Backchannels in English Speech: A Corpus Linguistics Study

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics : (), –.  ./ijcl...kje
 – / - – © John Benjamins Publishing Company
Where do we backchannel?
On the use of mm, mhm, uh huh and such like*
Göran Kjellmer
Gothenburg University
e paper investigates a sample of ‘backchannels’, a kind of response item, in the
Cobuild Corpus. Its object is to chart the occurrence of backchannels in modern
English speech, and especially to nd out if they can indicate how much of a
language sequence is needed for a listener to understand the intended message.
e sequences into which backchannels are inserted and their insertion points
are therefore classied, and the fairly numerous sequences where backchannels
“interrupt” a linguistic unit are singled out for special study. A general conclu-
sion is that in the cases where there is no explicit information about the part of
the message following the inserted backchannel, the message will nevertheless
mostly be understood even at the backchannel insertion point. A comparison
between male and female speakers shows that women use backchannels more
than men and that, unlike men, they prefer unemphatic backchannels.
Keywords: backchannel, collocational bonding, gender relations, interference,
nexus constructions
. Introduction
e following is talk between students who are planning a lavish meal.1
(1) <M01> I’m going to have to make erm I’m going to make a big pan of
<F01> I’m just putting the fruit on top.
<M01> <ZGY>
<F01> <ZGY>
<M02> Mm.
<M01> It’ll make a big pan of mince chilli.
<F01> Mhm.
<M01> and a pan of vegetable chilli.
<F02> Right.

 Göran Kjellmer
<M02> Mm.
<M01> And a <ZF1> I’m going to do about <ZF0> I’m going to do about
three or four cans of chilli er er those pepper things
<M02> Mm.
<M01> with loads of sour cream on and and make
<M02> Oh yeah.
<M01> lots and lots of rice which I need your cauldron for.
<M02> Ye a h .
<M01> And lots and lots of tortilla chips.
<M02> Mm. Mhm mm. Mhm. Mm mm mm mm. Mm. Mm.
<M01> Cos Mexican’s dead easy to make.
<F02> Mm. <tc text=pause> And it’s good for feeding large numbers of
people.
(from the Cobuild Corpus, ukspok/04. Text: S0000001166.)
Although the passage is essentially a description by <M01> of a dish he is prepar-
ing, it takes the form of a collaborative eort where the listeners take part without
interrupting the speaker. <M01> holds his turn throughout the passage, while the
rest of the company show their support and appreciation by means of the elements
emphasised in bold above. e result can be seen as a joint achievement (Scheglo
1982:89). e emphasised particles are so-called ‘backchannels’, a type of element
regularly occurring in casual conversation. In this study I will look at the use of
backchannels in order to study the transmission of information between partici-
pants in a discussion. More precisely, the question I will try to answer is this: can
backchannels tell us when the speaker’s message is understood? And if so, how
much of an utterance do we need to hear before the penny drops? Can the inser-
tion point of backchannels show how much information is conveyed implicitly?
In dealing with such problems, where quantitative measures are oen called for,
language corpora are very useful, not to say indispensable. e present investiga-
tion will consequently be largely corpus-based.
e current study is organised as follows: aer a presentation of denitions and
functions of backchannels and of the sources used for the study, homonymous non-
backchannels are discarded and the remainder classied into turn-external and turn-
internal backchannels. Some conclusions are drawn from the results of the classica-
tion. A brief sub-study of men’s and women’s use of backchannels is then followed
by an analysis of turn-internal backchannels. A rough estimate is made of the degree
of interference they create with the speaker’s message. e types of backchannel-
inserted sequences where a maximum of interference and therefore possibly a break
in communication can be expected are singled out for special study. It is concluded
that information is normally transmitted even when it is only partially expressed.

Where do we backchannel? 
. Denition
Backchannels2 have attracted the attention of a number of scholars. According to
Rühlemann (2007:94), “there is little agreement in the literature as to what qualies
as a backchannel […] backchannelling is essentially not a lexico-grammatical but
rather a discourse phenomenon.” It is therefore hardly possible to give a nite list
of English backchannels. Even so, the items given in exemplication by dierent
scholars overlap to a considerable extent. Two denitions of backchannels that will
serve in the present context are those given by Tottie (1991:255): “Backchannels are
the sounds (and gestures) made in conversation by the current non-speaker, which
grease the wheels of conversation but constitute no claim to take over the turn”, and
by Carter and McCarthy (1997:12): “[N]oises (which are not full words) and short
verbal responses made by listeners which acknowledge the incoming talk and react
to it, without wishing to take over the speaking turn.” Credit is given by most writers
on the subject to Yngve (1970) for rst using the term in his discussion of the phe-
nomenon. Tannen (1992:11) places backchannels in their conversational context:
us any utterance by any participant in a conversation is a joint production, in-
uenced by speaker, listener, and audience (including the investigators or their
equipment). For this reason, research has also focused on listenership behavior.
Among the more frequently studied of such phenomena is .
is includes minimal responses such as Mhm and Uhuh, lax tokens such as Yeah,
one-word responses such as Right, phrases such as I see what you mean, repeti-
tions and sentence completions, and short ratifying utterances.
e backchannels occurring in example (1) above are probably among the most
frequent of English backchannels, but as was just pointed out there is no nite list
of elements in this function. Dierent writers arrive at dierent lists. “Numer-
ous investigations into listener activity have succeeded Yngve’s [list], but what is
included within back channel behaviour (as opposed to turns which assume the
speaker-role) varies from study to study.” (McCarthy 2002:51). ere also seems
to be some dierence between British and American writers in this regard (Tot-
tie 1989:271, 1991:270; Biber et al. 1999:1096). It may be mentioned for the sake
of comparison that Nordenstam (1987:47) lists 22 Swedish backchannels with 36
variants of ja (‘yes’) in her study of Swedish conversational style.
. Functions
Scheglo (1982:78) sums up characterisations of “these bits of behavior” (includ-
ing laughter, nods and shakes) oered in the literature in this way:

