Cover not available
Article published In:
Interaction Studies
Vol. 25:1 (2024) ► pp.70–99

Backchannels in the lab and in the wild

ORCID logo | Illinois State University
| Elon University
| University of California, Santa Cruz

Backchannel choices affect conversational development. Some backchannels invite interlocutors to continue to the next part of what they are saying and others invite them to elaborate on what they have just said. We tested how communicative modality (audiovisual, audio, text), environmental setting (wholly in-lab, partially in the wild), and conversational goals (on-task, off-task) influenced backchannel usage by participants. We found that backchannel production depends on modality, setting, and goals. For example, we found that specific backchannels played a more prominent role in self-motivated dialogue. Knowledge of how backchannels are used has both theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: backchannels, discourse processes, communicative setting, communicative task, spontaneous communication
Article outline
  • A collaborative approach to dialogue
  • Two approaches to backchannels
    • Generic and specific backchannels
    • Horizontal and vertical backchannels
    • Overlap between generic and horizontal backchannels
  • Examples of how backchannels are used
  • Factors affecting backchannel use
    • Goals of the conversation
    • Task familiarity
    • Conversational modality
  • Current studies
  • The influence of conversation type on backchannel use
  • The Roommates Corpus
    • Method
    • Results
    • Discussion
  • The IM Reciprocity Corpus
    • Method
    • Results
    • Discussion
  • The Artwalk Corpus
    • Method
    • Results
    • Discussion
  • The influence of modality and location on backchannel use
  • Discussion
  • General discussion
    • Limitations
    • Future directions
    • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Published online: 7 June 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.21036.ngu
References
Bangerter, A., & Clark, H. H.
(2003) Navigating joint projects with dialogue. Cognitive Science, 27 1(2003), 195–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bavelas, J. B., Coates, L., & Johnson, T.
(2000) Listeners as co-narrators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79 (6), 941–952. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bryant, G. A.
(2010) Prosodic contrasts in ironic speech. Discourse Processes, 47 (7), 545–566. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H.
(1996) Using language. Cambridge university press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E.
(1991) Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 127–149). American Psychological Association. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Schaefer, E. F.
(1989) Contributing to discourse. Cognitive science, 13(2), 259–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
D’Arcey, J. T., Oraby, S., & Fox Tree, J. E.
(2019) Wait signals predict sarcasm in online debates. Dialogue & Discourse, 10 (2), 56–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dideriksen, C., Fusaroli, R., Tylén, K., Dingemanse, M., & Christiansen, M. H.
(2019) Contextualizing conversational strategies: Backchannel, repair and linguistic alignment in spontaneous and task-oriented conversations. In A. K. Goel, C. M. Seifert, & C. Freksa (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2019) (pp. 261–267). Montreal, QB: Cognitive Science Society. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drummond, K., & Hopper, R.
(1993) Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on language and Social Interaction, 26 (2), 157–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox Tree, J. E.
(2015) Discourse markers in writing. Discourse Studies, 17 (1), 64–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox Tree, J. E. & Clark, N. B.
(2013) Communicative effectiveness of written versus spoken feedback. Discourse Processes, 50 ( 5 ), 339–359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox Tree, J. E., Mayer, S. A., & Betts, T. E.
(2011) Grounding in instant messaging. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 45 (4), 455–475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fox Tree, J. E., Whittaker, S., Herring, S. C., Chowdhury, Y., Nguyen, A., & Takayama, L.
(2021) Psychological distance in mobile telepresence. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 151 1, 102629. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C.
(1986) Between and within: Alternative sequential treatments of continuers and assessments. Human Studies, 9 (2/3), 205–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P.
(1975) Logic and conversation. In Speech acts (pp. 41–58). Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guydish, A., D’Arcey, J. T., Fox Tree, J. E.
(2021) Reciprocity in conversation. Language and Speech, 64 (4), 859–872. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guydish, A., & Fox Tree, J. E.
(2021) Good conversations: Grounding, convergence, and richness. New Ideas in Psychology, 63 1. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2022) Reciprocity in instant messaging conversations. Language and Speech, 65 (2), 404–417. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, A. H. & Smith, S. W.
(1998) “And people just you know like ‘wow’”: Discourse markers as negotiating strategies. In Andreas H. Jucker & Yael Ziv (Eds.), Discourse Markers: Description and Theory, 171–201. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jurafsky, D., Bates, R., Coccaro, N., Martin, R., Meteer, M., Ries, K., … & Van Ess-Dykema, C.
(1997) Automatic detection of discourse structure for speech recognition and understanding. In 1997 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Proceedings (pp. 88–95). IEEE. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiesler, S., Siegel, J., & McGuire, T. W.
(1984) Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. American Psychologist, 39 (10), 1123–1134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knudsen, B., Creemers, A., & Meyer, A. S.
(2020) Forgotten little words: How backchannels and particles may facilitate speech planning in conversation? Frontiers in Psychology, 11 1. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, H. Z.
(1999) Grounding and information communication in intercultural and intracultural dyadic discourse. Discourse Processes, 28(3), 195–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, K., D’Arcey, J. T., Walker, M., & Tree, J. F.
(2021) Referential Communication Between Friends and Strangers in the Wild. Dialogue & Discourse, 12 (1), 45–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, K., Fox Tree, J. E., & Walker, M. A.
(2016) Coordinating Communication in the Wild: The Artwalk Dialogue Corpus of Pedestrian Navigation and Mobile Referential Communication. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation.Google Scholar
Paatsch, L. E., & Toe, D. M.
(2014) A comparison of pragmatic abilities of children who are deaf or hard of hearing and their hearing peers. Journal of deaf studies and deaf education, 19 (1), 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A.
(1982) Discourse as interactional achievement: Some uses of “uh huh” and other things that come between sentences. In Tannen, Deborah (ed.), Analyzing discourse: Text and talk, (pp. 71–93). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Tolins, J., & Fox Tree, J. E.
(2014) Addressee backchannels steer narrative development. Journal of Pragmatics, 70 1, 152–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) Overhearers use addressee backchannels in dialog comprehension. Cognitive Science, 40 (6), 1412–1434. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tolins, J., Namiranian, N., Akhtar, N., & Fox Tree, J. E.
(2017) The role of addressee backchannels and conversational grounding in vicarious word learning in four-year-olds. First Language, 37 (6), 648–671. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tolins, J., Zeamer, C., & Fox Tree, J. E.
(2018) Overhearing dialogues and monologues: How does entrainment lead to more comprehensible referring expressions? Discourse Processes, 55 (7), 545–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yngve, V. H.
(1970) On getting a word in edgewise. In M. A. Campbell (Ed.), Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 567–578). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar