When Listeners Talk (Pragmatics & Beyond New)

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When Listeners Talk

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor Andreas H. Jucker Justus Liebig University Giessen, English Department Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10, D-35394 Giessen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey, University of Southern Denmark Herman Parret, Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp Jef Verschueren, Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Chris Butler, University College of Ripon and York Jean Caron, Université de Poitiers Robyn Carston, University College London Bruce Fraser, Boston University Thorstein Fretheim, University of Trondheim John Heritage, University of California at Los Angeles Susan Herring, University of Texas at Arlington Masako K. Hiraga, St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University David Holdcroft, University of Leeds Sachiko Ide, Japan Women’s University Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, University of Lyon 2 Claudia de Lemos, University of Campinas, Brazil Marina Sbisà, University of Trieste Emanuel Schegloff, University of California at Los Angeles Deborah Schiffrin, Georgetown University Paul O. Takahara, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies Sandra Thompson, University of California at Santa Barbara Teun A. Van Dijk, University of Amsterdam Richard J. Watts, University of Berne

Volume 92 When Listeners Talk: Response tokens and listener stance by Rod Gardner

When Listeners Talk Response tokens and listener stance

Rod Gardner University of New South Wales

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gardner, Rod. When listeners talk: response tokens and listener stance / Rod Gardner. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 92) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.Conversation analysis. I.Title. II.Series P95.45.G28 2001 401.41--dc21 isbn 90 272 51088 (Eur.) / 1 58811 0575 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)

2001043029

© 2001 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Contents

Acknowledgements Transcription Notation

ix xi

Chapter 1. Introduction

1

Chapter 2. A Review of Response Tokens Introduction What do response tokens do? A brief survey of eight response tokens Early work on response tokens in Conversation Analysis Eight response tokens Typical Uses of Eight Response Tokens Continuer uses Acknowledgement uses Newsmarking uses Change-of-activity uses Summary: Eight Response Tokens Tokens-in-a-series The Dietetic Interview Conclusion

13 13 17 22 22 24 25 25 34 40 52 57 58 58 64

Chapter 3. Five types of Mm: The non-response tokens Introduction The Lapse Terminator Mm The Degustatory Mm The ‘Hesitation Marker’ Mm The Repair Initiator Mm The Answering Mm Conclusion

65 65 67 78 87 93 95 96

vi

When Listeners Talk

Chapter 4. From continuer to acknowledgement token: Mm as a token between Mm hm and Yeah Introduction Distribution of Mm, Mm hm/Uh huh and Yeah Terminal pitch direction and the response token Mm Mm as a weaker, more neutral acknowledger than Yeah Response tokens Mm, Yeah and Mm hm with falling terminal pitch direction Canonical cases of Mm as acknowledgement token with falling contour Canonical cases of Yeah as acknowledgement token with falling contour Non-canonical case of Mm hm with falling contour Response tokens Mm, Yeah and Mm hm with rising terminal pitch direction Canonical cases of Mm hm as continuer with rising terminal pitch direction Non-canonical cases of Mm as continuer with rising terminal pitch direction Non-canonical cases of Yeah as continuer with rising terminal pitch direction Conclusion Chapter 5: The Weakness of Mm: Topic disalignment and zero projection Introduction Mm and topic disalignment Mm plus substantial same speaker talk Topic change Topic recycling Mm plus substantial same speaker talk in dispreferred environments Free-standing Mm and contiguous silence Mm followed by silence Mm following a silence Free-standing Mm and other speaker continuation Mm at the end of a multi-unit turn Mm in topic attrition environments

99 99 101 104 105 108 109 113 116 117 119 124 126 129

133 133 135 136 136 141 147 152 152 155 159 159 162

Contents vii

Mm at a point of completion, with falling intonation Mm as a continuer, with fall-rising intonation Mm plus brief same speaker reactive talk Yeah and Mm hm followed by substantial same speaker talk Conclusions

163 166 168 176 184

Chapter 6: Intonation contour and the use of Mm Introduction Intonation in conversation: a review Identifying intonation units Functions of intonation Mm with falling intonation Canonical cases of Mm as acknowledger with falling contour Falling Mm as a Xexible second position response Falling Mm in post-expansion position Falling Mm following a multi-unit turn Falling Mm accompanied by other minimal same speaker talk Falling Mm: Some apparently anomalous examples Mm with fall-rising intonation Free-standing, fall-rising Mm in the environment of incipient trouble in the talk Fall-rising Mm in an environment in which a topic has not yet become salient Fall-rising Mm in the middle of a multi-unit turn by the other speaker Fall-rising Mm following a dependent clause Fall-rising Mm in the environment of dispreferreds Fall-rising Mm in the environment of hitches and perturbations A fall-rising Mm with substantial same speaker talk Mm with rise-falling intonation Rise-falling Mm in the environment of assessments Rise-falling Mm following other speaker assessment Rise-falling Mm prior to own assessment Rise-falling Mm following other speaker expression of inner state Rise-falling Mm in the environment of ‘involving’ topics Rise-falling Mm in some other environments Conclusion

187 187 188 189 193 196 197 198 199 200 202 204 210 213 214 216 220 221 225 228 232 236 236 238 241 242 244 249

viii When Listeners Talk

Chapter 7: Summary and future directions Summary Future directions

251 251 254

Notes Bibliography

257 269

Acknowledgements

An enterprise such as this could not reach its conclusion without the support of many people. I am indebted, Wrst, to those who gave generously of their advice during the study at the University of Melbourne from which this book grew: Susanne Döpke and Mark Durie, who provided supervisory support, and to John Heritage for invaluable input through the middle and later stages of the project. Numerous students have provided stimulating discussions on issues in Conversation Analysis. I wish to mention the following: Valerie Astbury, AnneMarie Barraja-Rohan, Catarina Cafarelli, Libby Clark, Anna Filipi, Sera Giannone, Anna Medeiros, Ruth Pritchard, Elizabeth Taylor and Anna Milionis. Colleagues have also given their time to read, discuss, or make comments. Foremost amongst these are Paul Drew, Maria Egbert, John Gibbons, Sue Hood, Tony Liddicoat, Ilana Mushin, Manny SchegloV and Johannes Wagner. The study is also indebted to the fourteen volunteers, who must remain anonymous, who agreed to being taped, and who provided the data without which this work would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank Ilana Mushin for her love and support during the Wnal stages of the writing of this book, and love and thanks to my mother Brigitte, brother CliV and late father John.

Transcription notation

The transcription system used in this book is JeVersonian, with some modiWcations. In particular, the notations are compiled from Atkinson & Heritage (1984), JeVerson (1984a), SchegloV (1990; ND), as well as Sacks, SchegloV & JeVerson (1974), although some of the conventions used in this last paper have been superseded as transcription practice has evolved. In addition, some speciWc notations have been developed by the author.

Simultaneous, overlapping and latched utterances Turns beginning simultaneously are marked by left-hand square brackets: [

B: A:

[That wz the problem, bicoz they were[wo:z, I r’member that letter you wrote,

In overlap, the point of overlap onset is marked with left hand square brackets: [

B: A:

No:, (they wer- (.) y’kno [:w they-) [b’d et th’ sa:me ti:me, they- y’know-,

and the point at which overlap stops is marked by right-hand square brackets: ]

L: M:

[seeing ‘f I cn:- cook th’m, ] [Cook th’m a mea:l er something, ]

Contiguous stretches of talk between which there is no gap and no overlap (latched) are linked with equal signs. This can be between diVerent speakers: =

B: A:

oh well, (.) y’know couldn’t we come over to your place?= =Yeah, well they will be tomorrow, so, (.) huh

This sign is also used where the single utterance of a speaker cannot be kept on a adjacent lines (transcriptionally disjoined utterance) to show that it is the

xii When Listeners Talk

same speaker utterance (to accommodate overlap or continuer tokens): =

B: A: B:

alone, like if your Ma[c’ntosh], wasn’t= [ M m , ] =connect’ to a network, sortev thing:, jest on its ow:n,

It is also used for within-turn latching, to show that the same speaker produces a new intonation unit without a pause between units. =

N: M: N:

The: Pear’s encyclopaedia, Yes, it certainly will,= have you used this teabag a second time¿ I don’t know, I didn’t- (0.4) you:’d(.) made my tea last night, (0.3) (a:h de but-)

If more than one speaker latches onto a previous turn, this is shown through a combination of equal sign and square bracket =[

B: A: B:

Yea:h.= =[But I mean ] =[we:ll, (.) ] the only:, (0.6) problem I see the:re

Where simultaneous utterances are coterminal and latch onto a subsequent utterance, this is marked by a right-hand bracket and equal sign: ]=

L: M: M:

An yet- n’ (.) it w’ld be a -te:rrible time, to [sell at Ry:e.]= [Yes it would.]= =I -kno:w,

Intervals in and between utterances Intervals are measured in tenths of a second, and placed within curved brackets. Silences can occur within a turn or turn constructional unit (pauses): (0.0)

B:

I mea:n (0.8) y’know I picked ‘em up Monday

or between turns (gaps):

Transcription notation xiii

B: A:

No:, I said look put Alistair ondo it. (0.4) It’ still the:re!

A very short pause, or micropause, of less than 0.2 seconds (ie. within the normal transition space), is indicated by a full-stop between brackets: (.)

M: L:

Yeah (.) [Okay?] [Okay,]

Prosodic features of utterances There is no adequate way of capturing all the subtleties of intonation and prosody on paper. The terminal contour is indicated by punctuation marks (. , _ ; ¿ ? !). Note that these are used to mark terminal pitch direction, and are used diVerently from graphological convention. In itself, this is a crude system, but can render the intonation of an utterance to a satisfactory degree for most purposes in the analysis of conversation. Note also that these symbols do not necessarily occur at obvious syntactic boundaries. .

A full-stop/period indicates a falling terminal contour, a ‘Wnal’ intonation. This can occur with many other speech activity types than a statement, including questions. The best identifying feature is that it ends at the low end of the pitch range. B: Y’kn’w it’s jess bo:ring.

;

A semi-colon is one of three continuative terminal contours. It indicates a slight fall, from high to mid, or from mid, but not to low. It is most common turn internally during a multi-unit turn at talk. A: Oh; ga:me player.

_

An underline mark at the end of a word is a second continuative contour. It represents level pitch terminally. It is most characteristically used in listings or in hesitation markers. A: Yeah_ right,

,

A comma indicates a third continuing contour, a slight rise. The crucial point for transcription purposes for all three continuative contours is that they represent talk that is hearably incomplete, ie. the hearer (or the

xiv When Listeners Talk

transcriber as overhearer) senses that there is more talk to come. These three types of terminal contour are not restricted to utterances occurring prior to the last utterance of a turn. M: O:wh, I- don’ wanta go that fa:r,

?

A question mark indicates a strongly rising terminal contour, typically, but not exclusively, for polar questions. There has been an increasing use of high rise for statements in recent years in some English speaking regions, including Australia (see for example Guy and Vonwiller 1989). Its characterising feature is that it rises a long way in pitch and ends up at the high end of the pitch range. B: so:- c’n you: give him a copy ev my sa:les repo:rt?

¿

The ‘Spanish’ question mark is used for terminal contours that rise more than in a continuing contour, but less than the sharp rise of the question mark contour. Its characterising feature is that it rises substantially, but ends up in the mid to mid-high end of the speaker’s pitch range, rather than the high end. B: j’s< gave ‘im a biteva ba:ckgrou:n’¿ coz ee kne:w we’d bin ta:lkin’ fer some minutes¿

!

A exclamation mark indicates a strongly animated tone, and may have pitch movement in any direction. It has been used very sparingly in this book. If it is used, then it is characterised by violent Xuctuations in pitch, such as from very low to very high, or is preceded by a strongly undulating contour. A: -Rea:lly:!

Each of these marks in itself will be used in combination with some widely diVering contours internal to the intonation unit. However, in combination with the stress markings explained below, a fairly Wne reading of what is going on intonationally can be captured. Stress is indicated by underlining. CA has been inconsistent with marking for stress over the years, but JeVerson has come up with the most Wnely grained conventions. Stress is realised in speech through drawl (sound stretch) and/or a marked pitch movement and/or increased amplitude. Tonic (or nuclear) stress will always have pitch movement internal to the syllable, which other stressed or unstressed syllables will not. Conventionally in CA, short underlin-

Transcription notation

ing indicates less stress than a long underlining. _

B:

en j’st all a the things I wanneda gedone, I didn’t gedone¿

For this book, only single symbol underlining has been used to indicate stress, with increased amplitude being indicated by upper case letters, and increased length (sound stretch) by colons. This allows for a more delicate representation of the internal contour of a stressed syllable in an intonation unit, as well as the overall contour of the intonation unit. As virtually all strongly stressed syllables are lengthened, these syllables will include a colon. The following examples use the token Mm to illustrate the points. If the contour of the syllable moves initially at level tone, the Wrst letter of the syllable is underlined. xxx

M: L:→

(On) channel two; (0.1) channel two:. Mm:.

Note that the full stop after the Mm indicates that it falls away terminally to low pitch. The underline symbol after the Mm indicates that the contour remains level through the syllable. B:→

I l:ike the one where you (0.4) mm:_ (0.8) it’s rilly f:unny how they do: that,

If the contour of the syllable falls and then rises, a colon after the Wrst symbol or sound, internal to the syllable, is underlined. x:x

M:

L:→

So; (0.2) I a:sked him-; ho:w w’d it go:; over three: mo:nths. (0.3) M:m,

Note the comma after the Mm indicates that the syllable has a slight terminal rise. If the contour of the syllable rises and then falls, the second letter symbol of the syllable is underlined, and is followed by a colon that is not underlined. xx:

B: A:→

Yea:h; it’s acksh’ly a good way e- (.) ev being °Mm:°.

xv

xvi When Listeners Talk

Note the full stop after the Mm indicates that the syllable falls away to low pitch terminally. If the contour of the syllable rises throughout, the last symbol of the syllable is underlined, in Mm most commonly this is a Wnal colon. xx:

A: B:→

In fact I’ll have two days alone with Luisa ‘n’ Carol. Mm:?

Note the question mark after the Mm indicates the syllable rises strongly to high pitch terminally. Drawl, or the lengthening or prolongation of a sound (sound stretch), is marked through colons. Each colon represents approximately the length of a beat in the rhythm of the preceding talk: :

A:

it wz th’ sa:me bra:nd, en’ (0.5) I went to:: I ws pud on to: thee:: em:, (1.3) a pla:ce, the Werribee ti::le (0.3) place,

If shift in pitch is particularly marked, this is indicated by up arrows for a marked rise in pitch and down arrows for a marked drop in pitch. They indicate a ‘recalibration of talk all of a sudden to a higher [or lower] pitch’ (SchegloV, 1990). ↑

L:

↓

A:

if only this: (.) ↑wre:tched person Carola wasn’t the:re. Why she was late tonight, ↓yea:h (.) just a (0.4) little retaliatory thing¿

The symbols ˆ and © are also used to indicated sudden movement to higher or lower pitch respectively. (These are used to avoid the Symbol font necessary for the up and down arrows, as that font is non-proportional and of a diVerent width from the proportional fonts such as Courier, and can thus cause problems of alignment between the lines in a transcription). These two symbols are found in the following fragment from the Chicken Dinner transcript. ©

^

Viv:→ O©kay[good.? Sha: [Yuwuh (.) g’ss I g’d say ih same abaht p’t[atoes. Nan:→ [^Mm::.

Certain combinations of these symbols can indicate strongly undulating intonation:

Transcription notation xvii

B:

I mean ↑un:↓be↑lie:v↓able. ↑ho:w ↓many ↑clo:thes.

Talk that remains at a high or a low pitch can be enclosed by up or down arrows respectively. This means that the talk between the arrows was either all raised or all lowered in pitch: ↑words↑

B:

↑Oh, c’n I ‘ave th’ ca:r↑ Monday.

Without the right closure, ↑ or ↓ means that the high pitch has sudden onset, but it then gradually wanders down (from ↑) or up (from ↓) to normal pitch level, ie. there is no sharp return to the baseline pitch. Falsetto voice or very high pitch can be indicated by double up arrows: ↑↑

A:

↑THAT’S ↑↑RI:GHT!

Similarly, very markedly low voice can be indicated by double down arrows: ↓↓

I:

↓↓whee:.

Loud talk is indicated by upper case. CAPS

A:

↑THAT’S ↑↑RI:GHT!

The option exists for using loud talk. WORD

WORD

A:

SMALL CAPS

to:: keep up the

for loud talk and ALL CAPS for very

THIRTY

perCE:(H)NT¿

For talk that is softer than the surrounding talk, the degree sign is used: °

B:

she’s °prob’ly late°, ·hh and then on the way ho:me,

If it is very quiet (ie. barely audible), a double degree sign can be used: °°

A:

and Doris visited her day- in, dayout, ev’ry day fer three ‘n’ a half yea:rs:¿

B: °°Yeah°°,

Subscribed degree sign is used for unvoiced talk or vocalisations, including whispering: °

B:

°so:°.

n:’ yeh I see why it-

xviiiWhen Listeners Talk

An abrupt cutoV is represented by a single dash. This generally represents a glottal stop. -

L:

We:nsda:y, but- I- c’d- cook afta the:m?

Stuttering is represented by a series of symbols connected by hyphens w-w-word

L:

b-b-but Pat wanted to tell her himse:lf,=

Audible aspirations are represented by h’s, audible inhalations are represented by h’s preceded by a raised dot: hh ·hh

B: B:

but- hh she’s prob’ly late, ·hh and then on the way ho:me,

H’s inserted into the words in the transcription indicate breathiness: h

P:

an- an’ they think peohple w’l pa:hy tah come ta this, do the:y¿

An h in parenthesis indicates plosive quality, as in talk in laughter or breathlessness (h)

A:

Depends, th’ first time might ev been when they w’re three:, and the(h)y do(h)n’t re(h)me(h)mbe(h)r i(h)t huh huh huh huh huh,

Gutturalness is shown by inserting gh into the transcription where the gutturalness occurs. gh

A:

huh huh huh huh huh huh huh °huh° (.) ·hughh

Sympathetic voice (legato) can be shown by enclosing the talk between the # symbol: #

L: M:

and also: (0.7) just- (0.7) so: bad Rebe:cca and Suza:nne? about #↑Ye:s#,

Creaky voice is enclosed by asterisks *

A:

when her (.) elderly mother *became frai:l*, ·hh

Transcription notation xix

(Note in earlier versions of JeVersonian transcription, the asterisk functions in the same way as right square brackets in later versions to indicate the oVset of overlap. Also in some later transcriptions, the asterisk is used in place of the degree sign [°] to indicate quiet talk.) Tremulous voice can be indicated by the tilde: ~word~

B: A:

[~Yea:h ri:ght~], [ > ~b’coz it ] ws gedding a bit late~words
I mean I think-

A:

So:: e:m, (.) I ws jes sortev ↑thinking about that toda:y, ‘n’ sortev thinking about pudding, (1.3) , if ya know whad I mea:n¿

A prepositioned left carat without a postpositioned right carat indicates a hurried start, which then returns gradually to the previous pace (common at self-repair starts) >

B:

four hundr’d dollars more expensive, (0.5) per single user client, (.) tha:n:, (1.2) >s- single us’r, like stand alone, like if your Mac’ntosh, wasn’t connect’=

xx

When Listeners Talk

Laughter is generally represented by an approximate phonetic rendition of the laugh, eg. huh, huhn, hah, hih. B: A:

Don’ think I’ve hadth’ pleasure. huh huh huh hh do(h)n’ bo(h)ther huh huh huh (0.3) ·huh

Smiling while talking, which can be detected audibly (also known as smile talk), can be enclosed by $ $

A:

huh huh huh hh $don’ bother$ huh huh huh (0.3) ·huh

Vocalisations that cannot be satisfactorily transcribed, references to contextual features or occurrences, or prosodic features not otherwise captured, can be indicated within double parentheses. This is for transcribers’ description, rather then representation, of what is going on at a particular time (SchegloV, 1990): (( ))

?: I?: I:

B:

((smoke exhalation?)) hhh (1.7) ((sniff)) ↓↓whee:. ((music begins)) (5.2) ((whispered harshly)) °Yea(h):h°.

Inadequate hearing If the transcriber fails to make a coherent hearing of the talk of a speaker, this is indicated by the use of empty parentheses, the distance they are apart in the transcript reXecting the approximate length of the unheard talk: P: P:

↑Yea:h the’re nice ones. (0.4) ( (0.8)

).

If the transcriber achieves an uncertain hearing of the talk, this is placed within parentheses: M:

Well it doesn’t seem (to me like Susan like) she did suici:de. (2.5)

If the transcriber is unsure which speaker has produced a particular utterance,

Transcription notation xxi

this can be indicated by the use of a question mark: P: ?:

↑Yep- ↓that’d be nice:. (4.9) Can I have some.

Alternative possible hearings can be placed in two sets of parentheses separated by a slash: P:

Come on (Poss)/(Boss).

Transcriptionist highlighting and text ellipsis A feature of interest referred to in the text can be highlighted in the transcription by a right pointing arrow to the left of the line or lines being highlighted: →

A: → A:

B:→

=°Yeah, well they will be tomorrow, so, (.) huh° hhh yea:h-, (1.4) ↓°You: kno:w ‘at I mean°, hh °the’re obv’ously:, (0.3) completely comf’table, with coming he:re°¿ ↑Yea:h, (.) oh yea:h,

If portions of the transcription are not included this can be represented by a spaced series of dots, either horizontally: . . .

L:

·hh But- (.) I mean hh ·hh he’s going (.) . . . an’ see if the’s any packing wo:rk,

or vertically . . . .

A:

So yer going Mon:da:y, . .

B:

The’re puttin’ an- (0.4) a n:ew (1.1) (Nobel) network system,

Chapter 1

Introduction

The principal way in which we are social beings, in contrast to being individuals, is through talk. It is the main way in which we are not alone. The brief listener responses that are the subject of this book shed light on one of the central features of this human togetherness: the listener. In the totality of all the language of talk, there are few indicators of the stance and orientation of this side of conversation. At least, that is how it appears at Wrst glance. However, such unobtrusive response tokens as Yeah, Mm hm, Okay and Mm turn out to be exquisitely complex, in a way that is still becoming apparent. This is a book about these listener activities in talk: the brief mono- or bisyllabic responses of a restricted number of types. Listeners as a group have generally been neglected in language research. The discipline of linguistics, for example, has traditionally focused on language production (speaking and writing). As Goodwin (1986) says, “[t]he primary source of data for the study of language has typically come from the activities of speakers. Noticeably lacking within linguistics, has been systematic study of the action of hearers” (p 205). This is understandable to the extent that what language users say or write is available and ‘out there’ for study, unlike listening (or reading), the processes of which are internal, invisible, and not directly accessible to an observer. In pragmatics, too, most work has focused on speakers, for example in the speech act tradition (e.g. Austin 1962; Searle 1969, 1979, 1992), Gricean pragmatics (e.g. Grice 1975), and politeness theory (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1988), though there is also a focus on hearer-oriented speech acts in the last of these. There are, though, some scholars who have paid more attention to the roles and contributions of listeners in interactive discourse. The sociologist GoVman (e.g. 1976, 1978) is notable in this regard, having written extensively on the listener. He distinguished various kinds of listeners: overhearers; ratiWed, but non-addressed participants; and addressees (GoVman 1976). Psycholinguists have an established tradition of studying hearers, in early work in controlled ‘laboratory’ settings, but more recently some, for example Clark (e.g. 1992), have begun to study the listener in natural interactive settings. In

2

When Listeners Talk

discourse analysis, Brown (1995) has also explored how listeners achieve comprehension in discourse. Other exceptions to the general trend to ignore listener roles have been McGregor and White (1990:1), who considered ‘receiver-responders’ to have a crucial role in the shaping of discourse, as the real “arbiters of what becomes meaningfully determinant in an interpretive sense”, and as such can be understood to be more powerful than speakers. This, they argue, is because speakers express their own ideas and meanings, whereas listeners are more likely to be the ones for whom what is said is new. That is, the listener is more likely to be the one who goes through a transformation, for whom changes in states of knowledge occur. In addition, as Pellowe (1986:1112) has said, “a person who is able to listen, but who does not need to speak, suVers fewer doubts (does not need to trade vulnerability for conWrmation) than one who needs to speak but is unable to listen”. The most extensive studies of the role of the listener as recipient and coconstructor of interactive talk have come from conversation analysts working in the ethnomethodological tradition (e.g. Sacks 1992a, 1992b; Sacks et al. 1974; Goodwin 1981, 1986; SchegloV 1982; JeVerson 1984a; Heritage 1984b). Many of these studies have focussed on brief, non-topical responses. The range of activities participants in talk-in-interaction do in the role of listener include the following (cf. Gardner 1994). This list includes archetypal examples of each:1 – – –

– – –

–

Continuers, which function to hand the Xoor back to the immediately prior speaker (e.g. Mm hm, Uh huh); Acknowledgements, which claim agreement or understanding of the prior turn (e.g. Mm, Yeah); Newsmarkers, and newsmarker-like objects, which mark the prior speaker’s turn as newsworthy in some way, (e.g. Really?, the change-ofstate token Oh, the ‘idea-connector’ Right); Change-of-activity tokens, which mark a transition to a new activity or a new topic in the talk (e.g. Okay, Alright); Assessments, which evaluate the talk of the prior speakers (e.g. Great, How intriguing, What a load of rubbish); Brief questions for clariWcation or other types of repair, which seek to clarify mishearings or misunderstandings (e.g. Who?, Which book do you mean?, or the very generalised Huh?); Collaborative completions, whereby one speaker Wnishes a prior speaker’s utterance (e.g. A: So he’s moved into . . . B: commercial interests);

Introduction

–

Many non-verbal vocalizations and kinesic actions (e.g. sighs, laughter, nods and head shakes).

The Wrst four of these — continuers, acknowledgement tokens, newsmarkers and newsmarker-like objects, and change-of-activity tokens — are discussed in this book. These objects have historically been neglected by linguists and lexicographers, and even by many discourse analysts. The high frequency of their occurrence in spoken interaction, however, suggests they are worthy of study, and potentially of signiWcant interest to students of language. The listener responses on this list are frequently referred to in the literature as ‘backchannel’ utterances (cf. Yngve 1970; Duncan and Fiske 1977). There is, though, a problem with the broad notion of ‘backchannel’: a wide range of functionally very varied tokens is covered by the term, and it is very easy for these diVerences can be obscured. As Drummond and Hopper (1993a:162) say: The failure … to distinguish between diVerent classes of back-channels and the consequences they may have for speakership incipiency has made the backchannels category a hodgepodge — though the concept itself captures a basic intuition about brief turns. The concept remains widely cited, but evidence for its usefulness is thin and undiVerentiated.

One objective of this book is to survey the major distinctions between some backchannels, namely those from the list that can be characterised as response tokens: continuers, acknowledgement tokens, newsmarkers and change-ofactivity tokens. These tokens are a prime example of action types of a nonprimary speaker (or current listener) in interactive talk, and demonstrate the non-primary speaker’s power to inXuence the course of talk, by providing evidence of the stance that the recipient in the talk is taking at that moment (cf. Gardner 1998). Together with assessments, response tokens provide information to other participants in the talk not only about how some prior talk has been receipted, but also some information on how the response token utterer is projecting further activities in the talk, for example whether they approve of, agree with, disagree with, will remain silent on, or have something to say about the prior talk. This is not done in a way that says something topically or semantically precise, but through the general characteristics of the brief response that has been given. Response tokens are diYcult to describe, as they lack meaning in the conventional dictionary sense of the word. They have long eluded clear treat-

3

4

When Listeners Talk

ment by researchers of conversational interaction. Linguists have rarely considered them (but see Fries 1952; Yngve 1970), probably in part because they are not incorporated into clausal structures, which has been the overriding focus of linguistics in recent decades. Response tokens often stand alone in a turn as single items. Even linguists interested in pragmatics and language-inuse have struggled to provide adequate and convincing descriptions of response tokens. This is especially true of more conventional linguistic approaches to the study of language, with their intuitive, ‘native speaker’ understanding of what is going on in talk. Whilst response tokens have attracted the attention of many discourse analysts, particularly those interested in questions of language and gender, this work has in most cases continued to treat them as a homogenous, undiVerentiated group. There is, though, one approach to the study of naturally occurring spoken interaction, ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA), which has made greater headway in unraveling the mysteries of response tokens. CA focuses on the occurrence of talk in the context of an emerging, coconstructed dialogue, with each utterance dependent upon what has gone before, and in turn setting up a context for a next utterance (cf. Heritage 1984a), and has a major focus on trying to discover how the participants in the conversation, rather than the analyst, understand what is going on. If one studies what it is that response tokens are responding to, and what speakers do after a response token has been produced, and how participants themselves deal with them, then one can begin to make sense of how they are used.2 From the foregoing, it is apparent that it is not enough simply to consider response tokens as items in themselves, for example their phonetic form, prosodic shape, or intonational contour. What they do is highly dependent not just on sound shape, but also on the context in which they occur, particularly their timing and their precise placement within a sequence of talk, or whether the token is an ‘only’ in its turn. They provide wonderful examples of the collaborative nature of interactive discourse, and illustrate the importance of the co-construction of talk by participants (cf. Jacoby and Ochs 1995), and the ways in which meaning is transformed from utterance to utterance. As Goodwin and Goodwin (1987:4) say (emphasis in the original): The treatment that a bit of talk gets in a next utterance may be quite diVerent from the way in which it was heard and dealt with as it was spoken; indeed, rather than presenting a naked analysis of the prior talk next utterances characteristically transform that talk in some fashion — deal with it not in its own terms but rather in the way in which it is relevant to the projects of subsequent speaker. Thus while

Introduction

subsequent utterances can reveal crucial features of the analysis participants are making of prior talk they do not show how participants hear the talk as it is emerging in the Wrst place, what they make of it then, and what consequences this has for their actions, not in a next turn, but within the current turn.

