Monday, April 8th @ 3 PM, Wieboldt 408

Backchanneling in Russian:  Form, Function and Occurrence

Backchannels, otherwise known as listener response tokens, have been shown to occur quite frequently in the course of interactions between two speakers and they are considered to occur universally.  However as shown by Tottie, there is some evidence for backchanneling being a culturally specific phenomenon, as in her study British and American English speakers backchanneled in a significantly different manner, using both different backchannels at different frequencies (Tottie 1991).  However the exploration of this aspect of backchanneling is currently non-existent, with the vast majority of existing research focusing on varieties of English and only a handful of studies have been done on any aspect of backchanneling in any other language.  This paper is intended to be a first step in filling this gap in regards to the occurrence of backchannels in the Russian language.

The first part of the paper discusses the extent to which the current work on backchanneling can be applied to Russian data. Particular focus is paid to the particular forms that these tokens take in Russian and their functions as well as the relationship between these things.

The second part of the paper discusses a rough frequency of backchanneling in Russian and attempts to determine whether the occurrence of these tokens is prosodically or syntactically governed.  To this end, this paper analyzes a radio program “Obložka-1” hosted by Exo Moskvy, which is approximately 57 minutes long and consists of a single interview with one interviewee, two interviewers and one program host.  The backchannel rates of each of the participants are compared to each other in order to determine a potential frequency range for the phenomenon specifically in relation to English language data. The backchannels of all the participants are also analyzed in terms of the location of their occurrence in relation to the prosodic and syntactic structure of the co-occurring speech which leads to the conclusion that prosody rather than syntax is the more probably determining factor.

Finally this paper will discuss the limitations of the data as gathered and suggest possible areas for further research.