 Göran Kjellmer
According to one [characterisation], these bits of behavior are evidence of atten-
tion, interest, and/or understanding on the listener’s part. […] A second use of
such behavior proposed in this literature is that it ‘…keeps the conversation going
smoothly’ […], or ‘… appears to provide the auditor with a means for participat-
ing actively in the conversation, thus facilitating the general coordination of ac-
tion by both participants …’
Tottie (1991:256) distinguishes the “supportive” function of backchannels, signal-
ling understanding and agreement, and the “regulative” function, encouraging the
speaker to continue his/her turn. Stenström (1994:82) ranges them along a gradi-
ent, from indierence to strong involvement. And according to Aijmer (2002:53)
backchannels “come into the conversation at regular intervals to show the hearer’s
understanding of the social relationship between the partners and to keep the con-
versation going.”
A list of the main uses, partly overlapping, of backchannels may look like
this:
OK so far, carry on (Tottie’s “regulative function”)
I appreciate what you’re saying
I understand – ” –
I agree with – ” –
I agree with what I assume you’ll be saying
½
°
¾ (≈ Tottie’s “supportive function”)
°
¿
I conrm what you’re saying (“Conrmatory function”)
I’m listening (“Attention-showing function”)
I’m on your side, I sympathise with you (“Empathetic function”)
e functions just suggested should not be taken as exhaustive, nor do they con-
stitute a consistent pattern. Andersen’s discussion (1999:66–67) of the question of
formalising the functions of pragmatic markers is relevant here:
Since the existence of bona de categories of markers is dubious, and since a taxo-
nomic framework which does justice to the multifunctional aspect seems incon-
ceivable, I do not consider it a purposeful task to develop a taxonomy of markers.
Rather, I argue in favour of the understanding of pragmatic markers as having
multidimensional meanings/functions, and that assigning a particular function to
a marker on a particular occasion is a matter for pragmatic inference.

Where do we backchannel? 
. Material
is work makes use of material taken from the spoken British English mod-
ule of the CobuildDirect Corpus. e module is named “ukspok” and contains
9,272,579 words. e transcribers have painstakingly recorded not only all the
words but also all the grunts and sounds occurring in a conversation.3 Pauses oc-
curring in the conversation are also marked. For a study of the present kind it has
one great drawback, however: unlike e.g. the London-Lund Corpus (see Alten-
berg 1991) it has no prosodic annotation, which, if given, would have disambigu-
ated a number of occurrences. One such use would have been the indication of
upward intonation to show solicitation of signs of agreement (Scheglo 1982:80).
is is one reason for being cautious here. Another is, in the words of McCarthy
(2002:69), that “[s]poken corpora as a locus for research into human communi-
cation always run the risk that features of talk may be culture-bound, and it is
only in intervarietal and interlingual studies that one can nd safer ground for
generalisations.”
As the eld of backchannels is somewhat indeterminate, and, as McCarthy
(2002:52) points out, listener responses are characterised by their scalar nature,
there was never any question of trying to cover the whole eld. Six of the most fre-
quent English backchannels were selected for close study, viz. (in Cobuild trans-
literation) Mhm, Mm, Right,Uh huh,4Yeah ,Yes . One thousand occurrences of
each of those particles were randomly extracted from the Corpus. Some of them
include duplicated tokens, as in
(2) <M0X> I don’t think you’d be likely to say I don’t like that project.
<M0X> Right. Right.
<M0X> But <ZF1> it’s <ZF0> it’s used I’m sure <ZF1> in er <ZF0> in
reference.
Duplicated tokens were treated like non-duplicated ones. Not every instance of the
particles was a backchannel, so an operational denition was applied to the mate-
rial. ose cases which followed the pattern “Speaker 1: xxxx — Speaker 2: Mhm/
Mm/Right/Uh huh/Yeah/Yes. — Speaker 1: xxxx” were accepted as backchannels.
(4), further below, is such an example. Speaker <M08>’s Yes, Yeah and Uh huh in
the following example were thus not regarded as backchannels:
(3) <M01> […] and you cannot compare
<M08> Exactly yes. Yes <ZF1> that’s <ZF0> that’s. Yeah. Uh huh. Yes
exactly. Yeah the your rst thought tonight when […]
Such cases were called “Unanalysed” and not further dealt with. One of the ad-
vantages of dening backchannels in such a strict fashion is that the problem of