The focus of Goodwin and Goodwin’s observations is assessments, utterances that do appreciative, sympathetic or evaluative work, and which “can range from fully referential and predicational … down to relatively desemanticized displays of empathy, etc., that lack an explicit referent and evaluation, but do display aVective involvement in principal speaker’s statement” (Goodwin and Goodwin 1987:25 – fn. 15). These observations on how responses transform the prior talk are similarly applicable to response tokens such as Mm, Yeah and Okay. Even a continuer takes a stance: if a listener does nothing except hand back the turn to the prior speaker, this contrasts with doing anything else, and this means that the prior turn has been responded to in a particular way. There are, though, also some crucial diVerences between assessments and response tokens. In a discussion of continuers (as one sub-type of response tokens) and assessments, Goodwin (1986:210) points to a particular diVerence (apart from the obvious ‘evaluative’ one) between the two. The latter “display an analysis of the particulars of what is being talked about” through there evaluative stance on the prior talk, whereas continuers take no such stance to the content of the unit of talk to which they are responding, “but rather deal with that unit as a preliminary to another”. Mm hm/Uh huh in particular show a low level of speakership incipiency, being used primarily to return to Xoor to the prior speaker. In the same paper Goodwin also notes that some assessments, such as a long, falling Ah::: (unlike Beautiful or How sad for example) resemble continuers in that they have no readily identiWable semantic content, but their impact appears to hang as much as anything on their intonation contour and prosodic form being Wtted appropriately to the talk to which they respond. Further, assessments can occur as a last response to an extended turn, a position which is inappropriate for a continuer, which, if it does occur in that position, would most likely be indicative of a problem with the telling (though of course some other response token types may occur at the end of an extended turn, such as Okay). A third diVerence is that continuers are purely recipient actions, whereas assessments can be done by recipient or primary speaker. Assessments, though, share some other qualities with continuers (and other response tokens), apart from the lack of semantic content of response

5

6

When Listeners Talk

tokens and some assessments. One feature they have in common is that “despite their apparent simplicity [they] constitute one central resource available to participants for organizing the perception and interpretation of what is being talked about” (Goodwin 1986:49). They also provide participants “with the ability to not simply display alignment to ongoing talk, but establish and negotiate that alignment through a systematic process of interaction while the talk being aligned to is still in progress” (Goodwin 1986:49). We are then, according to Goodwin, dealing with two structurally diVerent ways of dealing with another’s talk. Assessments comment on what another has said, without treating it as preliminary to something else, and continuers (and some other response tokens) treat the talk to which they are responding as an emerging element in a larger, as yet incomplete structure. Continuers share the non-evaluative stance with acknowledgement tokens, newsmarkers and change-of-activity tokens3 . What they do is a contribution to the management of the turn-taking (such as handing the Xoor back to prior speaker), or provide information on how topical talk is being treated (acknowledged, as news, as being ripe for closure). Response tokens also are not distributed evenly through talk. Their most natural home is during extended turns by another, such as a storytelling or an extended explanation. In fact, even though they can occur hundreds of times in an hour of talk (as in much of the data used in this study), there are also long sequences of talk in which they hardly occur, most typically in ‘turn-by-turn’ talk (cf. Sacks et al. 1974). The uneven rate of occurrence also appears to be related to individual factors. JeVerson (1993) reports that some speakers of English use both Mm hm and Yeah, whilst others use very few Mm hms. Guthrie (1997) found similar individual variation amongst her subjects in their use of Mm hm and Okay. Also in the data set used for the main study reported in this book, there was great variation in the use of Mms, with the highest users producing them at a rate of more than 200 per hour, and the lowest at six per hour. The distribution of response tokens can also be considered at the level of the turn. It comes as no surprise that they are overwhelmingly placed at transition relevance places (TRPs) (cf. Sacks et al. 1974; Ford and Thompson 1996), that is, around points in the talk of others that are potentially grammatically, intonationally and pragmatically complete. An example of this systematic placement at TRPs is seen in the extract below, which is taken from a dietetic interview, in a phase in which D (the dietician) is giving Cl (the client) advice about modifying his diet.

Introduction

(1)

Diet, 29.7.96:1630

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

D: Cl:→ D:

Cl:→ D:

D: Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D:

I mean granted you are only having it a few times a ?we:ek? [·hh- but they’re just a-= [Mm hm, =potential source of uh (.) calories th’t·hhh jess tuh make a seggestion,= en’ ( [ ) you c’d try:: the:[m, [Righ’. [Mm hm, ·h- other things are things like (ev course) ·hh if yuh like yo:ghurt-? (.) low fat yoghu’t (the:re)¿= =Mm [hm, [as a- (.) desse:rt-¿ [might ] be anothuh= [Ye:hs.] =option:¿ [·hhhhhh ] or a light Fru:che¿ if= [Uh; huh,] =yuh like the Fruch [es ·hhh (.) [Mm hm, uhm or with (.) a low fat custard¿ . . .

It can be seen that the majority of these response tokens are placed very neatly at point of possible completion, that is, at points at which speaker transition would be relevant if this were not an extended ‘advice-giving’ turn by D, but a sequence in which the turn-taking rules for conversation were being followed. For example, the Wrst Mm hm in line 3 is spoken during the inbreath by D and just after she has completed her utterance, I mean, granted you are only having it a few times a week. There are, though, a few instances in this passage where the response tokens are not placed precisely at the point of potential completion. The Mm hm in line 18 overlaps with the -es of Fruches at the end of or a light Fruche, if you like the Fruches. This Mm hm (similar to the Mm hm in line 7) is very close to the end of the utterance, and within the normal ‘space’ for transition relevance. Sometimes response tokens are not placed close to an obvious point of possible completion. Very often this is not random, but they are positioned at what Lerner (1996) calls an ‘opportunity space’, which is a point of partial grammatical completion, such as after an initial subordinate clause, but before a subsequent main clause, as in the following fragment (from Lerner 1996). (2)

Mother’s Day (simpliWed)

1 2

D:

S-so if if ah you were strong in your feeli:ngs about (0.2) people (0.2)

7

8

When Listeners Talk

3 4 5 6

A:→ D:

Mm hm= =you that you li:ked (0.3) and it was completely contrasted to (0.4) what your mother (.) thought was right . . .

A’s Mm hm here is placed after a potential completion of D’s if-clause, but note that it is only potentially, and not actually complete: it is potential and not actual completion that speakers orient to. Research has found that each response token is used in diVerent ways from others, and that each is a variable, multifunctional token in its own right. This variability can be extreme, to the extent that speakers regularly utter nonce words such as Nyem, Neuh, Mnuh or Nyuh (cf. JeVerson 1978b), which appear to be blends of more ‘standard’ versions of the tokens, so that Nyem, for example, looks like a blend of No, Yeah and Mm. As JeVerson has shown, even such seemingly weird utterances are at least at times used to achieve rational and orderly ends. This may be an equivocal stance towards a prior utterance, as in ‘I’m not sure whether I agree with that or not, I don’t know whether I want to say “yes” or “no”, so I’ll say “nyuh”’. Whilst response tokens are highly variable, even unstable, they do have identiWable core forms and core uses. As Heritage (1984b:335) says of acknowledgement tokens, they are “used to achieve a systematically diVerentiated range of objectives which, in turn, are speciWcally consequential for the onward development of the sequences in which they are employed”. Whilst there is still a great deal to be discovered, some fairly robust preliminary Wndings about the way in which many of them are used have emerged. Response tokens have, though, been seen by some as unimportant, even trivial objects. As SchegloV (1986:111) says of the beginnings of telephone conversations (and which can equally be said of response tokens), they “can seem a peculiar object on which to lavish scholarly attention”. However, response tokens are amongst the few objects that reveal something about how the responder-recipient is engaging in talk as a social action, whatever it may be — important or trivial — and such talk is, as SchegloV (1986:112) says, “what appears to be the primordial site of sociality”. One example may suYce to illustrate an attitude that demotes response tokens to the realm of triviality. The Birmingham discourse analysis tradition uses a hierarchical model of discourse, Wrst developed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), and developed by Burton (1981) and others. This model proposes a ranked structure to discourse starting with the smallest unit of discourse, the ‘act’, which is very roughly equivalent to a single utterance, then the next

Introduction

smallest unit, the move, followed by the exchange, the transaction, and the interaction. The move approximates to a turn at talk, though one turn may comprise more than one move. Two moves, such as a question-answer, complaint-denial, compliment-rejection, make an exchange, which in turn link together to form transactions, which are sequences of exchanges that are related, most obviously topically. These again form sequences which ultimately constitute an entire interaction. Within this model of the structure of spoken discourse, response tokens are considered to be examples of utterances akin to ‘acts’. Burton (1981) places them within this category, and deWnes the ‘acknowledge’ act in a similar way to Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), saying that its function is to show that an Informative has been understood, and its signiWcance appreciated. Note how these tokens are undiVerentiated and underanalysed. Stubbs (1983:190) says of the acknowledge act (which includes Yeah, Uh huh and Mm) that it is the minimal purely metainteractional category of move, which does no more than indicate that an utterance has been heard and accepted into the stream of talk, and thus indicates continued auditory presence … A functional gloss might be: ‘I am still listening’ (emphasis added).

Again, apart from an assumption that response tokens are indicators of hearing and acceptance, rather than a complex bunch of utterances that does very varied work, there is a suggestion, with ‘no more than’, that they are unimportant and trivial. In later work in this tradition, Francis and Hunston, who worked on ordinary conversation, have a category of act which they call ‘engage’ acts, which include Mm and Yeah as minimal feedback tokens. They say the function of these acts “is to provide minimal feedback while not interrupting the Xow of the other participants’ utterance” (Francis and Hunston 1992:133). In their coded transcripts, engage acts appear in parentheses in the ‘act’ column. They are thus relegated to marginal status, implying lack of importance in the discourse, doing something ‘minimal’, and allowing the main speaker to ‘Xow’. Once again the privileging of the speaker over the listener is illustrated. It can be instructive to note how these tokens are seen by non-scholars. A media interviewer in Australia, for example, has told me that journalists are often instructed as part of their training to withhold their Mms during interviews, though no-one could give him a convincing reason why they should. But as Heritage and Greatbatch (1991) observe, the recipients in media interviews are Wrst and foremost the audience at the other end of the airwaves, and

9

10

When Listeners Talk

not the interviewer. A response token is an appropriate action only for the true recipient, and thus not for the mediating interviewer. In the Weld of medicine, the use of Okay has been an object of reproach by medical trainers. Beach (1995) reports that this token was seen by the trainers as being an inappropriate response by a student doctor to a patient in consultations, as they considered it to carry connotations of ‘good’ or ‘all right’. The trainers cited an example in which a student responded with an Okay to a patient who admitted to smoking. As a result, the following is found in a program of the medical school in question: [Too frequent use of Okay] encourages the RPAP [Rural Physician Associate Program] student to be sensitive to and aware of the destructiveness of using the word ok as a response … approximately 50% of the students recognize they are inadvertently reinforcing some harmful behaviours and the inappropriateness of this phenomenon … Given the use of ok as a response to patient answers, the patient may think the doctor believes smoking, drinking, or other potentially harmful behaviors are acceptable. Additionally, an ok response also conditions and prepares patients to wait for the doctor’s next question, forcing the student to work and interrogate harder to obtain necessary personal information. RPAP faculty use direct confrontation and suggestion to eliminate the use of the word ok in interviewing (p 263).

These medical trainers thus believe that an Okay can be so powerful as to encourage patients to engage in activities harmful to their health! Beach pointed out to them that Okay, in this use, is not necessarily approving of the behaviour it responds to, but rather is being used as a device for moving on from one question (or question set) to another, as in: (3)

Diet:29.7.96:SimpliWed

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

D: Cl:

D: → Cl: D: D: D:

An:d with the chicken, would you tend to eat skin? or would you take the skin off?= or= =U::::::HM:, I think my wife leaves the- s:kin on:: an’ she takes et o(h)ff, but I think I leave it on. °hih [hih ·hh° [°O-kay°¿ °that’s fi:ne.° °( )° (°Ah we can talk about it,)° ·hh an:d what about with your meat. D’you tend to have the fat on:? or d’you take the fat off:¿

The Okay in line 6 is placed at a boundary between one question about fat on chicken, and the next question about fat on other meat. This has no implica-

Introduction

tions in terms of the dietician accepting the patient’s consumption of fat as good. This point is explicated further in Chapter 2. There are thus diVering views on the importance of response tokens in talk. In fact, some non-linguists appear to attach very considerable power to these small objects, whilst many researchers into spoken interaction downgrade their importance, either fairly explicitly, as the Birmingham discourse analysts, or implicitly, as for example researchers into language and gender issues. A major purpose of this book is to show some of the ways in which these tokens are used, particularly in their core uses. Chapter 2 is a survey of eight response tokens, summarising current knowledge on their main uses. These tokens are: Mm hm, Uh huh, Yeah, Mm, Oh, Right, Okay and Alright. The subsequent chapters present an in-depth description and analysis of one of these tokens, Mm, which illustrates how complex, Xexible and variable they can be. These chapters will include a summary of Wve uses of Mm, with a brief reference to three further uses that are discussed in subsequent chapters. This will be followed by a comparison between Mm and the two most closely related tokens, the continuer Mm hm4 and the stronger acknowledgement token Yeah, which is followed by an examination of Mm as a weak acknowledgement token. There is then a chapter on the eVects of intonation on Mm, especially terminal pitch direction. Depending on factors such as placement within a sequence of talk, variation in intonational shape and terminal pitch direction, Mm can be an acknowledgement token, a continuer or an assessment. Mm has been chosen for this detailed study because, Wrst, it has been very little studied previously, and second, because there is so much to say about just one response token. Indeed, there is a lot more that could be said. The Wnal chapter draws some conclusions and suggests some areas for future research.

11

Chapter 2

A review of response tokens

Introduction The brief responses that are the subject of this book can be glossed as conversational objects that indicate that a piece of talk by speaker has been registered by the recipient of that talk. They are “neutral1 monitoring responses and ‘generalized acknowledgers’” (Müller 1996:136), claiming that talk by another has been heard, acknowledged, perhaps understood or agreed with or treated as news, or not news. In some cases they are uttered instead of something more topical or substantial, or used to pass the turn back to the prior (or to another) speaker, and sometimes to indicate incipient speakership, or if shaped with certain prosody, such as a marked rise-falling tone or high pitch, to utter encouragement or appreciation (in which case they have aYnities with assessments), or if low and level in tone, indiVerence. They include Mm hm, Uh huh, Mm, Yeah, Oh, Right, Okay and Alright.2 There is inconsistency in the literature in what these conversational items are called. Several of the terms used refer to a wider range of response types than is discussed here. For example, the terms ‘backchannels’ or ‘backchannel responses’ (Yngve 1970) include not only response tokens, but also clariWcation questions, completions by one speaker of another’s utterance, and nonverbal responses. They have also been called: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

‘verbal listener responses’ (Dittman and Llewellyn 1968); ‘accompaniment signals’ (Kendon 1967); ‘aYrmative responses’ (Hirschman 1994 [1973]); ‘acknowledge acts’ (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975); ‘hearer signals’ (Bublitz 1988); ‘reactive tokens’ (Clancy et al. 1996); ‘minimal feedback’ (e.g. Holmes 1997); ‘minimal responses’ (e.g. Fishman 1983); ‘receipt tokens’ (e.g. Atkinson 1992).

14

When Listeners Talk

This last term including sub-types such as 10 11 12

‘continuers’ (SchegloV 1982); ‘acknowledgement tokens’ (JeVerson 1984a); and ‘newsmarkers’ (Heritage 1984b).

The most widely used term is probably ‘minimal responses’. In this book the generic term for the ‘acknowledging’ group (continuers, acknowledgement tokens and newsmarkers) will be ‘response tokens’, following the more recent conversation analysis tradition (e.g. Silverman 1998), as this term is semantically transparent, and best captures the nature of the restricted group that is the subject of this book. Response tokens are one class of conversational objects whose primary functions are not to make reference to the world, but to provide some information on the course the talk is taking. This distinction is not completely clear cut, but nevertheless useful. The broad class of words, phrases, particles and nonlexical vocalisations that do not make reference outside the emerging ‘text’ of the talk can accomplish functions such as linking utterances, adjacent or disjunct, in various ways (discourse markers), projecting a certain course for the ensuing talk, for example signaling an upcoming disagreement (dispreference markers), or contributing to the management of the turn-taking system (hesitation markers), expressing positive or negative aVect, judgement or attitude (assessment tokens), as well as simply acknowledging a prior utterance (acknowledgement tokens), indicating non-uptake of an opportunity to talk (continuers) or marking a heard utterance as news (newsmarkers). Such response tokens are usually brief, mono- or bisyllabic utterances. Amongst these discourse organising objects, which are not usually integrated into the syntax of an utterance, discourse markers are “elements which bracket units of talk” (SchiVrin 1987:31) , and speciWcally “function like a twoplace relation, one argument lying in the segment they introduce, the other lying in the prior discourse” (Fraser 1999:938). They are typically conjunctions, adverbs and prepositional phrases (p. 943), and can be used to relate messages, for example contrastively, (e.g. In comparison), in a quasi-parallel manner, (e.g. Furthermore), or as a conclusion, (e.g. So), or they can be used to relate topics (e.g. Incidentally as a marker of digression, As I was saying as a reintroduction). They have procedural meaning, in the sense that they contribute to the organisation of propositional meaning in the talk, and they are locally, contextually negotiated (p. 950). They are also typically used to link


arguments by the same speaker. A less lexis-like group is the hesitation markers, such as Um or Er, whose primary use appears to be as a turn-holding device, saying something like ‘I’m (still) here, I’m (still) talking, I’m (still) in my turn’, and they are typically used in the middle of a current speaker’s turn. They can, however, also be used at the beginning of a speaker’s turn, which is the typical position for a response token. Other items that function to help set the course of talk include ones which are not spoken by the current main speaker, but by a recipient of the talk, for example markers of dispreference, including Well or Yes but. These are frequently used to project disagreement (cf. Levinson 1983; Pomerantz 1984). Assessments, which are spoken by current speaker or recipient, evaluate some prior talk, include Wow, Oh dear or Great and many other expressions (cf. Goodwin 1986). When response tokens as a generic group are discussed in the literature, it is often diYcult to know which ones are being referred to. Frequently authors list two or three ‘minimal responses’ followed by a vague ‘etcetera’. Dittman and Llewellyn, for example, call their ‘listener responses’ “brief responses (‘mmhmm’ ‘I see,’ and the like)” (1968:79); Kendon (1967) includes nonvocal responses such as head nods; Bublitz (1988) takes a more action-oriented position, his ‘hearer signals’ being “speech acts such as agreeing, supporting, approving, doubting, inquiring etc” (p. 161), which can, on this deWnition, be a longer response; for Fishman minimal responses are utterings such as Yeah, Umm, Huh (1983:95); ‘backchannels’, a larger variety of response types, include for Yngve (1970) all utterances that are primarily displays of recipiency or listenership, including some clause-length utterances such as brief questions; for Duncan and Fiske (1977), ‘backchannel utterances’ cover collaborative completions (completion by a speaker other than the one who began the utterance), some types of repair, repetitions, and some kinesic responses such as head nods, as well as ‘minimal responses’ such as Yeah and Mm hm. In the conversation analysis tradition, various types of response tokens have been distinguished from one another, including ‘continuers’, typically Uh huh, Mm hm and Yeah (e.g. Sacks 1992a, 1992b; SchegloV 1982), ‘acknowledgement tokens’ such as Yeah3 (e.g. Drummond and Hopper 1993a) and Mm (Gardner 1997), and ‘newsmarkers’ such as Really, I see, and Oh (e.g. Heritage 1984b). Other studies that refer to these items also often use their terms (most commonly ‘minimal responses’) inconsistently or vaguely.4 In the conversation analysis tradition, Sacks (1992b:410) appears to have coined the term ‘continuer’ for items such as Uh huh, Mm hm and Yes, whilst

15

16

When Listeners Talk

SchegloV (1972) used this term around the same time. JeVerson (1981) was probably the Wrst to use the term ‘newsmark’ for utterances such as Yer kidding, Really? and Did you?, whilst Heritage (1984b) distinguished Oh from these as a particular kind of newsmark, a ‘change-of-state’ token, which is used to say something like ‘I now know something that I didn’t know before’, whereas JeVerson described the eVect of Oh as a ‘sudden remembering’ (1978a:221–222). The term ‘acknowledgement’ appears to be used particularly, though not exclusively, for Yeah, whose primary function is retrospective receipt, claiming understanding, agreement, or simply hearing. The primary function of a continuer (such as Uh huh), in contrast, is the prospective and immediate handing back of the Xoor to the prior speaker (cf. JeVerson 1984a). It should be noted, though, that this is a distinction concerning the action of a particular type of token on a particular occasion, rather than a way of distinguishing categorically between tokens. That is, Yeah may be seen to be doing acknowledging work on one occasion, and continuer work on another (cf. Chapter 6), depending on its sequential position (e.g. what it is responding to, and the way in which it is responded to in turn by other speakers), any silence that may surround it, and its prosodic shape (e.g. its intonation contour, pitch). A further type of response token is Okay, one of the major uses of which Beach (1993:341) characterises as “both closure-relevant and continuative”. He says that Okay is activity-shift implicative, that is, one conversational action is completed, and its speaker is ready to move on to a next one. This action may have been an adjacency pair, as in a question and answer in a series in an interview in which information is being gathered (cf. Heritage and Sorjonen 1994), or a longer sequence of turns, or even a series of turn sequences. A recipient’s use of Okay upon apparent completion of this action or set of actions is typically saying that participants can now negotiate moving on to a next action, or to a new action series. This may be a new question in the interview agenda, a change of topic, or even a pre-closing move to the whole conversation (cf. SchegloV and Sacks 1973). It can be said, then, that the literature is far from consistent in the way in which brief recipient responses are treated. The marginal status for language researchers of many of these vocalisations is also reXected in their graphological representation, which is marked by considerable inconsistency seen in the citations above, e.g. Mm versus M versus Hmm versus Umm; Mm hm versus Mhm versus Mmhmm versus Um hmm; Yeh versus Yeah; Uh huh versus Uhhuh versus Unh-hunh.5 All of this suggests that ‘minimal responses’ are not so


“readily identiWable” as Roger and Schumacher (1983:700) claim. However, there does appear to be a wide consensus that at the core of this group on the side of vocalised rather than non-vocalised responses are Mm hm, Uh huh, Yeah and perhaps Mm, in that they are included in virtually all lists. It can be seen that there is no widespread agreement in the literature about what constitutes a ‘minimal response’ or ‘response token’. This in itself is not a problem, though it does suggest that there is a great deal that requires further study.

What do response tokens do? In the Wrst section of this chapter, it has been argued that there is a lack of consensus concerning what does or does not count as a response token or minimal response. In this section, I shall discuss the literature in terms of claims that are made concerning the types of actions these items appear to be doing in conversation and other forms of talk, and their contribution to talk as an interactive event. Again, it will be seen that there is a lack of consensus, but also it is suggested that this is, at least in part, because these diverse and highly variable utterance types are frequently treated as a homogenous and undiVerentiated group, lumped together through a premature coding, with accompanying claims that they display, for example, attention, agreement or understanding. Zimmerman (1993) objects to this process of coding and lumping, with a concomitant obscuring of diVerences in their prosodic shape and intonation contours, and their sequential environment. He cautions that such coding must be based on a close observation of the details of the talk and its environment, and not on analysts’ intuitions. Coding obscures complexity and diVerence, leading to generalisations that are insensitive to subtle diVerences dependent on sequential position in the Xow of the interaction and individual speaker diVerences. Response tokens (as many other conversational phenomena) can then be treated as ‘denominators’, as though they were stable, number-like phenomena. As SchegloV (1993) reminds us, there are stretches of talk, particularly associated with extended turns with a single main speaker, such as in storytellings, in which many such tokens will be found, and other stretches in which participants produce mainly short, single-unit turns, with frequent speaker change, with fewer such tokens. So, as he says, “continuers have to be understood not relative to minutes, but relative to the environment of their relevant possible occurrence” (p. 106). However, response tokens and

17

18

When Listeners Talk

other ‘backchannels’ are still treated by many researchers as stable, unchanging and undiVerentiated phenomena, as if all tokens do more or less the same conversational work. In the early stages of research into a phenomenon such as minimal listener responses, such a failure to distinguish between diVerent types is perhaps quite normal. In one of the earliest modern references in the linguistics literature to these small tokens, Fries (1952:49) considered utterances such as Unh hunh, Yeah, I see and Oh, as a group, to be “signals of continued attention” by the participant who is listening at that point of the talk, an interpretation that is very similar to many more recent treatments. There was little subsequent interest in brief listener responses amongst scholars of conversation for nearly twenty years, until an inXuential paper by Yngve (1970) appeared, which gave currency to the term ‘backchannel’. This term covers all utterances that are primarily, and simply, displays of recipiency or listenership. Duncan and Fiske (1977), drawing from Yngve, adopted this view of the functions of backchannels, which contributed to their modeling of turn-taking. Around the same time, Zimmerman and West (1975:108) considered these ‘minimal responses’ to be serving “to display continuing interest and co-participation in topic development”. Such notions of ‘continued attention’, ‘displays of listenership’ or ‘displays of interest and participation’ set a tone which can still be found in studies of response tokens. Thus Roger and Nesshoever (1987:248) say that ‘backchannel’ responses “are used primarily to indicate to the speaker that the listener is attending to what is being said”, and Mott and Petrie (1995:328) state they “are usually considered to signal support for or attention to what the speaker is saying”, whilst Mulac et al. (1998:647) say that “backchannels signal attention to, support or encouragement for, or even acceptance of the speaker’s message”. Not all writers focus on these cooperative or constructive uses of response tokens. Bublitz (1988), for example, claims that because minimal responses such as Mm can be placed almost anywhere in the talk, they can be used by their speaker merely to pretend that she or he is listening. There is, however, considerable evidence that speakers place these tokens overwhelmingly at transition relevance places6 (cf. Sacks et al. 1974; Fellagy 1995, and the data used for the main study reported in this book), and that it would not take long for an interlocutor to notice that a speaker was not attending if their Mms were placed almost anywhere. More recently, some writers have begun to recognise the varied work that response tokens accomplish. Stubbe (1998:258) says of these listener responses


that they are used to construct a general “sharing of a frame of reference” between speaker and listener, but that they: also provide a sophisticated means of indicating the listener’s attitude towards both the speaker and what is being said, and can convey a wide range of meanings from relative indiVerence or doubt, through simple aYrmation to enthusiastic interest and agreement.

She proposes a continuum of facilitative interactional feedback, from low involvement, neutral aVect (minimal responses such as Mm hm or Yeah) through to the high involvement, positive aVect of cooperative overlaps (cf. Coates 1988). The more neutral minimal responses, she says, “are prosodically and lexically unmarked … and are characterised by mid to low pitch, fairly level intonation and relatively low volume” (p. 266). However, response tokens are more Xexible than she suggests, and can vary greatly in their import according to intonation contour, so that a supposedly neutral, minimal token such as Mm that is, for example, lengthened, uttered loudly, and rises to high pitch can, given an appropriate placement in a sequence, convey a high involvement, positive aVect message (see Chapter 6). Thus it would appear that there is more at issue here than some default phonetic shape that makes these items ‘neutral’ or more ‘supportive’. In other words, there is still an issue about the distinctive nature of the work that each of these tokens does. What is it that makes each diVerent from the others? How can intonation and prosody or their placement within a sequence and their timing aVect their impact in terms, for example, of the development of ideas or aVect in the talk? Most of the authors mentioned so far pay scant attention to the role of prosody and intonation, Stubbe (1998) being a notable exception. Another exception is Müller (1996:133). He discusses the importance of prosody in giving continuers and acknowledgement tokens their particular character, as they “acquire speciWc meaning locally, not only by their precise sequential placement, but also by the particular ‘Wt’ they show in relation to the prosodic features of their immediate environment”. Thus prosodically unobtrusive weak tokens tend to be used prevailingly as neutral monitoring responses and ‘generalized acknowledgers’ … displaying active listenership but acknowledging a recognition of the emergent speech object only and thus remaining limited to a ‘de dicto’ reading (‘Yes I hear you and follow what you are saying’) Müller (1996:136)

In contrast,

19

20

When Listeners Talk

by making acknowledgements ‘prosodically salient’, a recipient may then signal an understanding that goes beyond a display of ‘de dicto’ recognition and assume a more diVerentiated stance, e.g. a ‘de re’ recognition of the object, place, person or event current speaker is talking about (‘Yes, I know what/whom you are talking about’), an aYliation with an evaluative judgement or with the appropriateness and truth of what has been said Müller (1996:136)

He goes on to say that the more aYliative, supportive tokens “are more varied — in intonation, in lexical selection and also in length” (p. 163), whilst disaYliative tokens do not display these features. The diVerence in Müller’s study from most of those cited above is his insistence that prosody can change the impact of even the most minimal or ‘neutral’ of responses into aYliative conversational actions, and that the mere fact that someone utters an Mm hm or a Yeah is not indicative of lower involvement or lack of interest. The intensity of the display of interest depends on how it is said. A diVerent attempt to describe these tokens as each doing something distinctive is found in Gerhardt and Beyerle (1997), who examined the use of these tokens in a psychotherapy setting. They propose a hierarchical set of increasing aYrmative intensity for the acknowledgement tokens, which they call a “scale of speaker 2 alignment with speaker 1” (p. 384). They ascribe semantic meanings to the tokens, based on dictionary deWnitions, suggesting that Mm-hm and Uh-huh have positive valence, Yeah and Yes show aYrmation or agreement, Sure indicates certainty, Right means “exactly” or “precisely”, and I bet means “to stake a bet that something is so”. Whilst these authors avoid the tendency found in many other studies to see these responses as a homogenous set, their classiWcation is a mix of intuition and dictionary deWnitions, rather than a close, case by case unraveling of the use of these tokens in the context of the talk in which they occur. Response tokens are indeed more complex than most of the research reported here suggests. Each, on the evidence that has been accumulated so far, has its core interactional meaning. Each has to be interpreted according to its placement within a sequence of talk, i.e. what they respond to, how they in turn are responded to by the next speaker. This will involve an interpretation according to intonation contour and other prosodic features, for example duration, pitch height and amplitude. There is also a need to take into account the timing of these tokens and the silence that may surround them. In the next section, eight common response tokens will be examined. The characterisations of these are by no means comprehensive. Instead, there will be an attempt to describe some the their most typical uses, with some reference


to the most frequent prosodic shape found in talk, and to their sequential environments. Research into these tokens is continuing, and some questions researchers might address in trying to understand them are: –

– – –

– –

– –

–

How can one establish what a token is doing at a particular point in the talk (e.g. whether a Yeah is acknowledging, agreeing, answering, asking the other to continue, disagreeing (as in Yeah but), or a combination of these, and perhaps other, actions)? Why has one token rather than another been chosen by a speaker at a particular point in the talk? What eVect do intonation and other prosodic features have on the way in which the token is meant or interpreted or understood by participants? Does the token occur as an ‘only’ in its turn, or is it followed by other tokens, or more substantial talk, and what eVect does this have on how the token is taken up by participants? How can it be established whether an instance of one of these tokens in a stream of talk is appropriate or not? Is it possible to establish whether a token is relevant or ‘due’ at a particular point, whether or not it appears when relevant, and whether or not it is replaced by a non-verbal response? What eVect do preferred or dispreferred environments (including agreeing or disagreeing, or stronger conXict) have on the use of these tokens? What eVect do, for example, topic attrition environments or delicate topics have on the use of these tokens, and what is the signiWcance of any associated silence, before or after production of a token? If speakers are doing a non-talk activity (such as cooking, decorating, working at a computer), what eVect does that have on the production and possibly delay of these tokens?

