Are you listening? Cultural influences on the use of supportive verbal feedback in conversation

Abstract

Although all conversation requires participants to cooperate in taking turns at talk and providing appropriate listener feedback, different groups of speakers may have differing perceptions of (a) the amount and type of interactional feedback which is appropriate in a particular context, and (b) precisely what information various formal cues provide about an interlocutor's intentions or attitudes. This paper reports on a number of quantitative and qualitative differences found in the use of supportive verbal feedback devices by Maori and Pakeha listeners in a small sample of conversational New Zealand English, and discusses their implications for cross-cultural communication.