Michael McCarthy
Talking back: "Small" interactional response tokens in everyday conversation
This paper considers the role of interactive non-minimal response tokens in conversation. In it I attempt to bring the evidence of spoken corpora to bear on an issue of relevance to conversation analysts: the work interactants do to indicate engaged listenership. I am particularly interested in the way response tokens show interpersonal and affective engagement and encode similar kinds of meanings to small talk in general, especially those connected with social bonding and feelings of conversational well-being. The paper is part of ongoing research into the 5-million word CANCODE spoken corpus at the University of Nottingham.
Michael McCarthy is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham.