There are no doubt many other questions that could be asked, and in our current state of knowledge, some of these questions would be very diYcult to answer satisfactorily. The point, however, is that it is particularly diYcult to make deWnitive pronouncements on the uses of response tokens. There is a need to diVerentiate the actions performed by these diVerent response tokens, rather than lump them together as if they were a homogenous groups of items.

21

22

When Listeners Talk

A brief survey of eight response tokens In this section, some of the core uses of eight mono- or bi-syllabic response tokens will be surveyed, each of which can take up the whole of a speaker’s turn at talk. Four of these,7 in their most typical uses, constitute a core minimal response token group, namely the continuers Mm hm and Uh huh, the acknowledgement token Yeah (with its variants, such as Yes and Yep) and Mm, which typically express a more minimal acknowledgement than Yeah. Also included in this survey are Oh, Right, Okay and Alright. It could also have included Sure, Really, Righto, Ah and No,8 as well as some clausal responses such as I see, I know, That’s right or I bet. Some of these are most usually used as newsmarkers (e.g. Really), or markers of prior knowledge (e.g. I know), or of agreement (e.g. That’s right, Sure). It has been decided, however, to focus attention in this review on the eight tokens mentioned above, as these are also the ones that have received most attention by researchers, and they are also the most frequently occurring in the data examined for this book. As has already be stated, response tokens are extremely Xexible, and are interpreted by participants according to, crucially, their placement in a sequence and their intonational and prosodic features. The survey in this section will not delve deeply into intonational or prosodic factors, as this would complicate the survey immensely. Instead, the most characteristic intonational shapes are examined. For continuers, this is a fall-rise (sometimes a rise), and for the rest most typically the contour is Xat (or a slight rise or fall) or falling. The issue of intonational shape is taken up in more detail in Chapter 6 with reference to Mm.

Early work on response tokens in Conversation Analysis Studies that have diVerentiated between response tokens have come mostly from Conversation Analysts. The earliest references to response tokens in the published CA literature are in Harvey Sacks’ lectures on conversation in the 1960s and 1970s (Sacks 1992a; 1992b). In contrast to many later researchers, Sacks assumed very little about the way in which they are used. In a lecture in which he discusses Uh huh, for example, he notes that “it would be diYcult to say that ‘uh huh’ exhibits understanding” (1992a:746), though he does observe that Uh huhs are overwhelmingly placed at grammatical completion points, (thus invoking the notion of transition relevance places and points of possible grammatical completion, which was expounded more fully in Sacks et al.


1974). He also points to the role that these tokens have in storytelling, noting that stories in conversations are interpolated with tokens such as Uh huh, Mm hm, Yes, etc. “placed ‘within’ the story” and that they are “utterances recognising that the story is yet going on” (1992a:766). On Mm hm, he says (1992b:9) that what it does “is at least this: It says, ‘The story is not yet over, I know that’.” He also appears to have coined the term continuer for tokens like Uh huh and Mm hm (1992b:410), and he notes the phonetic aYnity between the ‘Wller’ or hesitation marker Uh and the continuer Uh huh, saying that Uh Wlls a pause in a speaker’s own talk, whilst Uh huh Wlls a pause in another speaker’s talk, i.e. Uh huh is typically uttered at a point at which there would be a silence between units of talk in the other’s talk if the Uh huh had not been uttered. The next substantial treatment of response tokens in the CA tradition9 is SchegloV (1982), in which he gave wider currency to the term continuer for vocalisations such as Uh huh, Mm hm and Yeah (as well as some gestures and head nods). He says, Perhaps the most common usage of ‘uh huh’, etc. (in environments other than after yes/no questions) is to exhibit on the part of its producer an understanding that an extended unit of talk is underway by another, and that it is not yet, or may not yet be (even ought not yet be), complete. It takes the stance that the speaker of that extended unit should continue talking, and in that continued talking should continue that extended unit. (1982:81)

SchegloV criticises the claim made by some researchers that utterances such as Uh huh exhibit ‘attention’ or ‘understanding’, because, as he points out, Uh huh, Mm hm or, for that matter, Yeah/Yes do not have a semantic component denoting ‘understanding’. However, it can be claimed that Uh huh and other response tokens are used when there is an opportunity to do repair work, and thus indicate a lack of any claims to problems of understanding in the talk. Repairs are a virtually unique phenomenon in talk in that they can occur at any point in a conversation to indicate some problem of articulation, understanding or hearing (cf. SchegloV et al. 1977). This provides participants in conversations with a sense that things are proceeding smoothly, including that current speaker is being understood. Thus a more sound claim about response tokens is not that they show understanding, but that their presence can be taken to indicate a lack of any claim by their utterer that there is a problem of understanding in the talk of the other. As well as a lack of repair work when a response token is used, there is an absence of anything that may have portended disagreement, such as protracted

23

24

When Listeners Talk

inter-turn silences, or Well, or Yes but, or other markers of dispreference. SchegloV argues that it is because of what they are not doing that Uh huh etc. can be taken as indications of agreement. This negative characterisation of continuers strongly suggests that they are not showing disagreement nor a lack of understanding.10 What then are they doing? One approach to answering this question is to see how they cluster together, i.e. when they occur, as they often do, in a series of transition relevance slots during another’s extended turn. According to SchegloV, this may diVerentiate between them. For example, producing several Uh huhs (and nothing else) in response to another’s extended turn “may then be used to hint incipient disinterest, while varying the tokens across the series … may mark a baseline of interest” (1982:85), such as surprise, special interest, assessment etc. Not producing a variety of tokens shows the recipient to be Wnding in the talk uninteresting, not newsworthy, or not warranting a more involved response such as an assessment. At the time SchegloV wrote this paper, there had been very little attempt to describe the range of work that continuers, acknowledgement tokens and newsmarkers do. In the twenty years or so since then, there has been a growing body of research which has examined these tokens very closely in their sequential environments, and this does indicate that speakers make very Wne distinctions between them. As JeVerson (1984a) noted, she has found herself surprised by the Wne organisation of even the smallest perceptible bits of conversational material. In the following section, there is a brief survey of our current understanding of some of the most frequently used response tokens, and their archetypical uses.

Eight response tokens The response tokens examined here are: continuers (most typically Mm hm and Uh huh), acknowledgement tokens (typically Yeah and the weaker acknowledgement token Mm), the newsmarker group (‘change-of-state’ token Oh, the ‘idea connector’ Right), and the ‘change-of-activity’ tokens (Okay and Alright). It is, though, important to remember that these tokens all exhibit great Xexibility and multifunctionality of use.


Typical Uses of Eight Response Tokens Continuer uses The archetypical continuers are Mm hm and Uh huh, which are used to pass up the opportunity to take a more substantial turn at talk. There is some evidence from a perusal of published materials and available transcriptions that Uh huh is more frequent in American English than in British or Australian English.11 Continuers have no apparent meaning, and, as Müller says, “given their size and their scant lexical content, [they] are highly indexical contingent achievements” (1996:133). These two continuers appear to work in very similar ways in conversation. I know of no studies that have found any signiWcant diVerences between them, apart from the obvious articulatory ones. However, Drummond & Hopper (1993a) posited, without presenting any real evidence, that “Uh huh signals a sort of midrange speakership incipiency” (p. 165) between Mm hm and Yeah. Their data, however, showed a very similar rate of speakership incipiency between Uh huh and Mm hm. An alternative view is that it may be that a reiWcation of spelling conventions, such as they are, has led to these tokens being seen as diVerent, and that they are perhaps variants of the same token, with a third variant, Nn hn - produced nasally, but with lips parted - somewhere in the middle phonetically between the two. The most closed of the set in terms of articulation, Mm hm, is a bilabial nasal, with aspiration in the second syllable (the h), Nn hn is a alveolar nasal with similar aspiration, and Uh huh is an low mid vowel with aspiration terminally on the Wrst syllable and in the second syllable. The reason that Nn hn is so rarely seen in transcriptions may be partly the transcription conventions noted above, but also that in audio recordings it is very diYcult to distinguish [m] from [n], though in video recordings it is often possible to see whether or not the lips are closed. Note, however, that there is an apparent possible iconicity between phonetic-visual-physiological salience (e.g. how much ‘muscle’ work needs to be done to produce a sound, and how much of this work is visible to others) and the interactional work that these tokens do: so perhaps Uh huh is indeed, as Drummond and Hopper (1993a) suggest, more interactionally involved than Mm hm (though without this translating into greater speakership incipiency), with Nn hn somewhere in between. Continuers are used by recipients to show “that he or she understands that [a unit of talk] is in progress but is not yet complete”, and their use has “less to do with the sociability of the participants than it has to do most proximately with the sequential structure of the turns into which the talk is organised”

25

26

When Listeners Talk

(SchegloV 1993:105). As would be expected, given that they are used to pass up an opportunity to speak, Mm hm and Uh huh are most typically found as the only utterances in their turn, and they are rarely found with further talk by their producers, either additional brief utterances (such as Uh huh, Okay), or with more substantial, topical same-speaker talk. Indeed this is one way in which they diVer from Yeah or Mm, two further tokens which can, in particular environments, be used as continuers,12 but which are more typically used as more retrospective acknowledgement tokens (see below). As Drummond and Hopper (1993a) claim, Yeah shows a greater degree of speakership incipiency than Mm hm/Uh huh, that is, there is a greater likelihood that the speaker of the Yeah will very soon say something substantial. Indeed, Yeah initiates turn bids nearly 50% of the time, whereas Mm hm/Uh huh do so rarely (5% and 4% of the time respectively). Similar Wndings were made by JeVerson (1984a) and in the study reported in Chapter 4 below. Fragments (1a) to (1f) show typical uses of Mm hm as a continuer, (1a) and (1b) from Australian data, (1c) and 1d) from British, and (1e) and (1f) from American. (1a)

MH:8:A&BD4a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Bob: Ann:

Bob:→ Ann:

Bob: Ann:

O↓:h;= right-,= ‘n’ howdja ↑go:? (0.2) We:ll-, (.) I couldn’ get- thee exa:ct h (.) colour? (0.2) M:m hm? a:n:d; (.) the problem woz;= it- wz a:ll th’ sa:me bra:n:d,= I wennto a numbera diffren pla:ces,= en[:d em:]; (0.2) [mYea:h.] ·hh it wz th’ sa:me bra:n

(1b)

MH:L&MC2a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Mel: Liz:→ Mel: Liz:→ Mel:

Ya know tha- (0.1) that- e:r:,= extror:dinry:, (0.4) e:r, (0.1) thing called cyberspa[ce:. [Mm: hm? (2.0) There’s a video::? of thee inve:nter.= o:r the (.) the person:, et Carodisk;= wo:rking on et. °Mm hm°? A:nd (1.5) he would- (1.5) the gu:y wud-;= fid inta that categry, (0.4) totally. (0.6)


(1c)

Field: 1988 Undated:1:8

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Dan: Gor:

(1d)

Field:1988 Undated:2:2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Les:

(1e)

Auto Discussion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Cur:

(1f)

Chicken Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Mic: Viv: Sha: Viv: Sha: Viv:→ Mic: Sha:

Dan:→ Gor:

Kev: Les:→ Kev: Les:

Mik: Gar: Mik: Gar: Cur:→ Mik: Gar:

Viv: Sha:

Thank you so m’ch Right Carry on .tch.hhhhhh Uh: I managed to get home in ti:me? .hh for my music lesson at five .hh thirty? ·h[hhhh [Mm hm?= =hu- uh dashing back at (.) at a gra(h)nd sixty (h)miles ‘n hour in:: .t Malcolm’s car it nearly shook itself to pieces. ·hhhhhh He wz zipping round the roads:- (0.3) didn’t slow down for a corner

↓No. So she’s u-she’s:: h she’s dreasonably sure everything’s okay, Yes I think so (0.7) ↓Mm hm, hh .hhhh Quite happy .t Jolly ↓goo:d,h Oh ↓goo:d,h (0.2)

=How come he’s r- what’s:: izze tryina move up¿ (1.0) No he just fo[und out iz ca r] works a whole= [heh-heh-heh eh! eh!] =lot better on asphalt then it [does (h)on di(h)rt. [They’re afraid of the camera. Mm hm (0.3) So, Sit out in the su:n, (0.5)

Wiz it a whole lobster?= =Th w[z a h_a:lf. ] [A half a lobs]ter. But it wz a:ll (.) yihknow, One claw en then: half’v[: yihkno]w,= [ Mm hm, ] =How m-How mu:c[h. [th’body (0.4) Si[x ni]nedy ]five.]= [Six ]ninedy ]five.]=

27

28

When Listeners Talk

In each of these fragments, the Mm hms are placed at or close to transition relevance spaces (though Les’ Mm hm in (1d) comes after a silence of 0.7 seconds), and none are followed by same speaker talk. In each the Mm hm speaker does not ask a question, as they might have done, nor do they embark up a repair, or object to an extension of the prior speaker’s turn. By uttering an Mm hm, they are expressing ‘no problem’ with the prior speaker’s turn, and declining the Xoor and an opportunity for more substantial talk. In most of these cases, the speaker after the Mm hm continues with an extension or increment of the talk so far. For example, in (1a) Ann continues after the continuer with an explanation of why she couldn’t get the right colour. In (1c) Danny goes on to explain how he managed to get home on time for his music lesson. In (1e), Curtis’ third position comes after his question appears to be adequately answered, but he still elicits incremental talk, albeit brief, from Gary and Mike, who had both answered his question. (1f) is slightly diVerent, in that the next turn after Viv’s Mm hm is not an increment by Shane to his talk, but a Wrst pair part of a new sequence — a question — by Michael. In all cases, though, the Mm hm utterer cedes the Xoor to another speaker. On other occasions, the Mm hm is placed at points that are incomplete in terms of the grammar. In (2), Curtis’ Mm hm is placed after an initial if-clause, if you need a spring, and close to the start of the main clause. (2)

Auto Discussion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Mik:

Mik: Cur:→ Mik:

They use to uh, y’know they use thee. (0.5) fer (0.4) ‘f you needed a

(0.4) .hh make’m any way to go up’n get’em fer the stock cars out there.

spring, yo[u wannid a certain= [Mm-hm? =type a’ spring °you c’go out’n get it made.

It has already been noted that Uh huh is much more frequent in the American data examined that in the British or Australian. However, there is little evidence that it is used in any substantially diVerent way from Mm hm. Two examples are shown from American data in (3a) and (3b). (3a)

Chicken Dinner

1 2 3 4 5

Nan: Sha: Nan:→

( ) fr’m ^work you called im?^ (0.3) No: ah wz on muh lunch (.) Uh huh,


6 7 8 9 10

Sha:

(3b)

Chinese Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Ann:

Bet:→ Ann: Bet: Ann: Bet:

I been (0.6) I- ruh- r’member I calledju up the other night (.) Toosday n-uh la- uh: ^las’©night. (0.2) I called you up. From work? en I wz on the’phone f’r a long ti:me? (0.5) Muh boss says ju know (1.2) watch thosse: (.) pers’nal phone cal[ls

Karen has this new hou:se. en it’s got all this like- (0.2) ssilvery:: g-go:ld wwa:llpaper, ·hh (h)en B(h)o(h)b sa(h)ys. y’know this’s th’firs’time we’ve seen this house. Fifty five thousn dollars, in Cherry Hill.Right? (0.4) Uh hu:h? Do(h)n said.(0.3) dih-did they ma:ke you take= hh! =this wa(h)llpa(h)p(h)er? er (h)di [dju pi(h)ck i(h)t ou(h)t] [Ahh huh huh huh huh huh ]huh

Yeah and Mm are prototypically acknowledgement tokens, with a falling intonation contour. They can, though, also be treated by participants as continuers, and when they are, they carry a rising terminal intonation contour. In fragment (4) Nik is talking about the young son of friends of theirs. (4)

P&QT3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Nik: Mat: Nik: Nik:

Mat:→ Nik:

Mat:

He:’s: a s::low learner. (0.8) °Wha’°; an anoxic bi:rth? I don’ kno::w. (0.5) B’t- (.) .= just a:fta the bi:r- (.) ↓o:r not- long: a:fta the bi:rth;= et ↑Bi:ll’s induc↑tion? Yea:h, (0.3) A:n:::: sh::- (0.5) <she w’s sa::ying;= how wo:nderful thi:rd chi:ldren we::re,= ‘n th’s no:: (wai-) (.) problem:s¿= ‘s so:: goo:d>¿ OH;= THE’VE ONLY J’S RE:ALISED EE’S ↓a slo:w lea:rn[er.

Nik begins this sequence with an announcement that the child they are talking about is a slow learner. Mat, note, chooses here not to use a response token, but takes up another available conversational resource, namely a question, to establish the reason for him being a slow learner. After expressing her inability

29

30

When Listeners Talk

to answer this question, Nik proceeds to elaborate on her announcement with a classic pre-story turn (cf. JeVerson 1978a; Sacks 1992a, 1992b), in which she characterises some of the circumstances of the story: a time frames (not long after the birth), and two protagonists (Joan and Bill), as well as I remember, which is indicative here of an upcoming recall and recount of what it was that she remembers. She encounters some trouble in the articulation of this orientation to the news, and therefore has to self-repair a name and a time. Pragmatically the turn ends on a note of incompletion, and Ben responds with a classic go-ahead to Nik to start her story: the fall-rising, continuer Yeah in line 10. It may be that he chose a Yeah in preference to an Uh huh/Mm hm because it shows more involvement in the talk. as Yeah carries implications of incipient topical speakership (cf. JeVerson 1984a), and speaking topically shows more involvement than not speaking. Not speaking topically is what Uh huh/Mm hm overwhelmingly do. An example to illustrate the continuer use of prototypical weak acknowledgement token Mm is found in fragment (5). Marilyn is providing Mal with an update on the death of the teenage daughter of friends of theirs. (5) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

L&MH3a Mar:

Mal:→ Mal:

(1.7) An’ there’s jes’ this little ba:re no:tice;= in the pah:per t’da:y:, hh y’know;= Miche[:lle;] die:d unex:pectedly in her slee:p. [°M:m°], (0.4) °Mm:°.=

In this fragment the non-completion of Marilyn’s news at the point of Mal’s Mm in line 5 is apparent in a number of ways. The most recently completed turn constructional unit includes a Wrst mention of a notice in the paper, which can be construed as a topic proVer. There is also intonational incompletion (a slightly rising, continuative terminal contour to the intonation unit in line 3 after today). Finally there is the ‘appeal’ of the Y’know with its slightly falling, continuative contour (line 3), looking for hearer support and drawing attention to upcoming important information (cf. He and Lindsey 1998), which turns out to be the immediately following announcement of the content of the notice. There is thus, at the point at which the continuer Mm is uttered, a strong sense of pragmatic incompletion. This can be contrasted with Mal’s acknowledging, intonationally falling Mm in line 7, which comes after the announcement of the content of the notice, so at a point at which the talk is not


only grammatically and intonationally, but also pragmatically complete. There is also the question as to why Mm rather than Uh huh/Mm hm or Yeah has been chosen. This may reXect the delicate and sensitive nature of the topic — death. As will be explicated more fully in later chapters, an important characteristic of Mm is that it is weak and minimal, arguably the most minimal of all vocalisations in conversation. Mm can be seen as a non-intrusive, reserved response to a delicate topic. Speakers display great skill in their use of these tokens. Hopper and Drummond (1990) report on a conversation in which the use of continuers can be seen to be not merely passing up an opportunity to talk, but also to achieve broader interactional goals. In this case, the conversation is between a young couple in the process of breaking up, and the girl uses continuers to get her soon to be ex-partner, Gordon, to give his extended perspective on the relationship before she gives hers. The card mentioned in line 1 was one in which Denise had been the Wrst to suggest they terminate the romance. (6)

G&D II: Break up

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Gor:

Gor:

Den:→ Gor:

Den:→ Gor:

Den:→ Gor: Den: Gor: Den:→ Gor:

We:ll. I got your card. . . . I’ve- actually w’d rather talk to you in person but I don’t think I’m gonna be able make a meeting cuz I (0.2) now have a headache and[fever and everything ·hhhhhhhhh Bu:t u:m hhh [Yeah hh I think maybe u- u I w- (0.2) um would like tuh- stop really goin ou:t at least for right no:w Yeah. ·hhh U::m I jus- ·hhhhhh (0.5) u::h hh I feel really ba:d because I- u:m (1.0) ·snff I wishI think I just we don’t have as much in common as: I think we both tho:ught (0.3) Ye:ah Bu:t- u:m cause I know sometimes we’re both at just a lapse for words and huh [huh ·hhh [·hh I’m a speech major I [juh(h)] [Mm : :] hm: U:m (0.3) ·hhhh bu:t- (0.2) and I wish I had more time- and tu:h even to get- to know you better (0.4)

31

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When Listeners Talk

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Den:→ Gor:

Den:→ Gor: Den: Gor: Den: Gor: Den:→ Den: Gor: Den:

°Yeah° U:m but I mean I’m- so busy and you’re so busy and I feel ba:d that I can’t do anything and so I’ll ·hhh M[m [feel bad when I can’t call you and ·hhhhh and whatever and uh °I know° Or go out and do anything with you even like tha:t. °Yeah I know what chyou me:an.° (1.2) But uh (1.2) I still wanna be in good frien:d with ya hhh Yeah (1.2) [I just[C’z I mea(0.7) I think part of it- (0.2) I think part of the problem . . .

Hopper and Drummond do not distinguish here between continuers and the more retrospective acknowledgers, lumping all the Yeahs and Mms and Mm hms together as continuers, though as far as can be gleaned from the transcription, the lack of punctuation to indicate terminal pitch direction suggests that all of the arrowed response tokens except the terminally falling Yeah in line 12 have ‘Xat’, continuatively marked contours. Be that as it may, the authors argue that Denise, by passing up her opportunities to talk whilst Gordon is presenting his position on why they should not continue to see each other, may be pressuring Gordon to continue, and thereby reveal more of his reasoning (1990:48), before she gives hers. There is a long sequence in which Denise is being listener, using almost exclusively response tokens and thereby avoiding any evaluation of what Gordon is saying, which she could have done through the use of assessment tokens or more extended topical talk, (cf. SchegloV 1982). It is not until line 48 of this extract that she launches into her own long, substantial turn, in which she provides her own perspective. With this skilful use of continuers she can remain neutral and uncommitted (at this point, relatively speaking), and also, it can be noted that most of her response tokens are Yeahs rather than Mm hms/Uh huhs or Mms. Yeah is more speakership oriented, which will be indicating more involvement in what is going on, and also saying that, although she is currently very much in a recipient role, there is a good chance that she will have something to say on the matter later.


There is an institutional setting that deserves special mention, namely therapy, and in particular psychotherapy (see Gerhardt and Beyerle 1997). In many types of this kind of discourse, the therapist’s role is non-intrusive, which frequently leads to a very high incidence of the use of response tokens. In this context, the authors say that while there is an “ever-ready acknowledgement of the therapist’s need to be ‘empathetic’ in the Weld, little is said about the therapist’s presence when in a nonactive, relatively more receptive role, nor about the importance of the therapist’s own prereXective subjectivity” (p. 369) (emphasis in the original). They also claim that “a crucial type of therapeutic work is accomplished through [the use of response tokens], but that this work has gone unrecognized due to the … bias toward verbal interventions” (p. 378). Czyzewski (1995) examined Mm hm in psychotherapeutic intake interviews. She distinguished four types of Mm hm, three of which were variants of the ‘passive recipiency’ token identiWed by JeVerson (1984a). Some were similar to Mm hms in ordinary conversation, but others, she claims, are speciWc to therapy, for example what she calls the analytic Mm hm, uttered by the therapist with a fairly Xat intonation contour, which is followed by a lengthy pause before the patient speaks again. This Mm hm followed by a pause, she says, is used to encourage the patient to open out with their talk. As her data are Polish, there may be diVerences from English, and it may also be that her categories are premature, as what she is describing, albeit for Polish, is a set of uses that can be found in ordinary conversational English, as in the following extract from an Australian conversation, where a continuer Mm hm is followed by a long pause. (7)

P&QT2a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Mat:

Mat:

Nik:→ → Mat:

‘m ge- (.) ‘m slopping th’ sa:rdi:nes oi:l;= all over th’ ta:ble. (3.9) ↓I’m (o:verkeen) like that-. (.) o↑r *I’m:* (0.5) making an:guish’d noi:ses;= es I do et. Mm: ↑hm¿ (4.0) ↓The resta thee oi:l;= (I’ll clean et)↓. (0.7)

As so often, it may be that what appear to be speciWc and common institutional uses draw on resources available in ordinary conversation, often relatively unusually in the latter form of talk. Their relative frequency in therapeutic talk

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When Listeners Talk

may meet the special needs of that setting, which in the case of such interviews would be to provide space for a patient to open out with her tellings. Buttny (1996) reports on another way in which continuers are used in therapy, where a technique used by therapists is to elicit clients’ views on some topic by giving their own views Wrst, and then inviting clients to conWrm and disconWrm or elaborate. One regular response that Buttny found was that clients withheld a response by providing a continuer such as Uh huh to avoid such actions, as in the following example. (8)

Buttny 11

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ther:

Jenny:→ Ther: Ther:

. . . so it reproduces a bit what may be ah: ahm a stylistic issue in your: (.) couple (0.8) Uh huh Yeah? (1.6) You don’t like what I’m saying yeah?

Note Wrst the delay of 0.8 seconds, and the bare continuer Uh huh. This is followed by a pursuit by the therapist of a response beyond the continuer, with his own, stronger continuer, the rising Yeah, and then a considerable space of about a second and a half, before directly addressing the non response of the client.

Acknowledgement uses The most frequently used of all response tokens in ordinary conversation is Yeah, the archetypical acknowledgement token in English. In some varieties of English, Mm is also very common, and is a weaker acknowledgement than Yeah. An examination of the sequential environments of these tokens indicates that because of the lack of repair or of dispreference in the response, they are, like continuers, claiming ‘no problem’ in understanding or agreement, (cf. SchegloV 1982). A diVerence from continuers is that they are not, primarily, in the business of handing the Xoor back to the prior speaker, but of making a claim to adequate receipt of the prior turn. In other words, they are more retrospective than continuers. The acknowledgement token Yeah typically carries a falling terminal intonation. It has already been noted that JeVerson (1984a) identiWed an important diVerence between typical Mm hms and Yeahs, namely the greater speakership incipiency of the latter. This point is also discussed by Drummond and Hopper (1993a:158–9), who suggest that, compared to Uh huh and Mm hm, “the token


yeah shows a … probability that its speaker is moving out of a recipient role and projecting further speaking”. They say that Yeah initiates immediate turn bids on about half of its occurrences, whilst Mm hm and Uh huh generally do not. As they put it, “Mm hm and uh huh take only the turn, not the Xoor” (1993a:159).13 JeVerson also noted that individual speakers vary in the frequency of their use of these tokens, one of her speakers producing both Yeah and Mm hm consistently, another using very few Mm hms, but frequent Yeahs. In another paper (JeVerson 1993), she also notes that Yeah is regularly followed by a shift in topic by its producer, i.e. it is a kind of “preshift token” (p. 8).14 Yeah is not only the archetypical acknowledging token. From the data used for this study, it appears that it is also the most common response token of any kind in ordinary conversation in English, sometimes occurring hundreds of times in an hour of conversation. It is also complex and multifunctional. Apart from being an answer to a polar (yes-no) question, it can be engaged to do varying kinds of acknowledging, aYrming or agreeing work, as well as showing, for example, surprise, appreciation, assessment and so on, which is similar to what SchegloV (1982) observes for Uh huh. Indeed, Yeah must be one of the words in English that covers the greatest interactional ground. How great this can be is shown in an extreme case study by Goodwin (1995) of an aphasic man who had suVered a major stroke, and whose productive vocabulary was restricted to Yes, No and And. Although his vocabulary was extraordinarily limited, he was able to “visibly take a stance toward what he is saying, through both the detailed way in which he says a word (e.g., through intonation, sound stretches) and through body behavior” (p. 241), and Yes and No were able to function in a very wide range of ways. Goodwin goes on to say that although “Rob is using what is semantically the same word, Yes, through variation in the way that he speaks it he is able to construct consequentially diVerent objects that project alternative trajectories of future action” (p. 242). More typically, though, Yeah is used as an aYrming or acknowledging object, as in the following fragments from Australian data, in the Wrst of which a repair sequence is acknowledged with Bob’s reconWrmation of Ann’s game player. (9a)

A&BD3a

1 2 3 4 5

Bob:

Ann: Bob:

°eh ‘n° David w’z up to ‘iz ole ↑tri:cks too:↑. hhh (0.5) Iz o:ld ↑tri:cks:?= =Ga:me pla:yer¿

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When Listeners Talk

6 7 8 9 10 11

Ann: Bob:→ Ann: Bob:

Oh;= ga:me player. Yea:h. [(Ris) [Nick ‘n’ I:;= ‘re both ev thee op↑inion;= tha’ t’da:y’s v↑isit;= ‘as godda hh (0.2) hidden ag~enda~.

