Sikveland2012

Sikveland2012
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Sikveland2012
Author(s)	Rein Ove Sikveland
Title	Negotiating towards a Next Turn: Phonetic Resources for ‘Doing the Same’
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, IL, back-channels, interactional phonetics, topic-organization, turn-taking
Publisher
Year	2012
Language	English
City
Month
Journal	Language and Speech
Volume	55
Number	1
Pages	77-98
URL
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830911428859
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

Download BibTex

Abstract

This paper investigates hearers’ use of response tokens (back-channels), in maintaining and differentiating their actions. Initial observations suggest that hearers produce a sequence of phonetically similar responses to disengage from the current topic, and dissimilar responses to engage with the current topic. This is studied systematically by combining detailed interactional and phonetic analysis in a collection of naturally-occurring talk in Norwegian. The interactional analysis forms the basis for labeling actions as maintained (‘doing the same’) and differentiated (‘NOT doing the same’), which is then used as a basis for phonetic analysis. The phonetic analysis shows that certain phonetic characteristics, including pitch, loudness, voice quality and articulatory characteristics, are associated with ‘doing the same’, as different from ‘NOT doing the same’. Interactional analysis gives further evidence of how this differentiation is of systematic relevance in the negotiations of a next turn. This paper addresses phonetic variation and variability by focusing on the relationship between sequence and phonetics in the turn-by-turn development of meaning. This has important implications for linguistic/phonetic research, and for the study of back-channels

Notes