Engaged listenership in spoken academic discourse: the case of student–tutor meetings

Abstract

This article uses a corpus of spoken English from an Irish university setting to examine how engaged listenership is signaled in meetings between tutors and graduate students. The various linguistic devices employed by both parties for this purpose are quantified and functionally analysed. The three strategies examined include minimal response tokens, for example, mm hm, mm, yeah, non-minimal response tokens e.g. really, right, fine, good, and simultaneous speech and interruptions. These items are found to differ quantitatively and functionally and are shown to be highly relevant for the effective functioning of students in such a spoken EAP context. Pedagogic implications are presented.