Note that Bob follows the Yeah immediately with further talk. In (9b), the speakership incipiency of Yeah is also apparent, with Ben complying with Ann’s request, albeit delayed. He follows his Yeah with a sniV and an assessment, Good, it’s a nice walk. (9b)

A&BF3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Ben: Ann: Ben:→ Ben: Ann:

↑Oh;= c’n I: ‘ave th’ ca:r↑ Monday. (2.0) >Y’na I: gotta go ta< Hy:de Street;= b’t wi c’n wa:lk there¿= =↑°Yeah°↑. ((sniff)) (0.2) >°Good. ‘t’s a n[ice wa:lk]°.


6 7

Bob:→ Ann:

[M : m . ] [That’s no]t- (.) a:ll thee otha ti:me¿

The main diVerence from Yeah is that Mm is a weaker, less involved acknowledgement token when uttered in this way. The evidence for this claim is presented mainly in Chapter 5. An acknowledging Mm is also seen in fragment (14), from a dietetic interview. Here the dietician (D) is asking about the client’s (Cl) alcohol consumption. SuYce it to say for the purposes of this analysis that she asks a question about how frequently he drinks, he begins his answer with an Ehm, and then she interjects a brief insertion sequence on the diYculty of providing an adequate answer to the question. (14)

Diet/29.7.96/3A/5.00p

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

D: Cl: D: Cl:→ D: Cl:

W’d that- be very ↑offen?= or j’st (0.3) E:::: [HM; [It’s harda say: exackly¿= isn’ [et. [Mm:. (.) b’t- (0.2) b’t- u::h; (.) oo:h. (0.7) °maybe- (.) yihkno:w°; (0.3) Fri:day nigh’- Sadurday nights,= I’d prob’ly have yihknow;= more th’n: two: uh two gla:sses¿

D’s inserted question is not the main business of this sequence, which is to Wnd out the frequency of alcohol consumption. As such, this more minimal response, the Mm rather than a more involved Yeah, Wts the parenthetical and peripheral nature of acknowledging the aside in lines 3 and 4. Mm hm can also be used as an acknowledgement token, though much less commonly than Yeah or Mm. In the following fragment, Bob has been telling Ann his ‘news-of-the-day’, relating a series of events. He comes to the end with his coda/formulation in lines 6 to 7, before Ann launches into her reciprocal news. (15)

A&BD4a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Bob:

Ann: Bob:

an::’ j’st all o’ the things;= >I wanneda< getdo:ne,= I didn’ getdo:ne¿ (1.1) Yea:h; ehhh (0.4) °en:d ehrhh° (0.2) so o↑h:nhh.= so that’s been the da:yhh.

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When Listeners Talk

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ann:→ Bob: Ann:

Bob:

Mm: h↑m:.= =‘n’ ow ‘bout y↑ou:. (0.9) Good-. (0.2) I w’s quite- busy this afternoon,= I went ou:- (.) te:m; hh (0.5) ta do a few thi:ngs¿=one: ev which wes:;= to: try: en:d e:m; (1.5) o:r; wa:s. ta get- the t~i:le grou:t~ en tha:t? O↓:wh;= right-;= ‘n’ howdja ↑go:¿

Ann’s Mm hm in line 8 is terminal to a long news sequence from Bob, and carries an unusual shape for this token, namely a marked rise-fall, rising to high pitch on the second syllable. There are too few examples of Mm hm with this shape in the data to make any strong claims about it, but a possible reason for Ann’s choice here is that when partners tell their news at the end of the day, as here, it is a regular occurrence that when one has told his story, the other will then tell hers (cf. Sacks 1992a; Ryave 1978 on ‘second stories’). In the extract here, there is a great deal to suggest that Bob’s news is coming to an end: Wrst there is a formulation (lines 1–2) about his failure to achieve what he had wanted to during the day, which receives an acknowledging Yeah, and then his coda and formulation, and so on, so that’s been the day. This can be recognised as a termination, and one way to show that Ann has recognised it as such is to do a falling, retrospective acknowledgement. But she may also be showing that she knows there is something else that is relevant as a next sequence, namely her news, and as such an acknowledging intonation contour on what is normally a continuer can do both the job of closure of the prior sequence, and opening up of a new sequence. Bob’s And how about you lends credence to this interpretation, as he does the job of handing the main Xoor over to Ann.

Newsmarking uses The next group of response tokens is the newsmarkers or newsmarker-like tokens, which respond to a turn that is, in some sense, new to the recipient of the turn. This is a more open group than the continuer or acknowledgement groups, but at the core are a few tokens that regularly stand as sole utterances in a speaker’s turn. These include Oh, Right, Really, as well as ‘minimal questions’, such as Did they? Two of these are discussed here: Oh, which has been the subject of ongoing research in particular by Heritage (e.g. 1984b, 1996), and Right (Gardner, in prep). In an early reference to Oh, JeVerson (1978a) characterises it as a ‘disjunct marker’, which is to say that its utterer has suddenly remembered a story, and


wishes to embark on its telling, this being ‘disjunct’ because the story that follows “is not topically coherent with the adjacent prior talk: (p. 221). Heritage (1984b) took the examination of Oh further, and has characterised it as a ‘change-of-state’ token, one “which is used to propose that its producer has undergone some kind of change in his or her locally current state of knowledge, information, orientation or awareness” (p. 299). In a not dissimilar vein, SchiVrin (1987) claimed that Oh’s overall role is to mark transitions in information states of speakers. One characteristic of Oh is that it is usually followed by further talk by its speaker, and this often develops the talk topically. This is not surprising, since there is a higher likelihood that a speaker will have comments to make on something new than on something already known. On occasion, though, Oh does stand alone in its turn, or with further minimal, often repetitive talk. In (16a), it comes in third position of a repair sequence, in which Liz asks for the identity of the we. (16a) L&MC2ai 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Mel:→

Liz: Mel: Mel: Liz:→ Mel:

>A:nyway;= we wen-< (.) went ho:me, en went ↓ho:me;= en wr:ote- (1.0) a routi:ne fer o:vercoming the problem:; (1.1) th’t we h[ad ]= [Who]. =yesterday afternoon. Tom. Oh. Did this ama:zing sordev (1.7) routi:ne fer extracting th’ inferma:tion.

This Oh marks as new information the identiWcation of Tom as the second person in the we. This Oh in the minimal third turn expansion (cf. SchegloV 1995; SchiVrin 1987) marks “a change in its producer’s state of knowledge or information” (Heritage 1984b), as a closing move to a question-answer repair sequence In (16b) (already discussed as fragment (9a) above), Ann has initiated a repair sequence, requesting clariWcation of the phrase his old tricks. Bob provides an alternative characterisation, which gets an Oh plus repetition of Bob’s repair. (16b) A&BD3a 1 2 3

Bob:

°eh ‘n° David w’z up to ‘iz ole ↑tri:cks too:↑. hhh (0.5)

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When Listeners Talk

4 5 6 7

Ann: Bob: Ann:→ Bob:

Iz o:ld ↑tri:cks:?= =Ga:me pla:yer¿ Oh;= ga:me player. Yea:h.

It is, of course, diYcult to demonstrate empirically that a ‘change-of-knowledge-state’ has occurred when the Oh stands alone, as in (16a), or without adding anything substantially new, as in (16b). In fragment (17), however, there is more evidence available. Here Mal and Lyn are exchanging news, Mal’s being that he has received an education cheque, and Lyn’s that his VBAL expenses (also a cheque for educational services) had arrived. (17)

L&MH3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Mal: Lyn:→ Mal: Lyn: Lyn: Mal: Mal:→ Lyn: Mal: Lyn:

·hhh (0.2) W:e:ll, (0.3) u:m:; (0.2) my education cheque w’s there this mo:rning¿ ri:ght, ↑Oh;= goo:d↑.= =en:- I’ve pud et in th’ bank;= et w’s fi:ve hundred dollars. Goo:d. (0.3) [<end you]r V:[B↓AL la:st] expe:nses ca:me? [(°°Okay¿] [ °°)] °Oh; goo:d°. it sh’d be a hundred ‘n’ ni:nety or something.= =Ye[a:h. [>hundred ‘n’ ei:ghty.= something< li[ke tha:t]. [Y e a: h].

Lyn’s Oh good in line 3 comes as a response to the announcement of the arrival of the cheque. The Oh occurs together with an assessment Good, but it also occurs before the elaboration of the news, which is about what she did with the cheque and the amount it was drawn for. After this there is a stand-alone assessment, i.e. without an Oh or any other talk. What receives the newsmarker is the main news, and not the elaboration. A similar pattern occurs in the next part of the sequence, when Lyn announces the arrival of a second cheque in line 8. This announcement receives a more extended response from Mal, an Oh plus Good plus his estimate of the amount. Apart from changes in information or knowledge state, Oh can also be used to register a ‘noticing’, as in (18), from JeVerson (1978a). (18)

JeVerson 1978:222

1

N:

Oh that teeshirt reminded me [STORY]


A more extended example of this phenomenon is found in (19), in which Ann and Ben are discussing a video tape of their children’s. Here Ann makes explicit that she notices that she had misidentiWed the tape they were talking about. She makes her ‘change-of-state’ and ‘noticing’ explicit in this case, by saying that she had thought that it was a diVerent videotape, namely a Disney one. (19)

A&BF3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ann:

Ben: Ann:→

Ben:

ah hah hah ·hh Oh we(h)ll, at lea(h)st it’s that tape, I(h) ne(h)ver could stand that one, ·hh huh [huh huh ] [(I like it)] ( [ )]. [O↑:h it’s ] ↓Pino:cchio.= I↑: thought it wz that- (0.9) Disney o:ne. (0.3) thee u:m (1.1) Mickey Mou:se at wo:rk hhh huh huh hh huh huh huh hih [huh [Don’ think I’ve had th’ pleasure.

A more extended example of this phenomenon is found in (20), in which Ike and Jan are driving along a country road when they notice an animal in a paddock next to the road. The noticing that is prefaced by an Oh is of the animal’s tail. (20) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I&JW4a Jan: Jan: Jan:→ Jan: Ike:

(2.2) ‘ma:zing how they turn arou:nd like that. (2.6) Makes me wanna take a °phohhdagrahhph°. (0.4) ↑O:h;= lookeda t↑ai::l. (0.5) >Izz’[n et ama::zing]. [ M : m : : : .] (1.3)

These Ohs are momentary indicators of a speaker’s state of mind, providing other participants with evidence of the alignment that their utterance shows to what has just been said. Heritage (1998) identiWes another environment for the ‘change-of-state’ nature of Oh, namely as a preface to a response to an inquiry. Such Ohs occur only in second position in an adjacency pair,15 and are invariably followed by further turn components. In other words, they are not third position Ohs, as in (16), neither are they responses to announcements, as in (17), neither are they ‘noticings’, as in (18), (19) and (20). There is something

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When Listeners Talk

initially puzzling about the ‘response-to-inquiry’ Ohs, namely that they do not appear to be expressing ‘surprise’ or ‘newness’ or something contrary to the expectations of the Oh-producer. However, what is new is that the responder to the inquiry is expressing that there is something inapposite, and thus unexpected, in the inquiry itself. Such oh-prefacing can ‘indicate that the inquiry being responded to is problematic as to its relevance, presuppostitions, or context’, or may ‘foreshadow reluctance to advance the conversational topic invoked by the inquiry’ (Heritage 1998:296). In fragment (21), Mal is telling his wife about mechanical problems he’s been having with his motorbike. His mechanic had told him that if it did break down, it was not going to go with a bang. (21)

L&MH3b:408

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Mal:

Lyn:

Mal: Lyn: Mal:→ Lyn: Mal:

[b’t thee otha thing he says;= is bicoz ev the wa:y it’s wo::rn,= >he said it’s not gonna go with a ba:ng:↑halt*¿= ‘n: (·)y [’d j’s:] [. ↑N↓o:↑¿ (·) >Ah no;= it wouln’ explo:de. (0.1) jess ↓gri:nd to a ha[lt↓.

Lyn, doing being the worried wife, asks him what would happen to him if his bike did go with a bang. The inappositeness of this question is that the answer is already implicit in the idea that it would not go with a bang, but would slowly, and safely, grind to a halt. This is a case in which the relevant information needed to answer the question has already been provided in prior talk. In fragment (22) there is a case where the Oh-prefaced response is not to an inquiry in the form of a question, but to an observation by Ben in line 15 which is designed to show his concern for the safety of his wife and their two daughters, namely that they will not have to walk around the streets in the dark, and thus be exposed to danger.


(22)

A&BF3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Ann:→ Ben: Ann: Ben: Ben: Ann: Ben: Ben: Ann: Ben: Ann: Ann:→ Ben:

[ ‘cept] I go- my medic’l on Monda:y mo:rning. [(Mm:),] °I hafta do summing with th’m the:n°. Where ye going? (1.0) ↑Oh;= c’n I: ‘ave th’ ca:r↑ Monday. (2.0) >y’na I: gotta go ta< Bly:the Street;= b’t wi c’n wa:lk there¿= =↑°Yeah°↑. ((sniff)) (0.2) >°Good. ‘t’s a n [ice wa:lk]°’ve you-¿< (.) sai:d ta him,= he’s goddanimage¿ (.) ↑problem? (0.3) °*O:h*. (.) cohme ↑off et°¿ uhn heh °hehh° (0.6) *·huhh* (0.6) ·hu[hh

45

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When Listeners Talk

Mel’s recognition of the joke leads him to a response that is dismissive of Liz’s inquiry, as not requiring a real answer. The Oh with which his come oV it is prefaced is suggesting that she ought to know that he could not ask his colleague such a question. Note that this time it is not the prior talk that makes the question inapposite, but general knowledge about what is appropriate to ask colleagues. Heritage’s studies of Oh over nearly twenty years have unraveled many of the complexities of this response token. It is used to accomplish many diVerent tasks in talk, but what links them all is that something in the talk to which they respond is unexpected, whether it be information, knowledge, noticing something, or presuppositions about what is being said. All the response tokens discussed so far have received considerable attention from researchers. Right, on the other hand, has been largely unexamined (but see Stenström 1987), though it is a very common token in some forms of talk (cf. Gardner, in prep). There are, of course, many meanings and uses of Right in English; indeed it is one of the most polysemous words in English. In particular, it should be noted that what we are dealing with here is not the ‘checking’ Right, as in (24). (24)

R.50.L&MH3b

1 2 3

Mal: Lyn:

(0.1) well, (0.3) look, they ↑didn’ allo:w fer a c’mpu:ter in their bi:ll.= ↑ri:ght? ← Yea:h¿

Neither is the Right in question a synonym for ‘That’s correct’, as in (25). (25)

TR.1.Diet/29.7.96

1 2 3 4 5

D:

Cl:→ D:

So jus’ ta s:tart with,= i(m): thee triglyceride level;= yer got here it wz three po:int fou:r.= [iz that ri]gh-? [That’s righ’,] °’kay°¿

Further, this Right needs to be distinguished from a truncated Alright, i.e. an Alright without the Al-. (26)

Rahman:B:1:VMJ(10)

1 2 3 4 5

Jen: Ver: Ver: Ver Jen:

*Well thaht’s nice. [(Vera).* [Yes. .h Anyway ah’ll tell y’all the news. [when u[h [when yuh c o m e by.] [Ye:s. [Ye[s. Ah’ll see you inna fe]w minutes then


6 7 8 9 10 11

Ver: Jen: Ver:→ Jen:

ah’ll [jis comb mah haiu: [uh,[an’ I’ll be on]the= [O: [k a y t h e n] [Yes. =way. O [kay the[n, [Right. [Bah bye: lu[v [Chee(h)rio Vera< - - - - - - - - end call - - - - - - - - - -

The Right in line 10 occurs in a typical environment for Alright, namely as a pre-closing token similar to Okay. This occurrence is discussed further in the section on Alright below. In contrast to the three Rights in the fragments above, the response token Right is related to the newsmarker group, but it shows some very distinctive characteristics in British and Australian English, and it is these, rather than American uses, that will be discussed here. This idea connecting Right is, on the evidence to hand, much less common in American than in British or Australian English, and may even be used in a markedly diVerent way, though a thorough analysis is lacking. Indications so far suggest that the most frequent use of Right in American English is as a kind of agreement marker. The British/ Australian token in question is the one found in the following fragment. (27)

R.11/12.A&BD3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Bob:

Ann: Bob:

Ann:→ Bob:

·hh (.) So::;= er we went to:: u-liddle Italian pla:ce;= in:: Paddington Para:de;= ca::lled Guiseppe::s. Mm hm¿ ( ),= en: sordev frequents:; (.) a liddle bit pe:rs’nelly:_= en:d er:m also wo:rkwi:se. Ri:ght-?= =Kno:ws the gu:ys the:re >priddy we:ll¿ (0.2)

Such Rights are used to accomplish a recognition on the part of the utterer that the unit of talk to which it is responding, or an idea from that unit of talk, has been understood to be connected to another unit from earlier in the talk. This earlier unit (or idea) may be the penultimate one, or it may be from two or more turns back in the same local sequence, or it may be from much earlier in the conversation, or indeed even from an earlier conversation. The connection may be to something the other speaker has said, or to something the Right producer him- or herself has said. In (27), Bob is telling about a visit he made with workmates to a restaurant. After setting up an extended telling, he says in his next turn (lines 5 to 7) that someone, presumably a colleague, frequents

47

48

When Listeners Talk

this restaurant a little bit personally and also workwise. Here we have, immediately prior to this Right, two ideas that have been juxtaposed: personally and workwise. This is, typically, the type of connection that such Rights are employed to recognise, though it should be stressed that in this case the two ideas are as locally connected as possible, namely two elements in the immediately prior turn. The basic use of Right as an ‘idea connector’ is seen again in the following fragment, in which an international telephone number is being dictated. (28)

R35-UK-HERITAGE OI-7

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Gay: Jer: Jer: Gay: Jer:→ Gay: Jer: Gay: Jer: Gay:

So the ↑nahmber is (0.2) eoh: one eoh::. Oh one oh:, (1.0) Yeup, ↑Four ni:ne, (0.5) Ri:ght? Sev’n three,u-six o:ne?hh (0.6) Sev’n three: six o:ne? (0.3) Ei:ght ni:ne, °Gosh° it goe:s (.) goes on’n on Oh it doe:s Ger[many doe:s.

In this sequence, Gay has segmented the very long telephone number into separate turns for the purposes of the dictation. The Wrst segment, oh one oh, gets a echoic repetition, and a rising, go-ahead Yeup. The second segment, the country code four nine, gets the Right. With its placement after the second segment of an emerging sequence of turns, this token is marks the connectedness between the international code and the country code as part of the projected dictation of the full number. In (27) and (28), the connections made by the Rights are between contiguous turn units. Rights are also found in environments in which the Right makes connections across intervening stretches of talk, as in the next fragment. Fragments (29a/b)16 are from the same dietetic interview as in fragment (14). The client is attending this dietetic consultation because he has a high count of triglycerides, a body fat that can lead to diabetes. In this phase of the interview, the dietician is gathering information about Cl’s dietary intake, speciWcally here about desserts.


(29a) Diet 29.7.96 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541

D: Cl:→ D: Cl: D: Cl:

↑Grea:’;= ·hhhh an’ you mentioned;= ↓sometimes having a disse:rt-¿ Righ’, en’ if yuh were ‘aving disser*t;= w’d it- u-mean ·hh w’t sord’v combina:[tion uh yuh likely] [E:::::::::::::HHH;] [tuh have,]=or- ·hhh[h [nhhhhhhhh] [Probably:: something with ice cream:,=

D is asking Cl here about desserts, and you mentioned sometimes having desserts (line 533–4). This reference to a previous mention was in fact to something Cl had said some minutes earlier, which is reproduced in (29b). (29b) Diet 29.7.96 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285

Cl:

Cl: D: Cl: Cl:→

E::rm; (1.2) fer dinnuh, (1.3) °w’d have e:h-um°; (0.4) ·fhhhhhhhh °I d’nno whether it’d be° usua(.) usa’lly it’d be:ay: e::::r (.) a mea:l’d be either; (.) meat or chi:ckin:¿= or fi:sh:¿ (0.5) °withuh° (0.3) coupla ve:gtubles¿ °Mm ↑hm°? o::::r (0.3) salud¿ (1.4) °e::hm° hh ma:ybe a dissert,= after that¿ (2.8)

In this case Right can be seen to be recognising a connection between the immediately prior turn (lines 533–4 in 29a) and an earlier mention, when he had said that he had maybe a dessert with his dinner (line 284 in 29b). His Right can thus be understood as a claim to recognition of the connection between her current and his earlier mentions. Sometimes the connections appear to be more complex, being simultaneously traceable both between two adjacent, immediately prior turns, and also across longer stretches of talk, as in (30a). In other words, this may be a making of connections between more than just two mentions, that is, between various mentionings in an emerging complex set of related ideas in the talk. In this extract, from early in the dietetic interview, Cl asks D about the level of his triglyceride count. (30a) Diet 29.7.96 76 77

Cl:

·hhhh but- (0.2) thee: three point f:our;= on thee: um triglycerides;= now I don’ know; (.) where

49

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When Listeners Talk

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

D: Cl: D: Cl: D:

Cl: Cl:→ D:

that stan:ds;= iz that- (.) extre:mely hi::gh¿ [·h h h h [e:::::::::hm [·h h h h ] [uh ↑li’l [↓bit hi:gh’r [th’n we’d ] li::ke¿ ·hh [h g’nuh] talk ‘bout that with you in m↑omen’;= [Ri:ght,]= =if you don’t ↑mind?= ‘v [got s’m] (.) u-thing:s= [Mm hm, ] =th’t I c’n talk t’you abo:ut¿ en’ see ‘ow we c’n modify that-; (.) when I’ve found ou [t what y]ou’re (.) having to e:a:t¿ [O k a y,] Ri:gh, (0.3) It is a bit high’r tha(n) wi’d ↑like; (3.4)

It is the second of the two Rights here, in line 89, that is the concern of this analysis. The dietician provides a brief answer to Cl’s question about his triglyceride level at this point: it’s a bit higher than we’d like (line 80). A reason for her not providing a fuller answer here is that she is following an agenda of questions and topics within routine stages in the interview, and she postpones a fuller answer to his question to a point in the interview that has been scheduled to deal with it, which Wnally occurs around line 900 of the transcription (about twenty minutes after this talk). She provides an account for her delay by saying that she Wrst intends to Wnd out what he eats before she deals with the triglyceride level question and how to modify it. If we skip over the Mm hm and the Okay in lines 84 and 88 for this analysis, the Right in line 89 is a response to when I’ve found out what you’re having to eat (lines 86–7). The Wrst connection that is being made between this utterance and some prior utterance(s) is to the extended turn by D which is emerging within this sequence, namely a mapping out of plan of the interview and the diVerent focuses of each stages, and the place of the question he has asked within these stages. There is, though, a second possible connection that Cl may have made here, namely between the utterance immediately prior to this Right, and something she’d said a few minutes earlier, seen in fragment (30b), namely that one part of her plan for the interview is her intention to Wnd out what he eats, his usual sort of intake (lines 45–6). (30b) Diet 29.7.96 37 38 39 40

D:

Cl:

‘kay,= well ↑whad I’ll do ↓today.= jus’ to outline the session;= is ↑jess ↓fin:e a liddle bit ebou’ yer↑self¿= eb [out- ] ·hhh things like y’know= [Righ’],


41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

D: Cl: Cl: D: → → Cl: D: Cl: D:

=cooking ev the mea:ls, who duz tha:t¿= wuh do ] dur’ng th’ da:y¿ y [a [Mm hm, ] [Righ’;] [·h h h] (.) bidda ‘bout- what you ea:t,hh (.) uthe usual sord’v in:ta:ke¿= =M[m hm, ] [·hhh ] an’ ↑then we’ll talk about;= y’know triglyceride le↑vel:s¿[·hhhh ] an’ the wa:y th’t= [Mm hm,] =we c’n (.) modify the ↑di:et? (.) p’haps

Although it does not appear possible to say which of these connections is being made (i.e. locally or more remotely) — or indeed whether both connections are being made simultaneously — the main point is that Rights are found in environments in which connections between ideas such as these can be traced, and the connections that are being traced can be compounded to a whole series of interconnected ideas. It is a consistent characteristic of response token/idea connecting Rights that speciWc connections of these types are being made. A Wnal, compelling instance in which Right can be seen to be connecting old, remote information with an immediately prior turn is found in fragment (31a). In this case, the information to which it is responding is something which had been mentioned in an earlier telephone conversation between these two, namely an itchy eye (line 7). In these British data, Danny and Gordon, a romantically involved teenage couple, are talking on the telephone. (31a) R2-UK-Field-U/88-1-5-SimpliWed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Dan:

Gor: Dan:

Gor:→ Dan:

I’m just about to eat my din dins, .hh then I’m going to the chemist hhh .hhh hh An’ then I shall come over. (0.4) Good.h (0.5) Becuz (0.3) I’m g’nna go see nice Mister Chemist ‘n ask im what ‘ee c’n do about my eye. Becuz it itches a lot. .hhhh aarRight u [h i s i t- ] [An I’m tryin ]a keep my fingers out of it ‘n I keep on gettin’ smacked by Mu(h)m because she tells me o(h)ff.=

Gordon’s Right in line 10 responds to a turn in which Danni it telling him what she has to do before she comes over to visit him, namely to go to eat her dinner and then go to the pharmacy to get something for her itchy eye. This is an extended turn, with several components that can be seen to be connected. In

51

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When Listeners Talk

this respect this is not dissimilar to (30a). However, there has also already been a mention of an itchy eye, this time in a previous conversation between the two held one or two days earlier. (31b) Field U/88-1-4-Simplifed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Gor: Dan: → → Gor:

[.hhh.hh[hhhhhhh [-(0.5)-[But um (0.7) all mu- this morning (0.3) uh:m (0.5) I: (0.2) my eye’s been really itching badly ‘n .hh we’ve been (0.2) throwing boiling water in it ‘n stuff[ën it (.) itches a lot. .hh [Oh dear (0.3)

So here again there is evidence that Right is used when a connection can be made to a prior mentioning, and these connections can even be across diVerent conversations.

Change-of-activity uses The Wnal pair of response tokens discussed here, Okay and Alright, can be glossed as ‘change-of-activity’ tokens. As Beach (1993) puts it, “‘Okay’ signals varying degrees of on-topic/activity shift” and “can be identiWed as momentary, ‘on hold’ preWgurings of movements toward next matters” (p. 341). In other words, Beach claims that Okays are used to propose a readiness to move out of the current topic or activity in the conversation into another, or indeed to move out of the conversation altogether. This latter use of Okay had already been noted by SchegloV and Sacks (1973), in what they called a pre-closing environment. (32)

SDCL: Drkscls:21

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

D:→ C:→ D: C:→ D: C: D:→ C: D:

Ahkay um (0.2) how bout if I give you call like around seven thirty Akay And we’ll figure out exa:ctly whenum (0.2) to >come get me or whatever< Okay At seven thirty I’ll probably have eaten and be show:ered and stuff sounds good? Okay a I’ll talk to you then Alright b[ye ] [Bye]

These pre-closing Okays (and the Alright in line 11) are used to do what SchegloV and Sacks (1973) characterise as a readiness to terminate the conver-


sation. It can be noted that the Alright appears to be used in an identical way to the Okays. Indeed Beach (1993) claims that Alright is a functional equivalent of Okay in pre-closings. Recent work (Turner 1999), though, provides strong evidence that these two tokens do subtly diVerent work, which will be discussed below. SchegloV (1986) noted that Okays can also be found at the openings of conversations, as in the following fragment. (33)

#250a; SchegloV 1986:139

1 2 3 4 5 6

Marlene: Bonnie: Marlene: Bonnie: Marlene:→

Hi. This is Marlene. Hi, How are you, I’m fine, Okay. ·hh D’you have Marina’s telephone number?

