Elsevier

Journal of Pragmatics

Volume 184, October 2021, Pages 29-51
Journal of Pragmatics

Feedback in Japanese and Australian first encounters

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.017Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Presenting an innovative approach to make sense of backchannels.

  • Relationally significant backchannels are identified.

  • First-encounter talks are analysed from the lens of balancing obligations.

Abstract

The study investigates how imbalanced information flow is managed and evaluated by the conversational participants in first encounter interactions. From the perspective of balancing obligations (Ohashi, 2008, 2010, 2013), one-way information flow is considered a disturbance to equilibrium. In a data set of ten paired first encounter talks (five collected in Tokyo and the other five in Melbourne), there are instances of small stories where one of the conversational participants temporarily dominates information flow. In each small story unit, the hearer interjects backchannels to align the teller's story telling frame. It can also be explained from the lens of balancing obligations that the hearer interjects backchannels to balance obligations, or in other words, rectify perceived imbalance of conversational contribution. This study builds on Iwasaki's (1997) and McCarthy's classifications of backchannels and develops two novel classifications, feedback (FB: minimal and obligatory backchannels), and feedback plus (FB+: relationally more significant than FB). By integrating participants' metapragmatic comments from the follow-up interviews, the study aims to identify the nature and effect of FB+, using the data gathered in first-encounter, taking age and gender differences, emerging identity, and common ground into consideration.

Introduction

The research rests on previous studies of interpersonal communication, in particular, of what researchers refer to as ‘initial interactions’/‘first encounters’/‘getting acquainted’. In initial interactions, or first encounters, researchers have been investigating how conversational participants interact and establish common ground, despite the lack of common knowledge between speakers. Some of the notable research on this area includes Maynard and Zimmerman (1984), Svennevig (1999; 2014), and Haugh and Carbaugh (2015). Maynard and Zimmerman (1984) compared talk between acquaintances and that of unacquaintances. Characteristics of talk between unacquaintances include ‘pre-topical sequences’ which are realized through a series of question - answer pairs to share information in order to categorise and position each other (first year student, local resident, studying sociology etc.) to reduce uncertainty and to explore relevant topics for further talk. Svennevig (1999; 2014) focuses on what he coined as ‘self-presentational sequences’. This is regarded as an initial phase of first encounter talk, and is similar to Maynard and Zimmerman's (1984) pre-topical sequences. As conversational participants accumulate mutual knowledge, they start offering ‘self-oriented’ comments, shifting from “other-selection to self-selection as the dominant turn-taking pattern” [emphasis original] (Svennevig, 2014:314). He further argues that self-presenters, “who are talking about themselves” (p.316), provide “a symbolic ‘gift’ of an interesting topic and thus contribute to affection and solidarity” (p.317). Haugh and Carbaugh (2015) compared self-disclosure practices between unacquaintances of speakers of American English and those of Australian English respectively. They found a tendency amongst American participants to opt for providing unprompted self-disclosure and such a move tends to be met with positive evaluation by American interlocutors. It is evident that ‘unprompted self-disclosure – positive evaluations’ is a more predictable conversational pair and repertoire to get acquainted with an interlocutor in the first encounter amongst American participants than the Australian counterpart. The present study builds on these previous studies in investigating how conversational participants during their first encounter manage interaction and evaluate it. In particular, the study focuses on floor-supporters’ backchannels as obligatory as well as non-obligatory contributions to the interaction, drawing on the notion of balancing obligations (Ohashi, 2008, 2010, 2013) as a key analytical concept. Particular focus is also given to small story units in interaction, which are broadly defined as any accounts of events including explanations or descriptions of any kind where the floor-holder dominates the information flow temporarily, as sites of imbalance requiring counterbalancing measures from the floor-supporter. The data include two sets of first-encounter interactions and individual follow-up interviews, one collected in Tokyo, the other in Melbourne between 2014 and 2015, each consisting of five conversational pairs and ten individual follow-up interviews. Combining multiple approaches, the study aims to explicate the relationship between the quality of backchannels and extra-linguistic resources and the participants' overall satisfaction. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the notion of reciprocity and balancing obligations, and some implications when such notions are suspended in intergenerational interaction. Section 3 explains the concept of small story as a unit of investigation and reviews some key concepts such as feedback/backchannels and their types. After the brief description about data and method of the study in Section 4, Section 5 analyses both the Japanese and Australian data, focusing on the nature of backchannels, employing FB and FB+ as key analytical labels, and also taking the participants' meta-pragmatic comments from the interviews into consideration. Section 6 discusses emerging features across the two data sets. Finally, Section 7 discusses the limitations and the future implications of the study.

