摘要
本文以近１０万字的英语会话语料为基础，分析了英语本族人在日常对话，公开讨论和电话交谈三种类型会话中的听者反馈语。从语音、词汇和语法三个层面探讨反馈语发生的语言环境特征，实施反馈语的语言策略以及制约反馈语的各种社会因素。
Backchannels are a hearer′s brief responses to the current speaker′s speech in conversation Non native English speakers may come across problems in English conversation such as how often or in what context they should make backchannels The present research studies the distribution of 706 tokens of backchannels retrieved in a 91,802 word subcorpus from the London Lund Corpus of Spoken English(LLC) With the help of Oxford Concordance Program (OCP), backchannels are analyzed in terms of their linguistic environmental features, language devices and strategies, pragmatic functions and social constraints The results show: 1 Backchannelling, usually in a form of simultaneous speech, is a frequent phenomenon in English conversation but it does not occur at random It is most likely to occur at a turn constructional unit boundary, which is usually signaled by prosodic, lexical and syntactic features A hearer makes use of the intervals of information units in the current speaker′s turn so as not to interrupt the current speaker′s turn but to show his or her attention to or agreement with the current speaker 2 Backchannels are characterized by their briefness (1 4 word in average) and a very limited number of words Three types of words 'yes (yeah, yup)', 'uhm (uh, @, @m, uhu, aha)' and “oh (ah) take up 83 5% of all the initials of backchannels They are mostly stressed and with one third of the total tokens in rising and level tone, which indicates the hearer is cooperating and encouraging the current speaker to go on speaking instead of bidding for a turn 3 Occurrence of backchannels is constrained by the degree of formality of conversational context, the familiarity of interlocutors′ relationship and gender difference Informal daily conversation has a higher frequency of backchannels than formal public discussion The same tendency also occurs in conversations among intimate interlocutors when compared with conversations among strangers Female speakers
出处
《现代外语》
CSSCI
北大核心
1998年第1期75+74+76-82,共9页
Modern Foreign Languages
关键词
反馈语
话轮结构单位
语言特征
语用功能
会话策略
Backchannel, Turn constructional unit, Linguistic feature, Pragmatic function, Conversational strategy