Clearly this is not heralding a closing of the conversation, coming as it does immediately between the opening sequence and the Wrst topic initiation. That is to say, the position of the Okay is at a juncture in the conversation, after the opening, in contrast to the pre-closing environment of the Okays in (32). In (33) the Okay occurs in a position at which regularly a return how are you occurs. Instead this Okay is followed immediately by an inbreath, which is hearable as preparatory to further talk. Thus Okays can be seen as turn components used to move towards termination of a call or of an opening sequence and to a Wrst topic. They can also be used in the middle of a conversation, as in the following example from the dietetic interview. (34)

DIET, 29.7.96/2A/5.00p

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Cl: D: Cl:

D: Cl: D: → D: Cl: D:

AHH NO [:,= u-’s th’ ] ↓still surfing [(No; ↑O::R) ] =during- (.) the- (0.2) thee::::: (.) wintuh but uh::m (0.6) moreso in summuh [then in wintuh,] [°moreso in the] summuh°;= =[Yea:h.] =[Ohkay,] (0.5) ·khhhh a:nd- (.) we ↑done yuh weight ↓an’ yer ↑height t’da:y¿ ·hh [is yer ]= [°Mm hm°,] =weigh’ (.) hhow w’d yuh describe yer weighd;= has it bin sta:ble?

53

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When Listeners Talk

Before this fragment, which occurs about 10 minutes into the interview, the dietician has been gathering information from the client about his Wtness regime. The sequence terminates with the dietician conWrming that the client does more surWng in summer than in winter, which the client reconWrms with his Yeah (line 7). The dietician simultaneously produces an Okay, pauses, breathes in audibly, and moves to a new topic on the agenda, namely the client’s physical attributes, beginning with a reference to height and weight. Again we have a juncture environment, though in this case in the middle of an extended talk encounter rather than at the beginning or end. The nature of the juncture here is a shift between phases of the interview, and of the focus of their attention from client’s physical activity to his physical data. One major function of Okay thus appears to be the marking of junctures in the talk, and it proposes a move from one topic, activity or phase to another. As such, it is not surprising that Okays are commonly prefaces to further talk by the same speaker, as whatever it is that is new will need to be introduced into the talk. However, it can be noted that they are not simply indicators of readiness to assume primary speakership, as has been proposed for Yeah (cf. JeVerson 1984a; Drummond and Hopper 1993a). Okays appear to go one step further, namely to propose the next talk to be on a new topic or activity in the conversation, whether it be a new or Wrst topic, a new phase, or the good-byes at the end of the conversation. Movement to next topic/activity is, of course, a manoeuvre jointly negotiated by participants, and may occur over several turns at talk. An example of such manoeuvring is shown in the following fragment (from Turner 1999). Here Les is talking about Kat’s troubled Wnances. (35)

LKA3 1.5.1 Turner (modiWed)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Kat: Les: Kat:→ Les: Kat:→ Les: Kat: Les: Kat:→ Les:

You don’t- you want it on the water? necessarily? or do you j’st w- it- ‘r downto:wn or what. ↑We::ll it doesn’t hafta be on the water (0.6) O [:kay ] [See I] c’n afford either way Okay. Bud it’s your mother an’ an them that I c’ncern myself with.= Right. (0.5) You ↑kno:w [I thi]nk Gramma’s gonna offer to= [Okay ] =help them out.


15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Kat:→ Les: Kat: Les: Kat:

Okay With some financ [es] [Ye]ah cuz they’re havin’ a bit of problem I think (h) I think so:: hu[h huh heh] [Well I m]ean as you would so. ·h well I k- ki- sortev want Chris to stay with me.

In this sequence Kat produces six response tokens, four of which are Okays (with one Right and one Yeah), and only one substantial on-topic turn (lines 17–18), before moving to shift topic in lines (20–21). A Wrst observation is that they are talking about a delicate topic, namely Kat’s parents’ lack of money. A second is that Kat contributes very little to the topical development of talk. Her ‘on-topic’ contribution, because they’re having a bit of a problem I think is a summary formulation of the ‘problem’. Formulations are conversational objects that tend to occur at topic terminal or topic attrition places (cf. Heritage and Watson 1980), which constitutes supporting evidence that she is moving towards topic closure, and indeed, after this series of minimal Okay responses, Kat does in fact move to a new topic in lines 20 to 21. Beach (1995) suggests that such series of Okays are indicative of interactional diYculties, including troubling topics or activities. In this sequence, Kat can be seen to be resisting the ‘current topic’, and unilaterally attempting to terminate the discussion, with Les in her turn not responding to these attempts, as she maintains ‘current topic’ over several turns. Okays, then, are used to pre-Wgure, or negotiate towards, changes in topic or activity. They can occur after openings, before closings, and in transitional environments in the middle phases of talk. How do they diVer from Alrights? It has already been mentioned that some authors suggest that Alright appears to be a functional equivalent of Okay in many environments, notably as a preclosing (e.g. extract 32 above). Jensen (cited in Beach 1995) claims that the Alright is apparently equivalent to Okay, though with the possibility that Alright is a stronger ‘signal’ and/or marks more major transitions. Beach (1995) examines an environment in a medical interview in which an Okay is quickly followed by an Alright. He suggests that the Okay treats the immediately prior response as an adequate response to a query, whereas the following Alright, also by the Okay speaker, closes a more encompassing activity, namely the whole of the phase of diagnostic medical history, before moving on to the immediately subsequent physical examination. In a study of telephone conversations, involving mainly Americans (though recorded in Sydney, Australia), Turner (1999) provides conWrmation of this

55

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When Listeners Talk

view. She found that Okays most frequently occurred to close oV short topical sequences within larger topics, or put another way, Okays are used in more locally transitional environments. A typical case is found in the following telephone conference, in which the predominant topic of the talk for most of the conversation is Jak and Bet’s planned vacation visit to Kat. The current concern in (36) is the travel arrangements. (36)

JBKT3:1.2.2 Turner (modiWed)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Kat: Jak: Bet: Jak: Jak: Kat:→

Okay. Are you guys- are you guys coming- you comin on the plane with Lesley and Gramma:? U::h (0.2) I don’t kn [o:w (if we can ]or no:t) [I don’t know w’] I think we kinda ar::e. Okay. Are you- are you- uhm (0.6) are you guys staying in the same hotel as them or °what°,

Within the sequence concerning various aspects of the arrangements for their trip, Kat asks them about their Xight (lines 1 to 7), before moving on to talk about hotel (lines 8–9). The transition here is marked by the Okay in line 8, and it is at this local, on-topic shift that Turner found 62% of 77 Okays in her data. Alright, on the other hand, occurred mainly at more major shifts in topic, as in the following example. (37)

KCT2 1.3.1 Turner (modiWed)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Kat: Col: Kat: Col: Kat:

Col: Kat: Col: Kat: Col: Kat:→

Isn’ it j’st a piece uh pa::↑per? (1.5) Du:de no:, it’s matted now an’ stuff:. A::h it i::s. (0.2) Yeah big painting and (stuff)= =O:h okay.=alrigh’ I didn’t realise that,= I thought you could roll it up and put it in a tyube sorta thing. (0.7) No:: no.= =Ah o:kay. That’s fine the [n. [( ) got some cardboard backing A::h:. Put it in an art show ( ) That’s good. Alright, anywa:y::. Um:::: (.) so the thing you need to do::? ·h is you’re priddy sure about which- which school you’re wantin’ go to.


In this fragment, the Alright in line 17 comes where there is a major shift in the focus of their talk, from Col’s art to the planning of Col’s university application process. In Turner’s data, 74% of the 47 Alrights occurred at such boundaries. She had no instances of Okay being used in major shifts at these boundaries. So what she has found here is a clear trend for Alright to occur at major topic boundaries, and Okay to occur at minor topic boundaries. There are, though, types of phase boundaries in the talk where either of these two tokens can be found, particularly at an ‘intermediate’ topic or activity shift level,17 where a number of Alrights were used. Alright also occurred occasionally at the most local shift level. A closer examination by Turner (1999) explains some of this functional overlap. Sometimes speakers will attempt to backtrack and pick up a topic thread after a digression, that is, there will be a kind of re-focusing of the topic. She found that Okay is used more frequently when the digression is minor, and Alright after a more extensive digression. In other words, the local shift in topic after the digression may be at either the ‘topic’ or ‘sub-topic’ (rather than the ‘macro-topic’) level, but if the digression has been a brief or minor one, an Okay is more likely to be used, but if the digression has been long, an Alright is much more likely. The notion of Alright being used for more major shifts was also found in pre-closing environments, where 85% of Alrights were followed by actual closing of the conversation, whilst only 66% of Okays were. Also more Alrights are Wnal pre-closing components (i.e. before the good-byes) than Okays. In other words, there is a great deal of evidence in Turner’s study that Alright functions at a more macro-level than Okay, and as a stronger pre-Wgurer of a change in topic or activity.

Summary: Eight Response Tokens The response tokens discussed here have much in common. They all occur as minimal responses to another’s talk, and all are semantically weak, if not empty: it is diYcult to say what they ‘mean’. They are all also very Xexible, and many of them can be used to accomplish the more typical work of another token, particularly through the intonation contour they carry, and their placement within a sequence, so that, for example, the typical acknowledgement tokens, Yeah and Mm, can be used as continuers. However, each has a characteristic or archetypical use, and as such can be used to propose, to move towards, to pre-Wgure, or to achieve diVerent ends. Mm hm and Uh huh are used by their producers to move towards prior speaker continuing as next

57

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When Listeners Talk

speaker, most commonly in the midst of an extended turn by that other speaker. Mm is used to retrospectively acknowledge the prior speaker’s talk, though the Mm producer is simultaneously declining an opportunity to talk on the topic of the prior talk. Mm shows similarities to Yeah, in that it is typically an acknowledgement token, rather than a continuer, but it is also diVerent from Yeah, in that Mm shows considerably lower speakership incipiency than Yeah (though higher than Mm hm/Uh huh). Ohs most typically constitute a claim that their producers know something they did not know before, and have undergone a ‘change-of-state’ in their knowledge or understanding of what is being talked about, whilst Rights are claims to understanding that the immediately prior talk has been produced as connectable to, or building on, some earlier talk. Okay is used to display a pre-Wguring of a shift towards a new topic, phase or activity in the conversation, including exiting from a conversation. Alright is similar, but appears to be proposing a stronger, ‘higher level’ movement to a new topic or activity.

Tokens-in-a-series It is one thing to describe ways in which diVerent response tokens are used. It is another to explain speaker choices when tokens are produced in a series, either as a bunch of tokens in a single speaker turn, or as a series of single tokens in their turns responding to a series of turns by another speaker. In this Wnal section, some observations will be made on the latter of these two phenomena. Examples are taken from the dietetic interview.

The Dietetic Interview This dietetic interview took place in a hospital in Australia. Clients attending the clinic have problems with their diet and nutrition, resulting in conditions such as high cholesterol or triglyceride levels or diabetes. The interview used here took place in the mid nineties, and was the Wrst meeting between this dietician (D) and client (Cl), so it represents the entire discourse-history-so-far between these two speakers. The phases of the interview, in broad terms, are (Tapsell 1997): initial Greetings and Opening of the interview, after which the dietician makes a Statement of Purpose of the interview, before going on to the Wrst major phase, which is Information Gathering of the physical attributes, Wtness regime and dietary habits of the client. This is followed by the second major phase, which is Advice Giving by the dietician, with the aim of persuading the client to follow a


healthier diet, which includes some medical information. At the end of the interview there is a Wrap-up phase, including arrangements for a subsequent meeting, before the terminating Leave-taking. The Wrst example in which sequences of response tokens are examined is taken from the Information Gathering phase. This is a fairly typical sequence in this phase of the interview, with D asking a set of pre-arranged, ‘agenda’ questions, to enter the information on a form she has in front of her. There are thus short, often three part sequences of question and answer with a brief third position post-expansion, though these three parts are often expanded beyond this basic format. The main response tokens used are Okays from D and Mm hm from Cl. In the Wrst extract, the dietician is asking the client about his desserts. (38)

DIET, 29.7.96/2A/5.00p

539 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549 550 551 552 553 554 555 556

D:

Cl: D: → D: Cl: D: Cl:→ D: → D:

‘d you estimate- (.) °yihknow; approximately how offen in a wee:k¿= yuh’d ↑have something like tha:t? yuh’ve said- (.) someti [:mes [I: w’d ha:ve it probably:: (1.6) no more th’n three times a week, °°Ohkayh,°° (1.0) an’ is thee ice cream a: perticuler ty:pe¿= or jest [a regular ice cr [eam¿] [U:::::::::::::h [jest] regular ice [cream.] [a regu]lar i:ce [cream¿]= [Mm hm,] =↑°Oh:kay°? ·hhh (1.5) ↑en’ th↓en you said p’haps one to two glasses uh wi:ne with dinner¿

This fragment opens with D asking Cl how often he has ice-cream, Cl’s answer, with D following the answer with an Okay in third position in the sequence. This local level Okay is followed by another question about ice-cream, this time about the type. The Okay is marking transition between two related sequences, (a question-answer Wrst about the frequency of consumption of icecream and second about the type of ice-cream consumed) with the topic of icecream in his diet. The ‘type of ice-cream’ sequence is expanded beyond the basic three parts, with D echoing a part of Cl’s answer to her question, a regular ice-cream, which

59

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When Listeners Talk

Cl reconWrms with a continuer Mm hm, which is a handing back of the Xoor to D. That is, Cl does not add to the information he has already given. D then ends this sequence with another Okay, and moves on to the next topic in the series of questions, which is wine consumption. The next fragment (39) is from early in the advice giving phase of the interview, in which D is giving Cl information about cholesterol. Shortly before this sequence, Cl had talked about what he already knew about this fat, and now D is expanding in more detail on the nature and eVects of the substance. We Wnd in this extract a predominance of Rights and Mm hms rather than the Okays and Mm hms found in the information gathering phase of the interview, as in (38) above. These Rights are produced overwhelmingly by Cl, whereas the Okays in the information-gathering stage were produced overwhelmingly by D. There are two issues here. The Wrst is why Cl as main recipient in the advice-giving phase produced so many Rights (and few Okays), whereas D produced so many Okays (and few Rights) when she was main recipient in the information-gathering phase. It will be remembered that Okay is used to shift topic/activity. In (38) there was a series of topic-shifting, agenda questions, and after Cl’s answers, D marks the shift to a new question and a new topic with an Okay. The extract in (39) is an extended explanation of cholesterol, i.e. it maintains a single topic over a long stretch of talk, so Okay (or indeed Alright) would not be appropriate, as there are no ‘shifts’ of topic or activity. The second issue to be addressed here is why Cl, in the extract below, sometimes produce Rights and sometimes Mm hms. This question is addressed after the extract. (39)

DIET, 29.7.96/2A/5.00p

897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 908 909 910 911

D: Cl:→ D: Cl: D: Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D:

So w’re good predu(hn)ce(h)rs ev chelest’rol. [·hhhhh] ↑WE DO: NEE:D,= ↓u-cert’n amoun’ -though?= [Mm hm,] =cz it does have functions,= in our bo:dy:¿ ‘s im [por’nt] for some ho:rmones¿ ‘n some= [Righ’;] =bodily functi:ons¿ ·hhhh bud obvi’sly we don’ wan’ too much. [Coz too] much= [Ri:gh’.] =[ev it¿ ] ·hhh as I say,= it’s a type uh= [Mm; hm,] =fat in thuh bloo:d¿= it’s trav’ling aro:un’¿ ·hh too much ev it- (.) °um° (.) °starts to:° ·hh °um::° (0.2) go inside our a:rt’ries¿= like [you ment]ioned;= our blood vessels¿=


912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 925

Cl:→ D:

Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D: Cl:→ D:

[Mm; hm,] =·hhh an: ‘f we get ↑too ↓high u-level,= it c’n acsh’lly build up an’ ·hhh an’ narrow those,= [an’ make] it harder fuh thuh blood tuh flo:w.= [Mm ↓hm; ] =[(.)[s o:] uh cou:rse, ·hhh yuh heart disease;= [ Ri[gh’;] =like you men:[tion:ed;] ·hh so ↑that’s= [Y e: s:.] =cert’nly the reason;= why we need it tuh be on a good level; ·hh [‘bout f]i:ve point= [Mm hm¿] =↑fi::ve. (1.0)

It will be recalled that Mm hm is a continuer, used to pass the Xoor back to prior speaker without any comment (or topical talk), whilst Right is used to claim that a connection between two (or more) ideas that have been mentioned has been recognised. The Wrst point to note in this sequence is that D is engaged in a multi-unit turn at talk, in which she is explaining a complex phenomenon (in the sense that there is a range of features, aspects and relationships about cholesterol that she is engaged in telling about). As such, Cl as recipient needs to see how the diVerent components of the explanation relate to each other, and to what he has heard or said himself about cholesterol in the interview-so-far. The Wrst Mm hm in 899 responds to so we’re good producers of cholesterol, a formulation that provides the gist of the passage prior to this one. As such, D is saying something that she has already — and just — told Cl, so there is no new connection to be made between the idea she has just stated and some earlier, diVerent idea. Cl’s Mm hm, then, is a continuer, which passes up the opportunity to take the Xoor, and also passes up the opportunity to produce a less ‘neutral’ response token such as a Right. He is, in eVect, saying ‘I’m here, I’m attending, I have no need to tell you how I have received this information, except that I have nothing to add to or comment on what you have said, nor to particularise the stance I am taking on what you have said, except that I pass the Xoor back to you to continue’. The next response token is a Right in line 902, and the question here is why Cl chooses a Right and not another Mm hm (or indeed one of the other response tokens, or a more substantial turn, or a repair). The placement of this Right is after We do need a certain amount, though, because it does have functions in our body (898/900). Neither of the two ideas expressed in this turn has been

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When Listeners Talk

mentioned before in the interview, either by Cl or by D (remembering also that this is the Wrst encounter between these two, so there is no larger ‘discourse history’). So there is evidence that a new connection is being made, within the emerging complex explanation of cholesterol, between the need for a certain amount of it, and the reason for the need. The next response token is another Right in line 905. This follows D’s it’s important for some hormones, and some bodily functions, but obviously we don’t want too much. She is expanding here on her previous utterance by mentioning cholesterol’s importance for some hormones, as well as repeating that it is important for some (unspeciWed) bodily functions, and then adds that too much is not good. Her obviously appears to be claiming that this news is a given, and thus in eVect redundant — so why state the obvious? But there is a new connection being made here between two ideas: whilst we need some cholesterol, we still have to keep the level in check. Cl had shown that he knew that the level needs to be kept in check: if it builds up it could be sort of a- lead up to possible heart problems (lines 876–7). So a connection is being made between what he has already spoken about, namely that high cholesterol levels are bad, and a just mentioned idea, that some cholesterol in our bodies is necessary. Hot on the heals of this Right comes an Mm hm in line 907. All that has emerged since the Right is ‘cause too much (line 904). This is fragmentary, and insuYcient to have contributed a new idea to the emerging explanation. So this Mm hm can be understood as a continuer, indicating a readiness on the part of Cl to continue in the role of recipient. The next response token is the Mm hm in line 912, responding to as I say, it’s a type of fat in the blood, it’s travelling around, too much of it starts to go inside our arteries, like you mentioned. This is a series of ideas that have all already been mentioned, so this series of utterances is a recapitulation, which she has pre-Wgured with her as I say, in line 906. There is a reinforcement of the lack of newness in the development of this explanation also in her like you mentioned in line 911 (the last two words of which are overlapped by the Mm hm). There are thus no ‘new connections’ to be made by Cl between any of the ideas expressed in this turn and any other ideas, and thus a Right would not ‘Wt’, whereas a continuer Mm hm would, as there is also no indication that D has come to an end of her explanation — no formulation or summarising. In line 916 there is another Mm hm by Cl. This responds to D’s and if we get too high a level [i.e. of cholesterol], it can actually build up and narrow those [i.e. blood vessels/ arteries]. This, again, is an connection that had already been made explicit in the emerging talk on cholesterol. Evidence for this is found in


Cl’s summary a few minutes earlier of what he knew about cholesterol, during which he said (lines 876–882) ‘if it [i.e. cholesterol] builds up, it could be sort of a- lead up to possible heart problems, and problems with veins, artery blockage, and things like that. So once again, there are no new ‘idea connections’ to be made here, and a continuer Mm hm is a more neutral handing back of the Xoor to D, without Cl indicating any stance from his response token about how he has understood what she has said; indeed his lack of a more marked response token is telling her that he is not taking what she has said as anything worth commenting on. Next, in line 918, we Wnd another Right, this one responding to and make it harder for the blood to Xow (915). At Wrst sight, this looks like information that he had already incorporated, as it might seem obvious that if arteries were blocked, then blood would not Xow so easily. However, this is a Wrst mention of blood Xow, so a new idea has been introduced into the description. In other words, it is not so much a case of whether or not obvious logical connections have been made, however ‘obvious’ they may be, but about an aspect of the description that is being made explicit for the Wrst time here. Thus the ‘new connection’ being made here is between ‘vein/blood vessel/artery narrowing’ and ‘reduced blood Xow’. The Wnal response token in this extract is the Mm hm in line 923, which responds to so that’s certainly the reason why we need it to be on a good level. This is now a formulation, or upshot, of the explanation-so-far (cf. Heritage and Watson 1980), and as such is again introducing no new ideas that need to be integrated into an emerging, complex set of related ideas. The Mm hm is again a minimal, neutral handing back of the Xoor to D. There is one other response token in this sequence, namely the Yes in line 920, and it is reasonable to ask why this ‘vagrant’ token suddenly makes an appearance here. It is beyond the scope of this analysis to provide a full answer to this question, so suYce it to note that Yeah and its variants (Yes, Yup, Yep and others) are very common in ordinary conversation, but scarce in this dietetic interview (and in many other forms of institutional talk). Where Yeah/ Yes does occur in this interview, it tends to be at points such as this, where Cl’s own direct experience has been mentioned by D. Here his Yes responds to like you mentioned, that is, a mention by her that is about something over which he is the primary authority, which includes biographical or experiential aspects of his own life. This contrasts with most of what he responds to in this interview, which is information about matters that D, as the medical expert, has authority over, namely medical/dietetic information.

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The passages in the two Wnal extracts in the last section were relatively simple examples of how the speakers in the dietetic interview used ‘tokens-ina-series’. In some other passages the mix of tokens is more complex and varied, and currently it is beyond the scope of current knowledge to explain all the choices speakers make. This will provide a challenge to further understanding of response tokens in future research, for example how to track series of response tokens and attempt to unravel why participants choose a particular token at a certain point in the talk rather than another (or indeed another kind of minimal response, such as an assessment, or a more substantial topical turn). There are, of course, limitations to this line of research, as there are unlikely to be compelling reasons at all points for a particular token. Such an understanding of talk-in-interaction would presuppose something deterministic about the unfolding of the talk, whereas in fact speakers are constantly making local choices about how to respond, and these choices are jointly negotiated by participants. Nevertheless, as the examples in this segment show, it is at least at times possible to indicate some reasons for particular choices at particular points in the talk.

Conclusion There has also been little discussion in this chapter of the very important role of intonation and other prosodic features. This is highly complex, as prosody and intonation contribute very strongly to the functional variability of response tokens. The role of intonation is examined in some detail with respect to Mm in Chapter 6. Furthermore, the descriptions of each of the response tokens discussed in this chapter have been very partial. It has been the purpose of these descriptions to characterise the core functions, the most common uses, and the most typical ways in which they are used. The remainder of this book will focus on Mm, both as a response token in its own right, and in contrast to the most similar response tokens, Mm hm (and Uh huh) and Yeah. In these next chapters, there will be the in-depth examination of Mm that has been lacking for the surveys of response tokens in this chapter.

Chapter 3

Five types of Mm: The non-response tokens

Introduction Eight major types of Mm have been identiWed in the study of this response token, Wve of which are discussed in this chapter. The other three are types of response tokens, with three variants: weak acknowledgement, continuer, and assessment. These will be the major focus of Chapters 4 to 6. The weak acknowledgement token Mm is the most frequently occurring of the eight, and it is the most complex in terms of the environments in which it occurs and the actions it accomplishes. Therefore more attention is paid to this form than to the others. The eight types of Mm all have prototypical prosodic shapes. Some are unique to their type, making them identiWable on this criterion alone. The lapse terminator is a very long glissando (occasionally rise-falling). The degustatory Mm is a long, rise-falling token. The repair initiator rises. The ‘hesitation marker’ is Xat, either level or slightly rising or slightly falling. The answer and the response tokens are typically of medium length with a falling tone, although, as mentioned above, a signiWcant number of response token Mms do a rise-fall or a fall-rise. These last two can be distinguished by paying attention to their sequential position. The precise relationship (and etymology) of the eight Mms is not clear, but some preliminary grouping is possible. The Wrst to be discussed in this chapter occurs after a silence of at least several seconds: the lapse terminator token.1 This is used to re-engage in a conversation after a lapse.2 Unlike most Mms, this one is similar to a Wrst pair part in an adjacency pair in that it is not a response to an utterance in a conversation, although it could be argued that it is a response to silence. The second, the degustatory Mm, is a prosodically drawn out (drawled) token with a strongly rise-falling intonational shape, and is usually a response to a non-talk stimulus, most typically as an expression of pleasure in eating, or the prospect of eating,3 although it can also be a response

66

When Listeners Talk

to talk about some other pleasure evoking experience.4 These two tokens occur most typically in initial position, but in response to, or at least following, some action or event other than talk. The third, the repair initiator, also occurs in initial position in the adjacency pair, and does the same kind of work as Huh? or What?, namely it initiates repair (draws attention to some problem of understanding or hearing) in the turn after a trouble source turn. This one is rare in the data set. It has characteristics of a Wrst pair part in an adjacency pair, but, like all repair initiations, is also a response to some other talk. The fourth Mm, the ‘hesitation marker’, is very diVerent from the Wrst three, in that it cannot stand as a full turn in its own right, but is a kind of placeholder, Wlling what would otherwise be a silence. It appears to be saying something like, ‘I may not be saying anything topical at this point in my turn, but I am still in my turn, and shortly I will say something’. It appears to be a clipped form of Erm or Um, with the initial vowel missing, as it occurs in the same environments. The Wfth type, the answering Mm, shares with the response token Mm that it is a second pair part. The main diVerence is that the answering Mm is a response to a question (in a similar way to Yes or Yeah when they are used to answer questions), whereas the response token Mm is a response to some other action of talk, typically an informing or aYrmation or an expression of opinion. Apart from this diVerence, the answer and the response token are very similar in most respects, not least in their prosodic shape. These Wve are discussed in this chapter. They proved relatively easy to characterise quite brieXy. The response token Mm with its variants is treated separately in the following three chapters because it is not only by far the most frequently occurring of the diVerent Mms in the data set, but also the type about which there is most to be said. Any talk following an Mm is not criterial in identifying the token, apart from the ‘hesitation marker’ Mm, which is reserving the next ‘space’ in a conversation for its utterer. All the other Mms can be followed either by the same or by another speaker, although the response token, the answer, and the repair initiator are most typically followed by talk by another. Mm as a sound, as the phone [m], has some characteristics that make it distinctive in certain respects in English (and in many other languages). As a bilabial nasal continuant, it is the only sound in English which has the mouth closed from onset to termination. Further, there is no lip, tongue or jaw movement during the production of the sound, i.e. there is essentially no movement of the mouth and jaws associated with its production. The low prominence of the auditory production is thus complemented by a visual

Five types of Mm

message that the producer of these tokens is presenting minimal vocal activity and labial closure. The sound [m] is the only one in English that carries all these minimal characteristics. That is, there is an iconicity between the minimal message picked up in the auditory and visual channels, and the low level of active involvement in the conversation. In addition, this token (together with Mm hm, Uh huh and some other sounds such as Hm, Erm, and Uh) is amongst the semantically most reduced objects found in English conversation. It displays no understanding of a prior utterance in the way that a recipient inquiry Does she? or an acknowledging Yeah can do, though it can be argued that it claims such understanding. It is perhaps then not surprising that a minimal token such as Mm will have multiple uses. The problem of classiWcation, however, is not to be underestimated. There are a number of cases for which it has not been possible to assign a particular instance of an Mm to any one discrete category. This is partly a function of the fuzziness of lexical items in general, but the item Mm, with its inherent semantic emptiness, is particularly dependent on its environment for the work it does. In the overwhelming majority of cases, though, it was possible to make a more or less conWdent decision on the type of Mm that is being dealt with. The eight types identiWed are unlikely to constitute the whole ‘set’ of Mms that exist in English conversation and talk-in-interaction. Nevertheless, a description of many of the major types of actions that Mm accomplishes can be undertaken with some conWdence.

