Okay as a Marker for Coordinating Transitions in Joint Actions: a Cross-Linguistic Comparison

EasyChair Preprint 6124

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to offer a better understanding of how okay is used in naturalistic dialogue. We examined the use of okay in a French job interview corpus and in a German research interview corpus. We found that the interviewer was more likely to use okay than the other participant; he or she was also more likely to use okay as a vertical marker. The effect of age as well as changed in the use of okay during the interaction were also examined. The findings contribute to understanding the overarching functions of backchannel utterances in coordinating conversations.

Keyphrases: Backchannel feedback, French, German, Joint activities, dialogue, okay

@booklet{EasyChair:6124,
  author    = {Dominique Knutsen and Gilles Col and Elisabeth Germanier and Julie Brosy and Adrian Bangerter},
  title     = {Okay as a Marker for Coordinating Transitions in Joint Actions: a Cross-Linguistic Comparison},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6124},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}