as violation of pause, gaps, laps, overlaps, and interruption . The first highest violation was pause violation with 135 times (81.3%) implies that the speaker in debating activity was silence within the turn given. The second one was interruption with 15 times (9.1%) implies that the other speakers began to talk when a speaker was speaking. The third was overlaps with 7 times (4.2%) implies that the speaker spoke at same time. The fourth was gaps with 5 times (3.0%) implies that the speaker did not talk directly when other speaker were given a chance to turn when one speaker was replaced. The fifth was laps with 4 times (2.4%) implies than none options for next turn is used when speaker change, the participant did not indicate backchannel during the debating activity (0% of violation).

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.

This article investigates the speech of Humanities and Natural Science instructors and students in German and American lectures and interactional classes. It describes cross-cultural variation in these two academic genres using naturally occurring language data. This cross-cultural comparison focuses on linguistic items and behaviors that serve primarily interactional and structural functions, as well as functions of conversational support, contrast, and the expression of formality. Structures investigated include certain types of question tags, questions, structural markers, backchannel signals, and turn-initial response tokens. A quantitative sociolinguistic analysis is conducted which provides a global view of structures used in the cultures and contexts investigated. When compared to their German counterparts, American instructors and students make academic student–teacher discourse seem more interactive through the use of questions. American instructors also provide more structure in the interactional class format through the use of questions and in the academic lecture through structural markers and progression checks. German instructors provide more conversational support through the use of turn-initial response tokens and linking elements; however, at the same time they employ more elements that express direct contrast. Furthermore, German academic discourse is made to appear more formal through the use of group vocatives and – in the case of the lecture – frequent use of read-out speech.

During face-to-face interactions, listeners use backchannel feedback such as head nods as a signal to the speaker that the communication is working and that they should continue speaking. Predicting these backchannel opportunities is an important milestone for building engaging and natural virtual humans. In this paper we show how sequential probabilistic models (e.g., Hidden Markov Model or Conditional Random Fields) can automatically learn from a database of human-to-human interactions to predict listener backchannels using the speaker multimodal output features (e.g., prosody, spoken words and eye gaze). The main challenges addressed in this paper are automatic selection of the relevant features and optimal feature representation for probabilistic models. For prediction of visual backchannel cues (i.e., head nods), our prediction model shows a statistically significant improvement over a previously published approach based on hand-crafted rules.

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.

In Norway, the secret negotiations culminating in the 1993 Oslo agreement are still seen as a shining moment in the nation9s history, so when the files of the entire process were discovered to be missing from government archives, a minor public scandal erupted. After laying out the Oslo ““myth”” and its cast of characters, the author recounts the story of the disappearance of the files, new revelations concerning their scope, and the (thus far unsuccessful) quest to recover them. The author concludes by exploring the implications of the backchannel negotiations for the entire Oslo process and its lessons for conflict resolution, particularly third-party mediation in highly asymmetrical conflicts.

This article reports on an experimental study that investigated the effect of different conditions of listener backchannels on the fluency of L2 speakers. Participants were 14 non-advanced Japanese learners of English who each performed three oral tasks in three different backchannel conditions: (1) verbal/nonverbal (V/NV), (2) nonverbal-only (NV), and (3) no backchannels (NB). Verbal backchannels included ‘mm-hm’ and ‘uh-huh’ while the nonverbal backchannels involved head nodding. Fluency was assessed via five temporal measures. As hypothesized, the results showed that the 14 Japanese participants were, on average, most fluent in the V/NV condition, less fluent in the NV condition and least fluent in the NB condition. The differences obtained in fluency between the V/NV and NB conditions were found to be significant. These results lend support to the ‘backchannel output hypothesis’ which suggests that backchannels may facilitate the fluency of non-advanced learners of English during oral tasks depending on the nature of backchannel use in their L1 and sociocultural environments.