The Lapse Terminator Mm The lapse terminating Mm, as its name suggests, occurs after a lapse in the conversation, or a silence approaching a lapse, which means more than about three seconds or so of silence in the conversation (see Sacks et al. 1974). This Mm is, in all cases in the collection, prosodically a protracted glissando, that is, a very long, stretched out token. It falls from mostly high pitch to low pitch, and in some cases rises before it falls. This makes it prosodically a very distinctive variant. Speakers regularly do not simply launch into new topical talk after a lapse, but produce a token such as Mm, Ah, Yeah, Right, or also throat clearing, or loud, strong inbreaths. This can be seen as an action in place of a summonsanswer sequence, as in:

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When Listeners Talk

(1) 1 2 3 4 5

Chinese Dinner Jer: → Ann: Jer:

(4.0) Momm[y? [ Well- ((clears throat)) (0.4) Uhdih[you know avry single color

On some occasions at least, after a silence, a speaker will Wrst need to ensure that a co-present speaker is paying attention, before doing the Wrst substantial turn at talk. Mm and other lapse terminators appear to be doing summonsing work akin to the work done in a summons-answer sequence exempliWed in fragment (1). The lapse terminator marks a re-engagement in the talk in this way, as in all cases discovered it is followed by further talk, in most cases by the same speaker, but sometimes by another. One striking characteristic of this type of Mm is that the talk that follows it in all cases picks up the topic of the talk from before the lapse, generally as a formulation of that prior talk. Other objects that follow a lapse do not share this characteristic. There is a striking similarity here with the weak acknowledging token Mm. In the relatively low number of cases in which the acknowledging Mm is followed by same speaker talk, that talk is either on a brand new topic, or it recycles an aspect of the topic from before the immediately prior turn constructional unit, i.e. from before the one to which it is oriented. In this sense, the lapse terminator Mm can be seen to be recycling the topic from before the lapse, whereby the lapse, rather than immediately prior talk by another speaker, can be seen as coming between the Mm and the topical talk that it is picking up. In cases where tokens other than Mm are used in post-lapse position, the topic of the pre-lapse talk is not recycled. There is also a sense, as with a number of other type of Mm, in which the token is being used to close and terminate a prior action in the talk — in the case of the post-lapse Mm as a terminator of protracted conversational silence, and in the case of the acknowledging Mm to propose that its speaker has nothing to add to the immediately prior turn. A further characteristic shared with the response token Mm is that next speaker is not selected. Sometimes, as in fragment (2), another participant goes on to talk, whilst on other occasions, as in fragment (4), the same speaker continues, but in all cases the talk that follows it is a formulation of the talk preceding the lapse. It is also probably signiWcant that none of the lapses is extreme (the longest being 9.1 seconds). This constitutes some evidence that the topic has not been fully abandoned by the participants during the lapse (i.e. the topic may still

Five types of Mm

have held their attention during the lapse, at least part of the time). In this sense these Mms ‘repair’ the lapse: they put aside the silence to reconstitute the topic from before the lapse as the topic for the ensuing sequence. This would appear to be one way in which the use of this token diVers from some other ways in which lapse-type silences are broken. In (2), a lapse terminator Mm occurs after a silence of over nine seconds. The talk following this Mm, which is by a speaker other than the Mm producer, concerns an upshot of the previous stretch of talk: Mal suggests they help their relatives, who have been going through diYcult times, as much as they can. (2)

L&MH3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Mal: Mar: Mar:

Mal: Mar: → Mar:→ Mal: Mal:

°Th’t’s nodda [problem°.= [·hh =w’ll it’s ↑jest↑ I’ve got- my le:c↑Yeh I j’s:t-< hh o::h hh. (9.1) ↑*°Mm:::::°*.= =↑#°Wi’ll help th’m ez much ez we ca:n°#. (0.4) #°Ye:h[s:°#]?

In fragment (3), two lapse terminator Mms occur, the Wrst after a 5.5 second gap (line 7). This one is less stretched than the other lapse terminator Mms in the data set, but is nevertheless longer than typical examples of other Mms (with the exception of the degustatory Mm). Again, it is followed by a formulation of the talk before the Mm. The second one (line 16) is diVerent from the examples so far, in that it is not followed by a further short silence, but by immediate continuation by the Mm producer. Otherwise it is typical, being another formulation of the prior talk. Here Bob has been talking about his parents, in particular about his father, who has an alcohol problem. (3)

A&BD3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Bob:

Bob: → Ann:→

I said look if you ring me up, en I know alcohol’s been involved, (0.5) I’m not prepared to listen to anything, an’ I’m not prepared ta say anything. (.) e:m , there won’t be any point talking. (5.5) Mm::.

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When Listeners Talk

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Bob:

Bob:

→ Ann:→ Bob: Ann: Bob:

(0.2) Yeh-, (.) no:, I pulled that one withoud any (.) problems whatsoever. (3.0) I said I’m quite prepared ta talk ta ya, about↑anything an’ ev’rything, if you’re stone cold so:ber. (7.8) Mm::::. hh well you hadd’n eventful da:y, did’n you. nhh= =mah:,= ‘t’s a busy da[:y, ‘n’ th’n as I]sa:y, I= [°nhhh huh huh° ] =spoke to a woman by the name of Jo:y,= ad AA:,5= fer a liddle while¿ (1.3)

Not all lapse terminator Mms have a straight falling contour. In (4), which is from the same stretch of talk as fragment (3), the contour is a rise-fall, although otherwise the prosodic features of the token are similar to the ones shown so far: a stretched, very long Mm terminating at low pitch. There is evidence in this sequence that the topic has been running down in the talk leading to the lapse (viz. the pauses and minimal responses in lines 8 to 11). A brief lapse follows, which is broken by the rise-falling, long Mm in line 13. In this case it is the Mm producer herself, Ann, who follows the Mm with talk, which again is a formulation of the previous stretch of talk, this time as both gist (That’s done) and an assessment (Thank goodness for that). (4)

A&BD3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Bob:

Ann:

Bob: Bob: → Ann:→ Ann:

Ann:

Neither of them was comf’table talking to me, or being spoken to the way I woz (0.5) (or I) say I woz quite stern aboud it¿ I js- (.) stuck ta the facts as much as I could¿ (0.9) It’s like the roles ‘ve been reversed, don’t you think¿ (0.5) Mm. (0.4) Yeh(6.7) Mm::*:*. (1.9) Yeah well¿ (.) That’s done. Thank goodness fer that. nhh (0.4) ·hh ‘n’ I gather you said ta them th’t you weren’t

Five types of Mm

20 21

gonna speak ta them if: (0.2)

Here the diVerent shapes of two kinds of Mm are apparent: the Wrst, in line 9, is an acknowledging Mm that is short and falls; the second, in line 13, has the typical glissando shape, albeit with some rise before the fall, of the lapse terminator Mm. In (5), a lapse terminator Mm occurs after a 5.1 second silence (in line 9). It starts at high pitch, and, after rising a little, drops through a glissando to low. This one is followed by other speaker talk on an aspect of the topic that has just run down. In this case, the talk following the Mm is the upshot of the previous stretch of talk (cf. Heritage and Watson 1979). This is not apparent from the fragment, but for about three hundred lines of transcript leading up to this point, an underlying theme has been running through their conversation, namely to ascertain what each will be doing for the next few days, so that arrangements for the care of their daughters can be made. The ‘upshot’ in lines 11–12 is that Ben commits himself to Wnding time on the following Wednesday to look after the children. (5)

A&BF3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Ben:

Ann: Ben: Ann: → Ann:→ Ben:

Ann: Ben:

((clears throat)) ↑Yea:h; it’s ackshly; (.) good way e- (.) ev being honoured;= ‘n a wa:y¿ ↑’t’s nice. ↑°Mm:°. a:fter the debarcle ev th’ end ev la:st yea:r,= (w[ith ),] (° °) [(That’s ri::ght), ] (5.1) ↑Mm:::::. (0.4) We:ll-; (.) >I mi:gh- >s’t’v< see ‘f I c’n gets’me< ti:me Wen:sde:e¿ (1.2) T’ go↓:¿ ((clears throat)) Yep-_ hh

The next example in fragment (6) has a delayed acknowledging Mm in line 10, which is a response to Bob’s talk in lines 6 and 8, i.e. a second pair part receipt of that talk. This Mm comes before a long silence of 4.6 seconds, which in turn is followed by another Mm, which has many of the characteristics of a lapse terminator.

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(6)

A&BD3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ann: Bob: Bob: Ann: Bob: Bob: → Ann:→ → Ann:→ Ann:

Yea [:h, I like the ]sound ev that one¿ hh ·hh= [then I’ll do it.] =Well I gave ‘em both options¿= =·hh hhhn (3.0) Though I said (.) I am prepared ta do it. (0.9) ‘t’s up to you:. (2.1) °Mm:°. (4.6) Mm:::. (0.5) Did you actually speak (.) much with your mother? or was it all (.) virtually with your father. (0.6)

This second Mm comes after a shorter silence than any other lapse terminator Mm in the data set, and in addition it is shorter than others of its type that were found. There appears to be a relationship here between the relative shortness of the preceding silence and the relative shortness of the token, which comes at a point that appears to be temporally at the boundary between the a (very) delayed, and typically shorter response token, and the lapse terminator, with its typically longer shape. Apart from its shape, this appears to be being used as a lapse terminator token in so far as the talk that follows it resumes the topic from before the silence (and before the other Mm). The eVect of these two Mms in tandem in this fragment is, amongst others, to keep the conversation from lapsing. Note that if they had been absent, there would have been a gap of about eight seconds, and at this point the parties would be likely to have disengaged from the conversation (cf. Goodwin 1981). An Mm with many of the characteristics of a lapse terminator, but which follows an even shorter silence, is found in fragment (7). This one is prosodically indistinguishable from an acknowledging Mm, and the silence it follows is well short of lapse length. However, there are sequential aspects of this Mm that suggest it is plausibly a lapse- (or more accurately an silence-) terminator type. Sally announces news of the death of an acquaintance which, it turns out, Ron has already heard. She then goes on to announce the location of the funeral, which appears to be real news for Ron: his use of the change-of-state token Oh (cf. Heritage 1984b) is evidence for this. He then utters the short Mm after 1.2 seconds.

Five types of Mm

(7)

R&SB3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Sal:

Sal: Ron: Sal: Ron: → Ron:→ Ron:

Did I tell you that Herbert Ba:rstow wes: (1.4) <was die::d>¿ (1.1) A:n: [d (hi-) ] [>I: knew] thathave any-< (0.2) ↓dips:: left;= °do w [e°, [He:y? WI DON’ HAVE ANY DI:PS LEFT. (22.8) A:::h;= I sh’d ring Melinda ‘n sa:y; (1.2) no: fer [t’ m o: rr o:w.]= [‘bout tomorrow;]= =Yea:h. (2.2) Dju think shi ↓mi:ght come t’mo:rrow¿

Five types of Mm

In (10) the re-engagement in talk after a substantial lapse in the talk is heralded by a particularly loud inbreath followed by a loud outbreath. It may be that this is another resource that participants have to let other parties know that talk is about to resume, as audible inbreaths are one ‘signal’ of an incipient turn (in pre-onset position). In this case, however, as it is at the very beginning of the recording of this conversation, it is not possible to say what talk had been going on prior to this talk. (10) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

A&BD3a/2

Bob:→

Ann:

(17.2) ((banging and sawing noises)) ·HH HH >Whad am I:n do;= I mi- j’s stick iz: ca::hr awa:y? ‘n’ get- that- do:ne¿ (0.7) O:wh;= right-. hh (0.3)

Inbreaths are noticeable pre-onset phenomena before talk, but the talk has lapsed in this sequence, so he may be doing extra work — markedly loud inbreath and loud outbreath — to get Ann’s attention and to re-engage in the talk. In (11) another device is used to break the lapse and to get the attention of the interlocutor: a throat clearing, which is a way to prepare the vocal tract for speaking. Not long after this, Mel, the throat clearer, resumes talk on a collateral branch of the topic from before the lapse, namely gambling, and some possible objects for the disbursement of any winnings he may accrue from the gambling. (11)

L&MC2aii

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Mel:

Mel: Mel: Liz: Mel: → Mel:→ → Mel:→ Liz:

I c’n tell you no:w;= I didn’ wi:n. ·hh I didn’ ged anythenk-; °th’ fi:rst horse°¿ (1.4) ↓°*sec’nd horse*° . (0.4) ↑I ↓w’s= =( -) [(et the ] top). [() ] (7.1) ((clears throat)) (1.0) ·hh en I w’z thinking:-; (0.4) I deserve a new ca:r¿ °so that w’d be;= the fi:rst thi:ng°. uh huh (.) °heh heh°

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When Listeners Talk

Parties can also launch straight into talk after a lapse, as in fragment (12), where a non-speciWc formulation, so there we are, comes as part of a sequence in which topic attrition is occurring, with two assessments (very good), and other formulations (that was Wednesday, didn’t do any work) co-occurring. (12)

L&MC2ai

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Liz:

Liz: Mel: Liz: Mel: → Liz:→ Mel: Liz: Mel: Liz:

↓huh huh↓ (0.1) huh huh (0.7) huh huh huh ·HHH O:h_ dea:r. (0.7) °↓huh huh↓ huh huh° Mi:ght be someone you do:n’t kno:w. (0.5) Mm:. (0.1) ea:sil[y. [((clears throat)) (7.7) >So the’ wi a:reVery goodsordev-< (0.3) very slo::w, (0.2) th’t they’re;= s:ordev ecknowledging no:w, (0.8) [Oh;= yes:,] [Coz he’s;] (.) ↓needing special: treatment↓. (0.2) Ye:h. (9.5) Do ↑not- let me ferget-;= ta- (.) ta:hke th’ padlock up- ta my luggage. (.) °thad I used f’r the Phillapi:nes°. (0.4) ↑What- ↓padlock. (0.2) M:y bi:ke padlock. (1.1)

It seems then that some indication that talk is to resume after a lapse, i.e. some kind of re-engagement marker or summons, is the norm. This could be a naming (summons), an Mm or other minimal token, including a lax token, or a marked inbreath. Its absence may, as in these last two fragments, lead to a need for repair work. From these examples of post-lapse talk, it appears that Mm is one resource that is used regularly to terminate a lapse. What makes the Mm distinctive from other resources that can terminate a protracted silence is that the talk following the lapse is a formulation of the topic of the talk preceding the lapse, so it reconstitutes (or, broadly speaking, repairs) what has been abandoned. In this sense, the lapse terminator Mm has some of the force of the response token Mm, namely it is saying that the action preceding the Mm, in this case silence (and presumably non-verbalised thoughts), can be terminated, with no further

77

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When Listeners Talk

talk on what was going on during that activity (the silence), though there is some talk on what had been going on before the lapse. This Mm also has a very characteristic prosodic shape, in that it is invariably very stretched, and moves from high pitch to low pitch, sometimes with a rise in pitch before the fall. The only other Mm type that is so long is the degustatory Mm. The lapse repair Mm is thus one of the most distinctive Mms in terms of its prosody.

The Degustatory Mm A second type of Mm is the degustatory token, which can be considered a subtype of the assessment Mm discussed in Chapter 6. It may well be that the etymology of this Mm is diVerent from the other Mms. It appears to be prototypically associated with pleasurable ingestion of food. It also appears to have acquired a metaphorical use, so that it is also used in anticipation of the pleasure of eating, or when talking of eating, or even with non-gastronomical pleasure, for example sexual or smoking,7 evidence for all of which were found in the data. The degustatory Mm is usually a very long Mm with a strongly rise-falling shape. The most similar token is the lapse terminator Mm, which is also very long, but which usually does a straight fall, and most frequently falls from mid rather than high pitch. The latter is also typically a Xatter token, even when it takes on a rise-falling shape. The degustatory Mm is not common in the core Australian data. The richest source for this type has been two American conversations, Chicken Dinner and Chinese Dinner. The titles of these two transcripts provide the clue that they are eating events, where it is to be expected that some of the talk and activity will concern food, and the guests would produce a more than usual number of degustatory Mms to express appreciation of the food. The Wnding that the degustatory Mm is relatively common in these two conversations has further implications that concern the distribution of Mm in three major ‘dialects’ of English: Australian, British and US. It has been found that overall Mm is most frequent in the Australian data, also frequent in the British data, but infrequent in the American data, except in the two transcripts Chicken Dinner and Chinese Dinner. A signiWcant number of the Mms in these two dinner party conversations were degustatory Mms, and not response

Five types of Mm

Mms that form the bulk of the occurrences of Mm in both the Australian and British data. One way in which the degustatory Mm can sometimes be formally distinguished from the lapse terminator Mm is that whilst the former is often (and the latter always) preceded by a lapse, the degustatory Mm is not necessarily followed by talk. It can also be identiWed by reference to the activities with which it occurs, at least when that activity, namely eating or some talk about food, can be heard on the audiotape (or seen and heard on the videotape). The Wrst example of a degustatory Mm is from the author’s own Australian data, with an Anglo-Australian husband, and a Japanese wife who had been in Australia for about three years when the recording was made. It is the Japanese wife who produces the Mms in this fragment.8 Keiko and her husband are preparing their evening meal, and at this section of the conversation the talk has lapsed. Keiko appears to be tasting some of the food that she is preparing. (15) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

K&LM4b

Kei:→

Kei:→

(31.0) ((munching sounds)) Mm:::. ((glissando)) (69.0) ((munching sounds, running water)) Mm::::. ((glissando)) (44.5) ((munching and chopping sounds))

Why should it be that Mm can be used as an expression of gastronomic pleasure? The point was made at the beginning of this chapter that the most common use of this token is as a minimal response token, and that the sound [m] is particularly suited to doing this receipt work, as there is an iconicity between the initial, medial and terminal labial closure and a lack of movement of the jaws on the one hand, and the most minimal interactional work that this token generally accomplishes. A similar argument can be put forward for the use of the same sound, though with a much more marked prosody, to express gastronomic pleasure. If the behavioural derivation of this token is to express pleasure whilst eating, then [m], as the only sound in English (and in most other languages) with labial closure throughout its production, is fundamentally suited to the task as being the sound that allows some vocal expression whilst avoiding egestion of food. The most frequent choice of the rise-fall contour provides this sound with an intonational overlay that expresses heightened involvement in the activity, in this case the expression of a particu-

79

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When Listeners Talk

lar pleasure (see Chapter 6). In the core Australian data used for this book, there is only one clear example of a degustatory Mm, which is reproduced in fragment (16). This comes from a sequence in which Nik and her husband Matt are preparing food for their evening meal. At the point in question, Nik has just tried a marinade they have been making. (16) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

P&QT2a Nik:

Nik: ?: Nik:→

Nik: Nik:

(3.8) ↑The’re a wie::rd thi:ng:,= the’re n↑ot rilly ↓m:eaty. (0.4) w’n ya see:;= j’s this lid’l brocc’↑lee? (0.8) tsk (0.5) ↑Mm:::↑. (.) ↓oo:h,= ni:ce marina:de, (1.9) ((slurping sound)) ‘cept- ‘t’s ↓*in a (crack)*↓. (1.3) (↑Hang ↓on,) (1.2)

Matt is not contributing to the talk during this sequence, although he is copresent. In the silence leading up to line 9, Nik must have tried the marinade, and her response is a long, rise-falling Mm at high pitch, which is followed by an assessment of the marinade. She then audibly tries some more, as the slurping sounds that follow this talk testify. The remainder of the examples in this section come from American data, all but one from Chicken Dinner and Chinese Dinner. In the Wrst of these fragments, the guests have begun to eat the eponymous chicken, and Nan makes a complimentary comment on its quality in lines 1 and 3. (17)

Chicken Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Nan: Viv: Nan: Viv: Sha: Nan:→ Sha:

[(Viv)-] [The chicken is rilly goo:d. You li [ke it? [Very very good. °O©kay[good.©° [Yuwuh (.) g’ss I g’d say ih same abaht p’t [atoes. [↑Mm::. (0.8) whhh-hh huh-hh-hh-hh-hh

Five types of Mm

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Viv: Mic:→ Nan:→ Mic: Viv: Viv: Mic:

↑Fine I’ll nevuh cook f’you again. Mm:. (0.6) Mm:. It is good. (0.7) Like it? (0.6) (G’d.) Yeh

Very soon after this, in line 7, she produces an Mm that has the characteristic shape of the degustatory token, stretched, and with a punched up contour from a high pitch onset. The two other Mms in this sequence, Michael’s in line 11 and another by Nancy in line 13, are less clearly degustatory, being relatively short, but they nevertheless occur in the environment of talk about food, and both are loud and quite long. The next fragment (18) also occurs around talk about and ingestion of food, this time from the Chinese Dinner conversation. Beth has just brought in some duck sauce and mustard and oVered it to the dinner guests. A few seconds later Don utters a longish and loud Mm, and a few seconds after that John does two Mms, the Wrst long and with a rise-falling contour, the second quite loud and with very animated intonation. (18)

Chinese Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Bet: Bet: Bet: Joh: Bet: Jer: Don:→ Jer: Joh: Ann: Don: Joh:→ Joh:→ Jo?:

Here’s the duck sauce. (1.0) ((Beth sits, then John sits.)) En here’s the mustard. (0.7) Oh:: there’s one more thing. Hnh! An that i:s, here kitty, hh! (1.5) ((Beth leaves with kitten)) °( ). Mmm. °( ) How’r you folks doing? °Oka:y? ‘Kay, (2.3) Mmm. (1.0) Mm! (2.8) °( ). (0.8)

81

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When Listeners Talk

22 23 24 25 26

Bet:

Don:

Hnhehhhhhhh, ((Sitting down at table)) (0.7) Don they have any:, (0.7) uhm, (0.3) duck, (0.4) (Wuddyuhcallit) duck[(sauce).

The position of these two Mms in the discourse so soon after the sauce (and the mustard) have been placed on the table suggests that it is most likely that they are responding to the food. They have had a few seconds to look at, smell and perhaps even taste the sauce. In fragment (19), from the same conversation, Beth is commenting on how good the soup is, in the present tense, indicating that she is imbibing, or has just imbibed, the soup. In this case it must have been done between mouthfuls, as she could not have made the comment the soup is goo:d without spluttering some of it audibly. (19) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Chinese Dinner Bet: Bet: Bet:→ Jer: T?J: Ter:

Bet: Bet: Ter:

(1.5) =Maybe she would be more gentle with us if we were That’s true ( ) [Mmm:: the soup is goo:d, [De::::n, even if we try tuh pet ‘er. .hh duh more gentle with her. [( )] One two [t h r e e f o u r, ] whack out ‘er a::nd maybe then we, (0.3) (0.7) Terry y’wanna have some? [Here Terry [five!

A Wnal example of the degustatory Mm and the concurrent enjoyment of the taste is fragment (20), where the Mm is much shorter than typical ones, but where the juxtaposition of the Mm and the assessment of the quality of the food, together with the Mm coming after an 8.8 second lapse in the conversation, means this cannot be a response token Mm. It comes in what could be a lapse terminator Mm position, which it may in part be, but the association with the positive assessment of the chicken suggests that the Mm has at least some degustatory quality to it. Note that all lapse terminator Mms in the data have a glissando shape and fall much more markedly to low than the token in this fragment. However, it is also quite likely that this Mm is doubling up as a degustatory Mm and a lapse terminator Mm.

Five types of Mm

(20)

Chicken Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Mic: Sha: Mic: Sha: Mic:→ Viv: Sha: Nan:

He dzn’ (.) He doesn’ ca:re (0.6) Mm hm, (0.2) Yihknuh? ih, (0.6) °Right,° (8.8) Mm chick’wz so guhd (1.3) °Oh guhd° (Good ^boy [©yee) [I wz hungry (0.9)

These Wrst six examples of degustatory Mms are all ones in which their speaker is tasting or has just, or at least appears to have just tasted some food, or is still, in some way, experiencing the taste. In the next batch, the speaker of the degustatory Mm does not appear to have actually tasted food, but is uttering the Mm in anticipation of tasting, but without the direct taste of the food in the mouth. This use of the degustatory Mm is indexical of the direct, concurrent association of its utterance and the ingestion of food, at one remove, so to speak, from the actual experience. Typically, as in fragments (15), (16), (19) and (20), and in the second and third Mms in (17) above, the Mm is the Wrst element in a Wrst pair part of an adjacency pair9 (though they do not always get their second pair parts). This is because such Mms are not responses to some talk, but comments on the food they are tasting.10 In fragment (21) the temporal dislocation of the utterance of the Mm from the primary site of tasting and verbal response to tasting is further underlined by the fact that the Mm in line 15, which has some of the characteristics of the degustatory Mm, is a second pair part to Don’s assessment of the bean curd. (21)

Chinese Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Don: ???: Ter: Don: Don:

[I guess I’ll[sit over here. ((Moving towards seat)) [( ), [( [ ).] [( [ ).] ((At his place,phone hung up.)) [(en all th [at). ((Beth leaves, Don sits.))

83

84

When Listeners Talk

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Ann: Don: Jer: Don:→ Ann:→

Ron: Bet: Bet:

[That’s a won ton. Hey that [bean sprout[(I don’ even want that!)/(What is a won ton!) That bean curd thing looks pretty good, Mmm. (4.0) ((John and Beth return)) ((Whistling)) la ti la[ti la ti ] do [O:kay. ] ‘Kay whydnche[sit-

Don’s comment on the bean curd dish as looking pretty good, responded to by Ann’s long Mm in second position, has some of the characteristics of a response token Mm, but its length, and the positioning immediately after an assessment of food, suggests it has blended some degustatory element to the response token. Again, a certain aYnity with the rise-falling assessment Mm discussed in Chapter 6 is evident. A very similar example is presented in fragment (22), where Beth has just commented that the Beef Peking is very good, and Don prefaces his proVering of the knives with an Mm, which has characteristics of a response token Mm again, but which may have been indexically pushed toward the Mm by this talk of food. (22)

Chinese Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Ann:

Bet: Ann: Bet: Don:→ Bet: Ann:

[Hey waitaminnit. They told us (0.6) Don said get something hot’n spicy en thisthey said this was and it isn’t. ( ). The, Beef Pek [ing? [Yeah! It’s very good. Mm. Here’r the knives, °Okay gimme two [maybe three [( ). [Mm hm [( ).

Two Wnal food examples are fragments (23) and (24), which represent instances in which the association with food ingestion is less direct, but the talk is about food, and as such this may be pushing the speaker’s choice towards an Mm, and in particular a degustatory Mm, rather than one of the other members of the set of possible brief responses in positions such as these. Other possible choices of tokens here might be Mm hm, Uh huh or Yeah. In (23) the Mm is longer than a typical response token Mm would be, whereas in (24) the Mm is indistinguishable from such an Mm.

Five types of Mm

(23)

Chinese Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Bet:

(24)

Chinese Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Don:

Jer: Don: Bet: Don: Joh:→ Jer: Bet:

Bet: Don: Bet: Don: Bet:→ Joh: Bet: Joh:

It looks like beef’n bean curd. (1.0) Well I wan’ lots of beef I think it’s pork. Oh. Pork. Mm hm. (0.5) Mmm. (0.4) Okay that’s enough. °Okay.

=[I think it’s duck sauce [°(thet you got) [Yeh that’s du [ck sah]ss.= [( )] =[Right. =[(You know,) (0.4) Mm. This course’ll be given at Jef [ferson Hospital nex’ week er ]= [But I mean people who’r no:t ,] =something like[that,=

The point to make here is that with Mms being relatively scarce in the American data, the ones that do occur appear to skew towards the degustatory type and are associated with the ingestion of food, or with talk about food. Two Wnal examples are included to suggest that the degustatory Mm can be used metaphorically, in the Wrst instance not terribly far removed from eating, in relation to ‘pleasure in smoking’, and in the second instance arguably also not terribly far removed, in relation to ‘pleasure associated with sex’. Fragment (25) is from Chicken Dinner. (25)

Chicken Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Nan: Nan: Nan: Mi?: Sha:

Thi(h)it guy wz °( )° (0.2) ?he::hh (0.3) That wz (cra:zy). nhh hn . (1.1) °( )° (0.5) ehh heh hn

85

86

When Listeners Talk

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Mic:→ ???:→ Sha: Nan: Mi?: Sha: Mic: Viv: Nan:

(0.4) (Like) this cigarette huh? (0.7) °°Mm:: [:.°° [hmh hmh hm (0.5) Kin I hev ye [r ligh [t? [(hhh) [ [hn ^hnh °(My li[ght)° [eh heh-heh-huh ^hu [h h u h huh] they do[n’t like smo:k [ e.

Michael appears to oVer some unidentiWed party a cigarette in line 11, the response to which (line 13) is a quiet, very extended, punched up Mm that has all the hallmarks of a degustatory Mm, except for its low amplitude. Note that the transference from degustation is not very far removed at all: from one oral activity to another. The Wnal example, fragment (26), is from a dirty story in the Auto Discussion conversation told by Mike. (26)

Auto Discussion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Gar: Mik: Gar: Cur: Mik: Gar: Mik: Gar: Mik: Gar: Mik: Cur: Mik:→ → → Gar:→ Kid: Cur: Mik: Cur: Mik: Cur:

[All the other girls,] [settin around in the,] [Ra:stus bought imself] a new s[ports c a r ]y’kno:w¿ ] [grass somewhere ]’n ta ]lkin’n,= =eh::¿ ‘n eez drivin downa stree[t’n passes Li:za.’n ‘e s’z,] [( )],= =( gets up) b’hind e [r ‘e s’z [( ). ehh-eh eh:: [: heh. plot pl]ots, [stops y’know en-] eh-e[h-e::h. [C’mohh:n Liza lemme take yih fo’a rahd in dee ca::h. ‘e says. ehh::::huh ehhuh So, (0.5) Liza gets in en they go buzzin aroun town for awhile’n, (1.0) pretty soon Liza’s playin with him y’know? (0.4) Mm[mm:::h= [°( [ ). = [I’m all f [er Liza pla(h)y(h)in with ]= [°ya-a-ayehhhah hah hah hah]= =him(h)hih ha[h ?hnhhhh [A:lraht,

Five types of Mm

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Mik: Cur: Mik: Mik: Gar: Cur: Mik:

Lits heah i [t one tahm fe [r L i : : z a !] [Mm, [eh-huh rilly ya]::[:::y! [heh-uh hah-u h hu [::h [eh-heh[huh= [.hhhh!= = [he:h [he:h [he:h he:h

In his turn starting in line 16, Mike starts to tell how Liza starts to ‘play’ with Rastus whilst they are driving around. In response to this, Gary produces a very long, rise-falling Mm that has all the characteristics of the degustatory Mm, albeit in the non-typical position of responding to talk, rather than an activity such as eating or appreciating food. In this case, Gary is responding to a narrated sexual activity, which is aYliative to Mike’s story, and provides a way in for Curt’s escalation of appreciation in lines 22/24. This is, then, a case of a metaphorical dislocation of the Mm from expression of gastronomic pleasure to expression of sexual pleasure, removed from the actual occurrence into the imagined realm by the narration. Degustatory Mms have a very distinctive prosodic shape: they are typically very long, and have markedly punched up contours. In the data examined, they have been found to be most common in the environment of the ingestion of food, but they also occur regularly in the environment of talk about food. In addition it seems this variant of Mm can be transferred to activities other than eating to express some pleasure or anticipation of pleasure or imagination of pleasure in that activity, for example smoking or sex.