Section snippets

Balancing obligations: reciprocity

In their much cited paper titled ‘A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation’, Sacks et al. (1974) explain that turn order is varied and not fixed. They state that “while turn order varies, it does not vary randomly. One bias that is particularly important is for speaker just prior to current speaker to be selected as next speaker …” (Sacks et al., 1974:708). According to them, the conversation has its internal system to select the speaker in an alternate

Balancing obligations: backchannels in small stories

Following Ohashi, 2008; 2010; 2013, the current study employs the notion of balancing obligations as an analytical tool. In other words, reciprocal obligation is assumed as one of the key concerns of face-work, and the study will demonstrate that backchannels including nods and other extra-linguistic features are used to repair asymmetries locally in dialogue. In a small story unit, new information flows from the teller to the hearer. Therefore the teller is dominant and thus disturbs the

Data and method

The use of naturally occurring conversational data has obvious advantages in the study of interpersonal pragmatics. However, the analyst cannot record naturally occurring conversation without participants' consent, nor can they access the conversational participants' perceptions on the interaction they have engaged in. Therefore this study employs an experimental approach in order to compensate for some of the drawbacks of naturally occurring conversational data, namely the difficulty in

Analysis

First, small stories in the first pair of Japanese data set, J1, are qualitatively analysed in detail, followed by summaries of small stories which occurred in other pairs, J2 ~ J5. Then, the nature of FB+ tokens that emerged in each small story across five Japanese pairs are investigated, and how they are related to participants’ perceptions and evaluations of their first-encounter talks are closely examined together with the notion of balancing obligations. Australian data are also dealt with

Discussion

The first Japanese and Australian pair, J1 and A1 present very different pictures of first-encounter free talk, specifically as to how small stories are managed by the participants. In fact J1 and A1 are very different even within respective cultural data sets. In this section, both the Japanese and Australian data are combined, and some emerging features are first, discussed by cross-referencing them. They include age and gender differences, emerging identities, and common ground. Second, the

Conclusion

Differences in the conversational participants' interactional engagement, specifically FB+ and lack thereof, and how they are later reflected on by the participants prove FB+ to be relationally more significant than FB. It is likely that the more a small story absorbs the non-floor holder's FB+ utterances, the deeper they are engaged in the talk and the more satisfaction they achieve.

Although the study is cross-cultural in nature, the study does not intend to draw absolute conclusions regarding

Declaration of competing interest

There is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Seeding grant from the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne in 2014. I would like to thank my research assistant Hannah Gould for her initial assistance in compiling the interviews in Melbourne and Daniel Ednie-Lockett for proofreading. I also benefited from the invaluable advice and wisdom of an anonymous reviewers, and from the advice given to me by Dániel Z. Kádár and Juliane House when I was involved in another project. Finally, I would like to express

Jun Ohashi is a Senior Lecturer at the Asia Institute, The university of Melbourne. His ongoing research interests include semiotics, interpersonal pragmatics, (im)politeness, critical discourse analysis, media literacy and linguistic rituals. Jun is the author of Thanking and Politeness in Japanese (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and has published papers in the Journal of Pragmatics, Multilingua, Journal of Japanese Studies, and many more. His current research in progress include signage in

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    Jun Ohashi is a Senior Lecturer at the Asia Institute, The university of Melbourne. His ongoing research interests include semiotics, interpersonal pragmatics, (im)politeness, critical discourse analysis, media literacy and linguistic rituals. Jun is the author of Thanking and Politeness in Japanese (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and has published papers in the Journal of Pragmatics, Multilingua, Journal of Japanese Studies, and many more. His current research in progress include signage in construction sites, small talk, and the semiotics of masks in the COVID-19 pandemic.

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