The ‘Hesitation Marker’ Mm The third type of Mm again appears unrelated to the response token Mm: the ‘hesitation marker’,11 a token that appears to be Wlling a pause in its speaker’s turn. This is most likely a clipped Erm or Uhm, uttered as a kind of turn-holder, with the initial vowel sound truncated. It most frequently occurs medially in a turn constructional unit, but there is evidence that at least some of the turninitial Mms are ‘hesitation markers’. This evidence is discussed below. This token is quite diVerent from the others discussed here in that it is a truncated or clipped form of another token that has a diVerent shape. Its inclusion here is on purely formal grounds, in that its sound is indistinguishable from other Mms.

87

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When Listeners Talk

The ‘hesitation marker’ Mm, usually has a Xat, often level, continuative intonation contour, and does not in any of the cases identiWed in the data have a full falling contour that is characteristic of the acknowledging Mm. One way of identifying the ‘hesitation marker’ Mm is by its position in a turn: it occurs most frequently turn-medially, or, more accurately, medially within a turnconstructional unit. No other Mm occurs within a turn-constructional unit. If this variant of Mm occurs turn-initially, as it sometimes does, it needs to be distinguished from a response token Mm. This can be done partially on the prosodic grounds indicated above, that is, by its Xat, ‘continuative’ contour, especially as very few receptor Mms in the data set (see mainly Chapter 6) have a Xat, near level intonation Wnal pitch direction. However, ‘hesitation’ Mms can be most decisively identiWed through an analysis of their sequential position (see, for example, fragment (30) below). There is, though, a residue of cases of turn-initial Mms that cannot be conWdently ascribed either to the response or to the ‘hesitation marker’ Mm. As a ‘hesitation marker’, this Mm, when it occurs turn-initially, will overwhelmingly be followed by further talk, because a reason for its utterance is to signal that its utterer is taking a turn, and at this moment in the emerging talk has nothing substantial to say, but is, so to speak, reserving the current turn at talk and using the ‘hesitation marker’ to Wll a gap in the talk until whatever it is that its utterer is going to say can be said. It may, of course, happen that a party who uses a ‘hesitation marker’ will abandon the turn before the substantial talk emerges, so it is possible that an isolated Mm in someone’s turn at talk (i.e. one not accompanied by any same speaker talk) could be a ‘hesitation marker’. Perhaps the most likely environment for such a free-standing ‘hesitation marker’ would be in the face of competition for the Xoor, for example in a simultaneous start of a turn with another speaker, whereby the speaker of the ‘hesitation marker’ Mm drops out in the face of the competition. However, none of these free-standing ‘hesitation markers’ has been identiWed in the data, and their existence remains hypothetical. Before looking at some speciWc instances of this variant of Mm, it should be noted that it is in fact rare in the data. The nine cases below (not all of which are conWdently claimed as ‘hesitation markers’) are the sum total of instances of this token found in the extended data set, which runs to about 28,000 lines of transcription. In the Wrst example of Mm as a ‘hesitation marker’, the token comes at line 5 as an initiator of a self repair (cf. SchegloV et al. 1977). The couple are discussing children’s videos. Ben begins a turn constructional unit, and then

Five types of Mm

appears to completely abandon it and do something quite diVerent. Note that the ‘hesitation marker’ comes between two silences, and is lengthened and falls slightly, but not fully. (27)

A&BF3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Ann: Ben: Ann: Ben:→

Ann: Ben: Ann:

The Discovering S:eries:,= I think it’s ↑ca(h)l(h)led, huh huh huh huh huh Discovering (how ta ), HUH (.) huh huh (.) huh huh huh= =I l:ike the one where you (0.4) mm:; (0.8) ‘t’s rilly f:unny how they d o: that,= they- they ged all this (.) o:ld stuff;= they useta d↑o:,= when they ha- (.) ne (.) when they w’re origin’l, Mm:. [↑Yea:h]. an’ then reha [:sh] et. [end] re:hash et. (0.3) [M m: .]

The turn-medial Mm in fragment (28) is also an initiator of a same turn repair. Mel and Liz are going through their accounts, and Mel estimates how much they have spent on certain items: he revises his initial calculation from six to seven hundred dollars, the Mm coming after a pause of 0.4 seconds again, but this Mm, which is quiet and level, runs straight on to the repair itself without an ensuing pause. (28)

L&MC2aii

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Mel: Liz: Mel: → Liz: Liz: Mel:

°(Here’s) jest a hundrid en fordy ni:ne;= ( )= =[( )°°] =[tsk An: (.) put that] in the- [(box). [so the- (.) to:tal amount;= is: e:r, what- ↑six:h (0.4) ↓°mm:° ↑’bout seven hundred dollars.= (already next [yea:r)], [seven ] fordy on:e-; ‘t says et the boddem ev- (.) [( ) [O↑:h;= seven fiftee:n;= °(how ‘bout that)°.

A third example of a turn-medial ‘hesitation marker’, in fragment (29), is not in the environment of a repair, but appears to be a hesitation as Mel prepares what he is about to say (the continuation of the turn-constructional unit in progress). He is providing an account of why he has decided not to listen to the news regularly. This Mm comes after a long pause of two seconds at a point of maximum grammatical control,12 and is broken into two parts, spoken softly, the second part rising from a lower pitch than the Wrst part.

89

90

When Listeners Talk

(29)

L&MC2ai

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Liz:

Liz: Mel: Liz: Mel: → Liz: Mel: Liz:

Thee a:vid list’ner ta the ne:ws person. ↑You:↑ listenta: th’ beginning a the ne:ws? (0.1) before ↑dinner↑? ↑Yeh↑; °Ow:h°. I’m not sa:ying;= I:’m: (0.6) going to:;= ba:n et-; (.) tot’lly¿ (0.1) b’d I:’m, (2.0) °mm ↓m:°, j’ss breakin the habit °a liddle°. When did you decide that. (1.1) °O:h. (.) a long: tih:me ago°, (0.5) °°Mm-°°. (3.5)

Fragment (30) is an example from American data. This is an instance where a ‘hesitation marker’ Mm comes in initial position in the turn. It is part of a response to Gary’s oVer to fetch her a drink, with Carrie prefacing her answer with an Mm that runs into the refusal. (30)

Automobile Discussion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Cur:

Cur: Mik: Cur: Gar: Cur: Car:→ Gar: Cur: Mik: Car: Mik: Car: Mik:

[°Oh Christ fifteen thou]san dollars wuunt touch a Co:rd, (0.7) That guy wz (dreaming). [Fifteen thousan dollars= [(heh) =[fer an original C o : r d ,] =[(°He) figured eed impress im,] Wuhyih wan me t’go mix y’a dri:nk? Shh [it [Mm I already got one. Now don’t sit on my [k n e e a [gain (I get-) [(He)/(You)could’n [: [I guess he’s got ]= [Don’t worry don’t]= =some, = wor[ry, [some other,[ old cars too eez go[t

This Mm cannot be an acknowledging or answering Mm, as it would be taken as a positive, preferred and accepting response, such as Mm, I’d like one. This does not happen. This Mm is in fact a preface to a dispreferred, declining response, in a position that Well as a delayer and dispreference marker, or Yeah as an ostensible agreement, would typically occupy, so that the ‘disagreeing’

Five types of Mm

response is not contiguous to the turn constructional unit with which it is disagreeing. The Mm here, then, is apparently doing some delaying work that pushes the response deeper into its turn and away from its Wrst pair part (cf. Sacks 1987). Note that in (30) the Mm in line 10 could not be construed as a substitute for a Yeah, in which case it would be an acceptance of the oVer of a drink, but in fact it is a rejection of the oVer. This, together with the Xat (sightly falling) contour of this Mm provides evidence that this is a ‘hesitation marker’. In (31), in contrast, the turn-initial Mm in line 10 could be construed as a weaker form of Yeah, which is later upgraded with a ‘real’ Yeah. This Mm, though, has a very similar intonation contour to the one in (30), which is slightly falling and Xat. In fact the evidence for this being a ‘hesitation marker’ rather than an acknowledgement token is slightly diVerent. (31) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

P&QT2a Mat:

Nik:→ Mat: Nik: Mat:

(0.2) Wi c’n::: re:u:se that tomado juice sli:ces¿= carn’- we. (0.8) °Mm::; ↓>ah° ↑YEA:H↑-f ‘t’s a< problem [I c’d] ↓cahncel et.= [↑No-_] =°Not a probl’m°. °Ri:ght. I do:n’t want it to be a problem°. (0.3) °Shut yer mouth°. (1.4) eRi:ght. [H m : . ] (.) [Wha]t- (.) H:m?= [I thou’- ] [we-] =Ehrn. (2.4) You know our pla:n ev going to E:vensong an then:; (1.3) for Wi- (.) ta the Windso:r, (2.7) ↑What ↓plan.

On the other hand, in fragment (35), which is from American data, there is a repair following a Hm repair initiation. (35)

Chicken Dinner

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Nan: Sha: Nan: Sha: Mic:→ Sha: Sh?: Viv:

[‘S gitting t’mah:shy I don’know, (0.7) Wha’. (1.2) Winds’v War, (0.6) I don’like that crap, (0.7) Hm? ·hh Ih wz a piece a’shit. (2.3) [mghhm [I couldn’t be ↑ho:me evry night. (0.6)

The repair initiating Mm appears, then, to be unusual, an exceptional use of Mm rather than a regular one. It may be a clipped or labially closed version of Huhn.

Five types of Mm

The Answering Mm The Wfth and Wnal Mm in this chapter is the answering Mm. It is most closely related to the response token Mm, which will be the focus of the next four chapters. In fact it is not altogether clear that it is distinct from that Mm. This token occurs as an answer to a question, more precisely a polar question, in which the Mm takes the place of a Yeah or a No. In (36) Ann initiates a repair sequence in line 6 to disambiguate Ben’s turn in lines 1–2. The second pair part to this question is an Mm rather than a Yeah. This can be seen perhaps as closing down the repair sequence rather than asking Ann to continue, and it may be the ‘closure’ aspect that has led to the choice of Mm over Yeah. (36)

A&BF3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Ben:

Ann: Ann: Ben:→ Ann: Ben: Ann:

Bert’s goin’ off te do a c’mpuder trai:ning course. ·hh (0.6) Ou:*h:. (1.9) Training hi:m:¿ ↑°M:m°. ↑O:h;= g(k)ood↑. ↑°Yeah°↑. (0.4) So yer going Mon:da:y,

In fragment (37) Liz asks Mel which of them is going to take their son to school the next day. (37) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

L&MC2ai

Mel: Liz: Liz:

Liz: Mel: Liz: Mel:→ Liz:

(3.7) ((background noises: clearing dishes etc)) °What ti:me d’ya hafta be et wo:rk temorra°, E:rhm, wehll;= ‘m teaching et ni:ne. (3.0) >Well I-↑Well it sounds like< (0.5) a-ppha::hhling timing, It’s ↑not goo:d;= ↑is it. Anyway; (.) >that’s quite a bonanza (fer Hugh),= he got th’ severence paya bettpaid< jo:b;= [some]where e:lse.= [↑Mm.] =Mm. that’s e:xcellent.= ↑Mm. ↑Well it’s like To:hm leaving. (0.4) )] [Tom Scu]tt leaving Hu:m:e [‘s. ( [Ye::s:.] [>↑W’l ↓pr’ps th’s] a lot’be< said fer this; (.) re:trenchment >bus’ness,= ‘t see:ms to ev< ·hhh seems to’ve benefitted Ka:rl as we(h)ll. hh (1.2)

The Mm in line 8 is doing agreement here (as well as its core function of ‘closing’ the sequence without comment). This is not so much because it comes with an agreement (which in itself is no argument, as contiguous response utterances regularly do quite diVerent things), but because what it is responding to is something that sets up expectations for an agreement or disagreement response as the conditionally relevant second pair part (cf. SchegloV 1972a). It thus becomes imbued with that ‘meaning’ through the environment in which it Wnds itself. In this chapter the scene will be set for the explication of Mm as a Xexible response token by presenting evidence for its amenability to diVerent environments. It can be treated as a continuer, with a fall-rising intonation contour, most typically transcribed M:m,, and as an acknowledgement token, with a falling intonation contour, most typically transcribed Mm:..1 Note that the comma indicates a slightly rising terminal contour, and the full-stop a falling contour to low pitch. First, however, a brief consideration of the distribution and frequency of the response tokens Mm, Mm hm, Uh huh and Yeah is presented.

From continuer to acknowledgement token 101

Distribution of Mm, Mm hm/Uh huh and Yeah In this section, a brief review is presented of the distribution of Mm in the Australian, North American and British data sets used in the main study in this book. This review covers both the variation in distribution across the three broad ‘dialects’2 in these regions, and in the frequency of occurrence of the four tokens Mm, Mm hm, Uh huh and Yeah, both within and across the diVerent region data sets. It should be stressed that the primary focus of the study is a detailed qualitative analysis of the tokens, and this chapter should be considered as a brief orientation to their domains of occurrence. The sizes of the data bases used in the wider study can be seen in Table 1, measured in numbers of turns per transcript.3 The primary database used was the Australian of a little below 4,000 turns at talk (comprising about 8,000 lines of transcription). These were transcribed by the author. The others are from corpora held at UCLA, California, and the University of York, UK. The American and British data were used mainly to supplement the core Australian data, and to compare uses of response tokens across these broad ‘speech communities’. Table 1. Numbers of turns in transcripts: Australia, US, UK Australia

No. of turns

Melbourne 3876 Couples (14 conversations)

Total Turns: Australian

3876

United States

No. of turns

United Kingdom

Newport Beach (11 conversations)

1989

Rahman 2143 (20 conversations)

Santa Barbara Ladies (11 conversations) Chicken Dinner Chinese Dinner Auto Discussion

1940

Heritage 1660 (18 conversations)

Total turns: United States

No. of turns

1843 1621 2031 9424

Total Turns: United Kingdom

3803

In the core Australian database, a distinction was made between three circumstances in which receipt tokens occurred. First, there were those which were the only tokens in their turn (isolated or free-standing tokens). Second, there were those that were accompanied by further brief reactive talk in the form of other response tokens, assessments or discourse markers of various kinds, brief

102 When Listeners Talk

clariWcation questions, collaborative completions, and one or two other brief types of primarily responsive talk. Third, there were those that were followed by some substantial topical talk by the producer of the token. In Table 2, the distribution of Mm, Mm hm and Yeah in part of the core Australian data set is presented, from a total of about four and a half hours of talk by the seven couples. It can be seen that, of the three tokens, Mm hm is the least frequently followed by same speaker talk, at 9% (N=3). About a quarter of Mms and about two-thirds of the Yeahs, on the other hand, were followed by same speaker talk of some kind. Table 2. Distribution of receipt tokens Mm, Yeah and Mm hm: in three talk environments in the core Australian data base Mm

Free-standing With Brief Talk With Substantial Talk

Yeah

Mm hm

N

%

N

%

N

%

176 24 36

75 10 15

105 71 149

32 22 46

30 0 3

91 0 9

In Table 3, the distributions of the intonation contours fall, fall-rise, rise-fall, rise and level are summarised for the Australian data. (Similar information for the US and UK data sets was not available due to variations in the transcription notation used.) Table 3. The distributions of Mm, Yeah and Mm hm according to intonation contour in the core Australian database Mm

Yeah

Mm hm

N

%

N

%

N

%

Fall Fall-rise Rise-fall Rise Level

199 44 40 7 0

69 15 14 2 0

331 37 58 31 17

70 8 12 7 4

3 28 1 0 0

9 88 3 0 0

Total

290

474

32

As can be seen from table 3, Mm and Yeah have a very similar distribution of intonational shapes, with falling tones being much the most frequent for both. These two tokens are most typically acknowledgment tokens. Mm hm, in


contrast, which is a continuer predominantly, most usually has a fall-rising contour, which is the typical continuer contour. Yeah has more simple rises than Mm, and also a number of level tones, which none of the Mms have. Mm also took on about twice as many fall-rises as Yeah, which reXects its more frequent use as a continuer. If a simpler distinction is taken from Table 3, contrasting only terminal contours, then Mm and Yeah are even more similar: 82% of each of these tokens has a falling terminal contour (ie. the falls and rise-falls together), and 18% of Mms and 15% of Yeahs have a rising terminal contour (ie. the fall-rises and rises together). The remaining 3% of Yeahs have level terminal contour. Although Yeah is not examined in depth in this study, the distribution of these contours does suggest some considerable aYnity between Yeah and Mm, with Mm hm being quite diVerent on this count from both. To turn to a comparison of these three tokens, together with Uh huh, across the three regions, the USA, the UK and Australia, the distribution of the four tokens can be seen. These Wgures, however, need to be read with great caution, as the type of data in these tables is diVerent. All are from ordinary conversations, but the UK and the US data4 in this table are from telephone recordings, whilst the Australian data are from face-to-face interaction. This makes a valid comparison of rates of use between Australia and the other two regions dubious, but the notably higher rate of use of response tokens in the British data compared to the American suggests an interesting diVerence. Table 4. The distribution of Uh huh, Mm hm, Mm and Yeah in corpora from three ‘Englishes’: US, UK and Australian UH HUH

US UK AUS

MM HM

MM

YEAH

TOTAL

Raw

%

Raw

%

Raw

%

Raw

%

Raw

111 4 0

14 1 0

129 34 32

17 4 4

22 142 290

3 15 36

506 740 491

66 80 60

768 920 813

US: N= 3929 turns at talk (197 tokens/1000 turns at talk) UK: N= 3803 turns at talk (242 tokens/1000 turns at talk) AUS: N= 3876 turns at talk (210 tokens/1000 turns at talk)

The main points to note are, Wrst, that Uh huh is rare and Mm hm relatively scarce in both the Australian and the British corpora, whereas Uh huh and Mm hm are both frequent in the American data. In contrast, Mm is scarce in the


American corpus but much more frequent in the Australian corpus, taking an intermediate position in the British corpus. Yeah, on the other hand, is common in all three corpora (and also for all speakers), but appears to be relied on most of all, at 80%, by the British speakers.

Terminal pitch direction and the response token Mm In this and the following sections, there is a brief review of the literature on intonation concerning falling or rising terminal contours in naturally occurring conversation, with examples of Mm as continuer and Mm as acknowledger, which are the canonical Mm hm and Yeah uses respectively. There appears to be widespread agreement in studies on intonation that a terminal fall in an intonation unit is associated with a sense of completion, and a terminal rise with a sense of continuation or incompletion. McLemore (1991:116) concludes that “phrase-Wnal rises connect … and phrase-Wnal falls segment”.5 According to McLemore, the connecting force of rises and the segmenting force of falls can be between textual structures, across types of textual content, or across turns. A corresponding distinction made by Brazil (1985) and Brazil et al. (1980) is between proclaiming and referring tones. As Brazil (1985:65) says, “the central opposition in the part of the meaning system realised by tone is that associated with end-falling tones on the one hand and end-rising tones on the other”. Brazil et al. (1980) claim that where what is said is being marked as part of the common ground, a proclaiming, that is falling end-tone, is chosen, and where what is said is being marked as an expansion of the common ground, a referring, that is a rising end-tone, is chosen. That common ground can be from the domains of ideas or of emotions. Whilst the focus of the Birmingham group is diVerent from McLemore’s, one can nevertheless see that ‘marking common ground’ is doing something that need not be developed further. It can thus terminate (or segment), whereas ‘marking expansion’ is going to need more talk, and would therefore project forward to further talk. In a similar fashion, Cruttenden (1986) talks about rises being ‘open’ and falls being ‘closed’. These ideas of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ associations with terminal falls and rises are supported in the current study. A falling tone on the Mm closes oV the sequence or the prior turn, whilst a rising tone leaves things open, in this case for continuation by the other. The focus in these and other studies (e.g. Du Bois et al. 1992) appears implicitly (and primarily) to be focused on local


interactional work, across adjacent utterances (though McLemore (1991) does refer to higher level ‘structures’). It will not be surprising, on the basis of these claims, that continuers such as Mm hm and Uh huh have Wnal pitch direction that rises, which is associated with a request for more talk from the current speaker, whilst the more retrospective and acknowledging Yeah will typically have a falling terminal contour claiming adequate receipt of what has been said up-to-now, thereby completing that segment of talk, and clearing the way for movement on to next matters. In the remainder of this chapter, some classic uses of Mm as a continuer with rising terminal pitch direction (M:m,), and some classic uses of Mm as an acknowledger with falling terminal pitch direction (Mm:.), will be presented. For comparison, typical uses of the archetypal continuer Mm hm, and of the archetypal acknowledger Yeah, are also presented.6

Mm as a weaker, more neutral acknowledger than Yeah Mm as an acknowledgement token typically has an overall falling pitch contour, and with a relatively narrow pitch range, overwhelmingly mid to low. There is a number of basic claims which can be made for Mm with a falling contour (cf. Gardner 1997), which will be demonstrated more fully in the examples analysed below. For now, suYce it to say that typical, falling Mms occur in positions in which no repair occurs, so there is no problem of understanding or hearing that the Mm producer addresses. Also the semantic emptiness of the Mm, its lack even of positive or negative valency, are all suggestive of a neutral stance. Overwhelmingly, then, it can be claimed that the turn constructional unit to which the falling Mm is oriented: i.

is articulated clearly and can be clearly heard (i.e. there are no problems associated with the production or reception of the turn constructional unit); ii. is conceptually not diYcult to understand (which means ‘diYcult’ conceptually for the recipient, the evidence being the smooth receipt and movement on to next matters, generally without any hitches); iii. is relatively neutral in terms of emotional, evaluative, surprised or otherwise remarkable content;7 iv. is, in terms of its position in the emerging sequence structure, in a sequentially relevant or predictable position (e.g. where an expected second pair part to a Wrst pair part would occur);


v. occurs in a topically coherent position in the development of the topic (e.g. there is nothing topically disjunctive in the topic of the prior turn constructional unit to the unit before that, or in the positioning of the Mm); vi. has come to (or is about to come to8) possible full grammatical completion (i.e. completion of a simple clause or a clause complex with all its subordinate clauses); vii. has come to (or is about to come to) possible full pragmatic completion (i.e. the action being undertaken by that utterance is a completed action, and not part of an action, although that action may be part of a series of actions within a larger action sequence such as a story, or an explanation, or a description). However, it should be noted that the very neutrality of an Mm means that it can be used to defuse a potentially conXictual situation by treating a prior turn as unproblematic. For instance, in response to a turn with which one disagrees, one could express that disagreement, and embark on a dispreferred sequence, with the extra interactional work that that entails (cf. Levinson 1983), and with potential for an escalation of the disagreement. One could ‘back down’ and agree, but that would mean lying or being untrue to one’s beliefs, principles or values. A neat way to avoid the horns of this dilemma is to use an Mm, which is claiming no problem with the prior turn, but which is simultaneously ducking the choice of agreement or disagreement by being as neutral as one can. It should also be noted that ‘full intonational completion’ of the turn constructional unit to which the Mm is oriented is not included amongst the above points, as it was not found to be a signiWcant factor for a choice of falling contour on the Mm. There are two levels of intonational completion that can be distinguished, which I shall call type one and type two completion. Type one completion occurs when the intonation unit has come to an audible physical completion, whatever the Wnal pitch direction. The overwhelming majority of falling Mms were oriented to this type of intonational completion. Fragment (1) is an example of this, where the Mm comes after a slightly rising, continuative terminal contour, at the end of an intonation unit. Ben, however, has not Wnished his piece of talk, as the slight rise suggests (together with the emerging meanings derived from the lexis, syntax and turn-so-far), and he does in fact continue. Ann’s Mm here is oriented to a unit that is grammatically possibly complete, pragmatically too, but intonationally complete only in this ‘type one’ sense.


(1)

A&BD3a

1 2 3 4 5

Ben:

Ann: Ben:

The problem w’z;= that th’t ya needed someone who kne:w;= a:bout compu:ders, ← °Mm:°. en’ about- the in:dustry:,

Type two completion occurs when the intonation unit has a terminal contour that falls to low pitch (marked by a full stop) or a strongly rising terminal contour (marked by a question mark). Some falling Mms were found to be oriented to this type of (full) intonational completion, as in fragments (2) and (3). (2)

R&SB3b

1 2 3

Ron: Sal: Ron:

(3)

L&MH3a

1 2 3 4

Mar:

Mal:

Take a diff:r’n’ sla:nt. Y:es. ← Mm:

[You know; (.) >I mean< (0.2) ;= >b’t my: f:a:mily’s th’ mai:n thing fer m↓[e :? ← [°°Mm:°°,

This suggests that parties regularly choose the falling contour on the Mm where there is type one intonational completion. This means they are orienting to intonation unit completion per se (as well as grammatical and pragmatic completion), not to some intonational, type two Wnality that would typically be marking the end of the turn at talk. There is thus some suggestion here that the main orientation is to the syntactic structures and meanings of the talk, as expressed through syntactic and pragmatic units, and that terminal contour type plays only an incidental role in the choice of contour for the Mm. It is true that intonation units, grammatical units and pragmatic units regularly coincide, as reported by Schuetze-Coburn (1994), Eggins (1990) and Ford and Thompson (1996). However, with the current data set, the picture in relation to orientation of Mm to various types of completion is complex. Only 60% of turn constructional units to which the Mms are oriented were complete in the type two sense: i.e. had falling or strongly rising intonation, were complete pragmatic actions, and were complete minor, simple or complex clauses (i.e. not at sub-clause boundaries). In no less than 31% of cases, the talk to which the Mm was oriented was intonationally complete in the type one sense (in practice a ‘continuative’ terminal contour), or was at some point in the


middle of an intonation unit (e.g. at a point of possible, but not actual, grammatical completion). (The other 9% were late Mms, or the other types of Mm discussed in Chapter 3.) In addition, 19% of these continuative units were pragmatically incomplete, in the sense that the pragmatic action they were part of was incomplete. The majority of pragmatically incomplete units were followed by Mms with fall-rising intonation (22 out of 27 instances) rather than one of the terminally falling contours. (This is discussed further in Chapter 6.) Finally, orientation of Mms to grammatically incomplete units was much less frequent: just 6%. It seems, then, that orientation of Mms to grammatical completion is the norm, whatever the other circumstances. Mms with a terminal falling contour are rarely oriented to pragmatically incomplete units, but such units frequently attract rise-falling Mms. The orientation of Mms to intonation units per se is the norm. Whether these are continuative or completive appears to be less relevant or, on the evidence here, systematic, except that the proportion of fall-rising Mms oriented to continuative rather than completive units is signiWcantly higher than that for terminally falling Mms. In summary, the response token Mm with falling intonation claims for the Mm onto which it is mapped that the turn constructional unit to which it is oriented has been fully, adequately and suYciently received. It is the unmarked case, in which there is no trouble in the receipt of the talk that it addresses. This Mm says something like, ‘I have heard adequately what you have said, and we can move on to next matters. I have nothing to add to what you have said’. There is thus a contrast with terminally rising Mms, which ask the party to which they are addressed to continue talking. Terminally falling Mms are more purely retrospective than terminally rising Mms. The former are merely claiming that the turn constructional unit to which they are oriented has been completely and adequately received, and no further comment or elaboration of the action that that turn constructional unit is doing is necessary.

Response tokens Mm, Yeah and Mm hm with falling terminal pitch direction In this section, there is a description of the nature of the environment of the talk where falling Mm, Yeah or Mm hm are found. For Mm and Yeah, a falling terminal contour is by far the most frequent.


Canonical cases of Mm as acknowledgement token with falling contour Fragment (4) shows a canonical case of the falling acknowledging Mm. In this phase of the conversation, Ann is telling Bob about the very accurate records she keeps of her contact with the children from her Wrst marriage. (4)

F:I:A:3.2 A&BD4a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Ann:

Bob:→ Ann: Bob:

I keep it down ta the hou- (.) dropped off a:t, (0.9) ·hheh b’t I min-, (0.4) the calcula:tion;= et thirdy percent,= is done on ↑n:i:ghts:. <et’s done (.) on ni:ghts-; (.) o:nly>. [M : m . ] [That’s no]t- (.) a:ll thee otha ti:me¿ (0.2) Yea:h,

Bob’s Mm in line 5 has a low falling contour, and is oriented to Ann’s turn constructional unit that comes to full intonational, grammatical and pragmatic completion in line 4.9 It is the second point of full intonational, grammatical and pragmatic completion, the Wrst being after the nights in line 3. This Mm is positioned immediately following a turn which can be characterised along the lines noted above, namely, it is articulated clearly, it is conceptually easy to understand, it is relatively neutral in terms of emotional involvement, it is sequentially (in terms of sequence structure) positioned in a relevant and expected position, it is topically coherent in its position in the topical sequence, it has come to full grammatical completion, and it has come to full pragmatic completion. It also happens to have come to full intonational completion, and it is positioned immediately after completion in these terms. In other words, this is a falling Mm which claims adequate and suYcient receipt, the unmarked case, in which there is no trouble in the turn constructional unit to which it is oriented. Fragments (5) to (7) are further similar cases, which fulWl the conditions for canonical use of the falling Mm. In each of these, the Mms have low, falling contours. (5)

F:I:A:3.27 L&MH3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Mar: Mal: Mar:

=an’ yet-; n’ (.) it w’ld be a t: ↑eh:rrible ti:me;= ta ↓s [ell et Ry ]:e [:. [Yes et ↓would. ] [I kn↑o [:w, [I mean it wasn’t worth a lodev money-; anywa:y,= I’m ↑s:ure it’s ↓decli:ning. (0.4)


8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Mal:→ Mar:

Mal: Mar: Mal:

Mm:. (1.0) an- (.) and also;= ↓Ma:lcolm-, (.) ↑that holiday ↓house;= was their secu:rity.= ↑Dihck hasn’t(0.2) ever b[ee:n] on a s [:u per annua:]tion= [Ye:s]. [Yes;= I kno:w]. =↓s:che:me. >↓I know;= I min< *i-* (.) in o:ne level,= it w’d bi m:a:dness te sell etda:rling ↑kids ↓love >that= [ °M:m:° ]. =sortev thingif there’s a- anything- any p’sition b’c’mes avai:lablef’r th’ ne-< (0.1) ne:xt school year or therea:fta. (0.8) ↑B’T THERE IS N↑O: ↓HA:RM IN RINGING UP- (.) Dubaih¿ Yea:h s. as lo:ng: es- (.) ↑ya ↓know;= we don’t mi:nd, (.) looking: too humble:, -UHHH

Ron’s response in line 11 is a Yeahs which acknowledges Sally’s suggestion. Again its intonation falls away from mid to low pitch. It concurs with Sally’s suggestion, which achieves a positive alignment that Mm, with its ‘inherently’ neutral polarity, would have had more diYculty in achieving. In a similar way to Mm, Yeah can occur as an acknowledgement token with further brief responsive talk. Fragment (12) shows such a case. Here Bob has been recounting the contact he is having with his children in the current week.

115

116

When Listeners Talk

(12)

A&BD4a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Bob:

Ann:→ Bob: Ann:

[>W’l you know ‘f] you look ed ity’know I picked ‘em up Monday ni:ght,= I took ‘em ba:ck toni:ghd,= I >pick’n ‘em up-< tomorrow ni:ghd, take ‘em back< Thu:rsda:y ni:ght-¿ (0.5) ern: the:n;= >pickin’ ‘em up< on th’ F:ri:day ni:ght-;= >‘n’ takin’ ‘em back< ↑Su:nda:y↑. (0.3) °Yea:h;= well th’t’s r↑i::ght°. ↑°So::°. W’ll we needed that;= fer this month though;= ack↑shally:? hh

Ann aligns with her aYrming Yeah, which occurs immediately prior the conWrming well that’s right, which is marked for heightened involvement with what is being acknowledged through the high pitch and the punched up right, with its strongly rise-falling intonation. The Yeah does the typical fall, but note that it does not fall to low, but only to mid, probably because she rushes through to the next unit of her talk, thus cutting oV the end part of the falling contour. Ann is, through this response, expressing strong alignment, perhaps sympathy, with Bob’s busy week with the children, and this is plausibly the reason for pulling out a Yeah rather than a weaker acknowledging Mm.

Non-canonical case of Mm hm with falling contour Mm hm is archetypically a continuer, overwhelmingly with a rising terminal pitch direction and a fall-rising contour. However, even this token can change its interactional import to an acknowledgement by mapping a falling terminal pitch onto it. In fragment (13), Bob is just coming to the end of his recount of the days events, and he marks the end of his story with the formulation so that’s been the day in lines 6 to 7. (13)

A&BD4a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Bob:

Ann: Bob: Ann:→ Bob: Ann:

an::’ j’st all a the things;= >I wanneda< getdo:ne,= I didn’ getdo:ne¿ (1.1) Yea:h; -ehhh (0.4) °en:d ehrhh° (0.2) so o↑h:nhh.= s’ that’s been the da:yhh. Mm: h↑m:.= =‘n’ ow ‘bout y↑ou:. (0.9) Good-. (0.2) I w’s quite- busy this afternoon,=

From continuer to acknowledgement token

This formulation gets an unusual response, the Mm hm in line 8, which has a strongly rise-falling contour on the second syllable, and which falls terminally to low pitch, one of only four cases in the core Australian data set which do this. Thus even Mm hm is suYciently Xexible to be used to mark the end of a sequence of talk, but when it is, it takes on a more ‘acknowledging’ intonation, and Wnishes with this falling pitch direction to low pitch. The switch here in main speaker is underlined by Bob’s overt invitation to Ann to tell the story of her day, which she then does. In this case it would appear that an Mm with falling contour and terminal pitch direction (or a rise-falling one to indicate heightened involvement similar to the token here) would have served the same function as an Mm hm. In this section some instances of typical Mms and Yeahs as acknowledgers, and one case of an atypical Mm hm, have been shown. It has been argued that a falling terminal pitch direction is associated with an acknowledging force in these tokens.

Response tokens Mm, Yeah and Mm hm with rising terminal pitch direction Rising terminal pitch direction, most typically following a fall-rising intonational contour in all three of these tokens, is associated with continuers. For Mm hm this can be described as the canonical intonational shape. For Mm and Yeah this is a regular, but not typical, intonational shape. In the core data set, about 15% of both Mms and Yeahs are continuers, with a fall-rising contour (and sometimes a straight rising contour for Yeah). In Chapter 6 the continuer variant of Mm is discussed more fully. At this point it is be useful to lay out the conditions under which one Wnds a continuer (with particular reference in this list to Mm as a continuer).16 A continuer Mm is oriented to a turn in which at least one of the conditions set out below is met. Note the formulation for the set of conditions for fall-rising, continuer Mms is diVerent from that for the set of conditions for falling, acknowledging Mms. In the latter all the conditions are generally met, whereas in the former it suYces for one of the conditions to be met.17 The diVerent overall characterisation of the fall-rising Mm is because a continuer occurs where there is some actual or incipient trouble in the talk, and any one of these conditions can account for a trouble, and thus the need for a continuer. This notion is expanded further in Chapter 6.

117

118

When Listeners Talk

Turns to which fall-rising, continuer Mms are oriented: i.

are regularly articulated unclearly or cannot be clearly heard (i.e. there are regularly problems associated with the production or reception of the turn constructional unit); ii. are regularly conceptually diYcult to understand (which means ‘diYcult’ conceptually for the recipient, the evidence being the lack of smooth receipt or quick movement on to next matters, or presence of further clariWcation or expansion following the token); iii. are relatively neutral in terms of emotional, evaluative, surprised or otherwise remarkable content (a feature it shares with the types of turn to which falling Mms are oriented); iv. are frequently, in terms of its position in the emerging sequence structure, in a sequentially incomplete position (e.g. before the completion of a Wrst pair part, or in the midst of a multi-unit turn-in-progress). In addition, in terms of completion of the turn constructional unit to which it is oriented, a continuer Mm is usually placed at what Lerner (1996) calls an opportunity space, that is, a place where the turn constructional unit is not complete in all senses, so that it v. generally has not come to possible full type two intonational completion (i.e. completion of an intonation unit with a terminal contour that falls to low pitch or rises strongly); AND/OR vi. sometimes has not come to possible full grammatical completion (i.e. completion of a simple clause or a clause complex with all the attached dependent clauses); AND/OR vii. generally has not come to possible full pragmatic completion (i.e. the action being undertaken by that utterance is an incomplete action, or is part of an action). With regard to points (v) to (vii), it should be stressed that the continuer variant of Mm (or the continuer Mm hm or continuer variant Yeah) do not simply occur anywhere, but orient to partial completion. For example, they orient to the termination of intonation units with a continuative terminal contour (type one completion), to grammatical sub-units, such as dependent clauses preceding independent clauses, or noun or verb phrases within emerg-

From continuer to acknowledgement token

ing simple clauses, or to the ends of stages in partially completed complex pragmatic actions. It should also be noted that what is meant by the formulation ‘at least one of the following conditions is met’ is that the continuer variant of Mm is typically used where one of the possible sources of trouble listed under points (i) to (vii) above occurs. In the next section some canonical uses of Mm hm are presented, and then some instances of the more marked uses of Mm and Yeah as continuers.

Canonical cases of Mm hm as continuer with rising terminal pitch direction In fragment (14), the Mm hm in line 17 is an archetypical continuer. Mal is telling Marilyn about the repairs he has arranged to have done to his motorbike. (14)

MH:22/23:L&MH3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Mal:

Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal:

Mar:→ Mal:

Seven e’clock;= temorrow >morning;= I get< the motorbike. (0.5) What’s happened with it. (0.3) ↑°Right°¿ ·hh There’s three: things th’ta godda be fixed;= fer th’ roadwo:rthy? Ye:ah. They’re ha:lf fixed et the mo:ment¿ [Ri:ght],= [°M:m°,] =·hh I pick id up-; ↑from hiz pla:ce;= et seven e’clock t’morrow >morn’ng-; I take it- down d’< Moder Italia:na; ·hh THE:Y fix thee other things-; (0.3) which nee:d do:ing, ·hh becuz they’re things which (.) I↑ : w’z genna cha:nge anywa:y, Mm h:m,= =or envo:lved with th’ work which I: w’z genna get >done anywayanother woman by the name a Pa:m McInto:sh;= who:: wo:rks wi:th Mandy Langman,= b’d is in based in Me:lbern. Mm [hm, [pt·hh (.) en he:r ro:le;= is go:ing ta be::; ca:lled, CPE↓:-, Coordina:der, which i:s; Customer Premise Equipment Coordinader, ·hh which i::s;= thee equipment thet w- I se:ll. an thet Nick’s selling.= That’s ca:lled customer premise equipment;= b’cez it gets insta:lled in customer premises. Ah;= right-, ·hh So they’re gonna be: thee; or she’s goinda be their coordinader; [Mm hm]¿ [·hhh] ‘n: whad I bou:ghd i↑:n was;= we GODDA MANual: from them¿ (1.9) an what- they ga:ve es w’s: e:r;= s’m stuff: with na:mes_= phone ↑num:bers,= en a:ll ev tha:t-, telling es:: abou:t-;= what- (.) γthe prece:dures a:re;= th’t a- we’ve godda go: throu:gh,= da get(0.2) a::h;= things ap↑pro:ved, Ri:ght; U:m: all about e::n appl’ca:tions wo:rkshop-,

The Mm hm in line 8 comes soon after the beginning of this recount of the days events. Bob has been introducing some characters for the story which has not yet begun, that is, he is still orienting to the story itself by providing necessary background information in the form of characters in the story: so a multi-unit turn has just got underway, and is not yet complete — point (iv) above. The Mm hm in line 19 also comes at a point at which the orientation to the story is still underway, though this time Bob is just completing this orientation stage before embarking on the story itself. This Mm hm is thus in a similar position

121


to the one in line 8. The story is also emerging as a complex one, requiring explanation of technical terms (CPE coordinator) and reference to procedures. So it also seems to be the case that the conditions for point (ii) above are fulWlled here: the sequence can be seen as conceptually diYcult to sort out, so supplementary information is needed. The main upshot of this, however, is that Ann is asking for more talk from Bob, and the rising terminal pitch direction underlines this. Most commonly Mm hm occurs in the midst of some other party’s multiunit turn, because recognition that another is talking for an extended period can be shown by asking them to carry on talking. The next fragment shows a series of three Mm hm continuers in a non-multi-unit turn environment. Ron and Sally are making plans for the following weekends, and neither has claimed rights for a multi-unit turn. (17)

MH:28/29/30:R&SB3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ron: Ron: Sal: Ron: Sal: Ron:→ Ron: Sal: Ron:→ Sal: Ron:→ Sal: Ron:

Now then. (1.3) This is where >w’ll bi th’< weekend. °°uhhhh°° [huhhn] [Good.] ·hh Fri:da:y, (1.0) Colleen en °Mm hm, (0.4) ptk (.) Saturda:y; (1.3) M:usic ↓S’ci:ety dinner-;= >music-c-c [ya kno:w], [Mm hm,] Co:dy:, Mm hm, (0.2) Colebrooke O’Do:rk bu:siness. ↑*Mmh:m↑; i↑s it*. (0.5)

The Wrst of these Mm hms, in line 8, comes after Ron has proposed Friday as the next day for which they should discuss arrangements. Sally mentions the Wrst partner of a couple (Colleen and). This is an incomplete unit requiring at least one more naming, that of Colleen’s partner. This makes the continuer Mm hm a token that Wts this environment, fulWlling point (iv) above, which is that the sequence or part of the sequence is not yet Wnished. Here, it is Sally’s turn constructional unit in line 7 that is not Wnished. Indeed it never gets Wnished, perhaps because there is no pressing need for it to be, as the name of the second


member of this couple is shared information: in Labov and Fanshel’s (1977) terms this is an AB event. The second Mm hm comes in line 13. They have now moved on to Saturday’s plans, and Sally is in the middle of formulating her turn constructional unit when Ron’s continuer Mm hm occurs. Again, it comes before completion of the unit — point (iv) above. In addition Sally is having trouble with the production of her turn, as the stuttering sic-c-c at the end of music testify — point (i) above. The third Mm hm in line 15 is very like the second, not only in form, but also by virtue of its placement before completion of the same turn constructional unit. This unit is still in progress, and is still encountering diYculty in terms of the lack of clear and trouble-free articulation. Fragment (18) is another instance of an Mm hm that does not occur in the midst of a multi-unit turn in progress, but during turn-by-turn talk. Liz and Mel are discussing a colleague of his. Up to this point they had been talking about his ponytail, which is what Liz’s have you said to him he’s got an image problem is referring to. (18)

MH:17:L&MC2ai

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Liz:

Mel: Liz: Mel: Liz: Mel:

Liz: Mel: Liz:→ Mel: Liz: Mel:

>‘ve you-¿< (.) sai:d ta him,= he’s goddanimage¿ (.) ↑problem? (0.3) °*O:h*. (.) cohme ↑off et°¿ uhn heh °hehh° (0.6) *·huhh* (0.6) ·hu[hh [((blows nose)) (0.2) t’huh hih (0.9) °·huh ·hh° (0.9) He:- (.) he wen- (0.1) went ho:me last night;= en ee- (0.1) took his:; compu:der ho:me¿ (0.7) Ya mean he hasn’t go:t one et ho:me, (0.5) He’s- he:; (0.1) carries one a the:m e:r; (1.7) laptop- (0.1) aroun:’ with ‘im. °Mm hm°¿ (0.8) An:’ the:: (.) ↑book. (1.8) ↑C’n ya do: all that↑ ↓stuff on the laptop. (0.5) ↑Oh;= ↑yea:h. (0.5)


26 27 28 29 30

Liz: Mel: Liz:

↑°Hmh°; (0.5) That’s my: (0.7) my ai:m. (0.4) What-; (0.3) >having a laptop o(h)¿] [>No;= I know¿ OH;= THE’VE ONLY J’S RE:ALISED EE’S a slo:w lea:rn[er.

First Nik announces that the child in question is a slow learner (line 1), which gets an inadequately heard (by the transcriber) response. Nik then goes on to elaborate on the announcement with a classic pre-story unit, in which she mentions some characterisation of the circumstances surrounding the story. These include a time frame (not long after the birth), and two protagonists (Joan and Bill), as well as a classic I remember, which is indicative here of an upcoming recall and recount of what it was that she remembers. However, she encounters some trouble in the articulation of this orientation to the news, getting not only one of the characters (Joan), but also the time frame wrong at Wrst try. She therefore has to self-repair both of these points. So pragmatically the turn ends on a note of acute incompletion, and the response that is then forthcoming from Ben is a classic go-ahead to Nik to start her story: the fallrising Yeah in line 10, upon which Nik continues the story. In fragment (23) Mal and Marilyn are talking about motorbikes again, this time about a 500 cc bike he wants to buy. (23)

L&MH3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar:→ Mal:

=E:rm; (0.4) >No.= it’s- it’s a very good liddle c’mu:der bi:ke. (0.1) Right? ↑↑I don’ see;= fi:ve h undred c: c:s es little¿ ?hh >Alrigh’s-single us’r;= like stand alo:neebou’ what the’re goinna do;= with< ↑roa:d tra:nspo[:rt¿

In this fragment, the Mm in line 10 comes as a third response token in a single turn: an Mm and a Yeah in line 8, followed by a substantial silence of 0.9 seconds, then this next Mm, and then talk on a new, though related, topic. This is a third story in the series, still on transport, a new story about road rather than rail transport this time. Here the transition to the new topic is not achieved simply. The Mm on its own is, again, not enough to bridge this shift to a next story. The Mm in line 10 closes the previous storytelling sequence. How can this shift from Mm to Yeah and then back to Mm be explained? It appears that Mal upgrades his Wrst response, a receptor Mm to a more agreeing Yeah in line 8, after which the silence grows out to 0.9 seconds. It is plausible that at this point the silence, which has reached the critical standard maximum silence of about one second (cf. JeVerson 1989), provides Mal with some evidence that no more talk on this topic will be forthcoming from Marilyn. This leads to the next Mm in line 10 serving to signal a close of the larger sequence of talk that


the Yeah had left open, and allow for the transition to the new topic. What follows next is another pre-announcement question preparing for a shift to a new story by asking Marilyn whether she had read about the news in question. A Wnal example in this section, fragment (5), is from a British telephone conversation. In this fragment Vera has been the main speaker, talking about returning some books to the library. (5)

RAH-14

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ver: Jen: Ver: Jen: Ver: Jen: Ver: Jen: Jen:→ Ver: Jen: Ver:

=Oh no- it dzn mattuh Jeh-ah actually ah think it’s one on Vera’s ticket any ra [te ah think it’s]= [O h : : : .] =in the name a’ Mannuhs [b’t ah’m not= [Oh ye- hhhh =sha[w, but one a’them ahr: [you know,] = [heh heh .eh:-: [·hhhhhhhh] This i [s th’ [So- ah’ll take them oll in, [‘n:d uh:m [Ye:s::. Mm, (0.3) [check’em [I’m’nna do s’m spaghetti’n: (.) n-eh::m meatballs f’tea fuh this lot now, Oh lovely.

Vera gets to the end of the topic, which comes to a conclusion with a hesitant Uhm (line 9) and a pause of 0.3 seconds before her closing check ‘em in line 13. Jenny has already responded early with a recognitional Yes (line 10) and an Mm (line 11) before the check ‘em. The Mm in line 11 has already marked for Jenny the end of the sequence. She then begins a new turn constructional unit after the 0.3 seconds and in overlap with the tail end of Vera’s turn. The topic of Jenny’s talk is quite new and unrelated to the talk that had gone before, namely what she is going to cook for her family, which provides the topic for the ensuing sequence of talk. Thus the same speaker talk that follows this Mm is a full-blown change of topic, as in the Wrst two fragments above. These Wve instances of full blown change or major shift in topic indicate powerfully a topical caesura between a sequence completing Mm and the substantial same speaker talk that follows it. The same break in topic continuity can also be observed with less radical shifts in topic, which are shown in the following section.

The weakness of Mm

Topic recycling The next set of examples is similar to the topic change set, in that following the Mm, its utterer shifts the topic away from the immediately prior topic. However, the diVerence to the previous set is that the topic is not new to the conversation, but the Mm utterer picks up something from a sequence of talk earlier in the conversation. In the Wrst examples in this set, the recycled topic occurred several minutes earlier in the conversation. In the later of these examples, what is recycled occurred very recently in the talk. Fragment (6) is an instance where the recycled topic is from considerably earlier in the conversation. Mal has recently applied for a job, and Marilyn asks him how he would feel if he were not oVered it, and then asking him to elaborate on his answer, which he does in some considerable detail. (6)

L&MH3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Mar: Mal: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar:→ → Mal: Mal:

Mal:

Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal:

Mar:→ Mar:→

·hhh So-; how ya go:nna feel as thisf- (.) if [this ] job;= doesn’ ring you ba:ck. [e:rm;] (1.0) °Disappointid¿= ↑ev course↑¿ (0.3) >I min:I min ev course-y’know;= ‘n all we nee:d;= is another:< (·) fi:ve thou:sand dollars;= ↑e[n wi c’em]plo:y ‘im.= [°M m: h°.] =>I min:Not a word,< (0.2) Hah ah, (0.2) n:Not (.) not a word,h (.)

Emma invites Nan to lunch with her, which Nan declines in a classic and elaborate dispreferred response (lines 5, 8–10, 12, 14–16, 18). After a delay and a compliment, she goes into an account of why she can’t come (she has to call Roul’s mother), and then she says of this in line 18 it’s like taking a beating. Emma responds to this with an Mm in line 21 as a response token (albeit a very long one that would be untypical in the Australian or British data) that closes the sequence in second position, and follows this up with no-one heard a word, hah, which appears to be alluding to Nan not calling her mother-in-law. What it does not do is build upon the topic of the turn to which the Mm is responding, it’s like taking a beating.

Mm plus substantial same speaker talk in dispreferred environments As has been demonstrated so far in this chapter, one of the features of Mm that distinguishes it from Yeah is the nature of any same speaker talk that follows it. In this chapter so far, it has been seen that where Mm is followed by substantial same speaker talk, that talk is on a topic other than the topic of the turn to which that Mm is oriented. A notable, though very small, subset of Mms followed by substantial same speaker talk consists of ones that occur with talk that maintains topic, albeit in a disaYliative way. What occurs in these cases is not topical disalignment from


the talk to which the Mm is oriented, but some kind of disagreement with or other dispreferred response to the talk to which the Mm is oriented. Whilst superWcially it appears that the Mm is once again being used in a Yeah-like way, and occurs in an archetypical Yeah environment of ostensible agreement projecting disagreement, the Yes, but environment (cf. Pomerantz 1984), a contrast with Yeah plus substantial same speaker talk is maintained. Yeah is a token that is overwhelmingly used to claim agreement or some other kind of alignment with the talk to which it is oriented, even when it is used for ostensible agreement before an actual disagreement. Mm, it has been argued, is used to claim topical disalignment, and the parties in the conversation can now move on to a new topic, or away from the topic-so-far. In the fragments examined in this section, Mm is also used as a token to move on from what has been said so far, but in these cases at a more pragmatic level, in the sense of distancing the force of the same speaker talk that follows the Mm from the force of the prior speaker’s talk, whilst maintaining topical continuity. That is, the disalignment in these cases is in terms of disagreement rather than topic. In the Wrst of these examples, in fragment (13), Marilyn and Mal are talking about an asthma attack she had suVered on a camping holiday. Two Mms occur in this sequence of talk which appear to be in what are prototypical Yeah environment (lines 16 and 20). A Yeah in such an environment, especially when contiguous with a Well (as both Mms are here), would classically be used to preface a disagreeing sequence with an ostensible agreement (cf. Pomerantz 1984; Sacks 1987). So what are the Mms up to here? (13)

270–L&MH3a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Mar:

Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar: Mal: Mar:→ Mal:

I min I s:pose it c’d come on suddenly:¿= ah you know that night we w’re camping at Malacoo [:ta, an- I: ] got so distressed,= [Yes::,= I know]. =[.hhh] y’kn litrally within a ten minute= =[Yes:]. =period,= I- .hh I went fr’m being quite normal [.hhh ta fee]ling I c’d juss= [Yeah, I know], =quietly ↑die. Yes. .hh hhh (0.5) That’s what galvanised me inta believing th’t this time et camp,= wi had ta have a big tent. M:m,= well wi’ve gotta bigger te:nt¿ [I kno:w]. >W’ll I m’n that- that- wz what-spend mosta th’ time;= talking ‘bout the o:rg’n;= anyway¿ (1.1) A:n:[d (hi-) ] [>I: knew] thatYes I mean; y’k ya< [↑go da t]ahp ‘er on th’= [°M m :°.] =shou:lde:r e*n:*; (.) ↑no-↓thi[ng:. [°Mm:h°. (1.0) ↑Y’know-;=↑all the tihme our ↓ba:bies [w’re lidd]le, , [°E r : :°,]

The Mm in line 11 is followed by a silence of 1.0 second, and then by a shift in the topic by the Mm producer, Marilyn. Here the new topic is related to the old by the notion of ‘death’, with the old topic on the death of a teenage girl, the new one on the imagined cot death of her own babies. The fact that this Mm is followed by nearly a second of silence reinforces the argument that the Mm belongs to the preceding rather than the following talk, that it in fact has no direct bearing on what follows, with Marilyn not building on the topic of Mal’s talk in lines 5 to 10. When the next turn constructional unit begins after the silence, it comes without any other markers of the shift. Instead Marilyn goes straight into the substantive part of the new topic. This may have been facilitated by the silence, which has placed temporal distance between the previous and the new talk, making the new topic less contingent on the prior. It can also be the other speaker who re-engages talk after a silence following an Mm. In (19), where Liz is doing virtually all of the interactional work, there is a long silence after Mel’s Mm, before the topic recycling by the Liz.

The weakness of Mm

(19)

L&MC2ai

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Liz:

Liz: Liz: Liz: Liz: Mel:→ Liz:→

((clears throat)) °~I have~ a °li’l° problem with the:se.= got ta be a bit sa:lty; didn’ et° (2.6) °cs it’s bee:n re:hea:ted°. (1.0) °(No wonder it was) sa:lty°. (2.9) Yahhh::. (3.0) °Pota:does are ni:ce°¿ °Mm°. (2.7) So:h. (0.1) Tohm Bahrry with the po:hnytai:l, (6.7)

Similarly, in (20) a very quiet Mm is followed by an other speaker topic shift after a much shorter gap. It is not surprising that topic shifts by another speaker after an Mm should occur, given that Mm is a retrospective, acknowledging token that does not project a next speaker. (20) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

L&MH3a Mar:

Mal:→ Mar:→

(0.2) ↑°Ye:s°↑, ·hh there is n:o: ↓ho:pe;= fer Neo:my, e↑what- can ya ↓gi:ve, ·hh nu:-thi:ng¿ (0.4) °°Mm:°°. (0.4) ↑Y’kn*o:w*↑,= *ri*member how I fe:lt- afta Mummy *die:d¿=

Mm following a silence Further evidence that Mm is a low involvement token is found when an Mm follows a long silence. Sometimes Mms in this position appear to be inhibiting an incipient lapse. In other words, some may be akin to the lapse terminators discussed in Chapter 3, in that they appeared to be designed to follow silences rather than talk. At other times there may simply be contingent reasons for the delay in its production which would require a video recording to explain. JeVerson noticed in her data that there appeared to be “some sort of interactional ‘metric’ in which ‘approximately one second’ operates, where that metric has as one artefact a ‘standard maximum tolerance’ for silence of more or less one second” (1989:170). She noted 951 occurrences of silences of between 0.9 seconds and 1.2 seconds, after which there was a very marked

155


drop-oV to only 92 occurrences of silences between 1.3 seconds and 1.8 seconds. She cites a psychological study by Butterworth (1980) involving reading aloud, and reports that this researcher also found that pauses in the reading tended to be about the same length, namely 1.00–1.24 seconds.4 In a run through of some of the Australian data (approximately four hours of talk) used for this study, the distribution of the lengths of silences beyond the normal transition relevance space preceding any Mms was noted. The data sample is not large (n=73), but a deWnite trend not dissimilar to that found by JeVerson emerged. Most of the silences preceding the Mms were of 0.3 to 0.5 seconds (n=33), after which there was a dramatic drop, with only one silence of 0.6 or 0.7 seconds. The instances then rose between 0.8 and 1.3 seconds (n=18), that is, the range was slightly larger than JeVerson reported. After 1.3 seconds, the number of occurrences dropped away dramatically again (only 17 were more than 1.4 seconds). The preponderance of short silences of up to half a second is not surprising, given the observation that “overwhelmingly one party talks at a time” (Sacks et al. 1974:700), that is, neither none nor more than one, so there is a strong tendency to keep silences short. Why, on the other hand, there should be a noticeable rise in the occurrence of silences around one second is not so intuitively evident, but it does appear that silences up to around one second are tolerated, after which either talk tends to resume or the conversation gears down further and eventually, around 3 seconds, lapses and there is disengagement from the conversation. That there is a cluster of Mms after silences of around one second is, therefore, consistent with Wndings in the literature, few as these are. After the ‘one second metric’ cluster, the length of pauses preceding the Mm falls away to seven between 2.0 and 2.9 seconds, three between 3.0 and 3.9 seconds, and two between 4.0 and 4.9 seconds. Any Mms that occur after this are lapse terminator Mms: the shape of the token changes dramatically to a very long glissando with a falling or rise-falling contour. The longest gap before an acknowledging Mm is 4.4 seconds, which is quite short with a falling contour. The shortest gap before a lapse terminator is 5.1 seconds (see fragment (5) in Chapter 3). The primary observable eVect of the following set of Mms is that they prevent the conversation from lapsing. They are excellent objects to achieve this goal as, on the one hand, they show presence in the conversation by the production of a recognisable contribution to it. On the other hand, they are semantically empty, so if no party has any substantial contribution to make to

The weakness of Mm 157

the conversation, then Mm can Wll the topically empty gap. Its contribution can be understood to be something like: ‘I’m here, I’m engaged, I’m not moving out of the conversation at this moment, but I have nothing to say right now’. In the Wrst fragment in this section, Ron and Sally are discussing plans for an upcoming weekend. Sally’s response in line 4 to Ron’s question is very delayed. After another gap of 2.4 seconds, thus approaching the critical point for a conversational lapse, Ron utters an Mm in third position. That is, once again there is no necessity arising from sequence structural constraints (such as a conditionally relevant second pair part to a Wrst pair part) for a response token at this point, but the conversation is moving towards the point of lapsing. (21)

R&SB3b

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ron:

Sal: → Ron:→ Sal:

>Y’ don’ know wha’ time E↑:vensong is,= ↑d’ju

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