American and Arab perceptions of an Arabic turn-taking cue
نویسندگان
چکیده
Nigel G. Ward, Yaffa Al Bayyari University of Texas at El Paso, 79968 USA Abstract Languages differ in the way that speakers coordinate their interaction moment-by-moment, and this can cause intercultural misunderstandings. We explore this in the domain of listening behavior. One way that listeners show interest and attention is by producing backchannel feedback (short utterances such as okay and hmm) at appropriate times, and these times are determined, in part, by the interlocutor, who signals when such feedback is welcome with various cues. In Arabic these cues include a prosodic feature in the form of a steep continuous drop in pitch. This paper shows that English speakers can misinterpret this, perceiving it as an expression of negative affect, and that this tendency can be substantially alleviated by training.
منابع مشابه
Additional information about American and Arab perceptions of an Arabic turn-taking cue
This technical report is a supplement to “American and Arab perceptions of an Arabic turn-taking cue”, a paper submitted to the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. It provides additional details, discussion, figures, tables, and references relating to the main finding, that English speakers tend to misinterpret the prosodic pattern used in Arabic to cue back-channel responses, perceiving it a...
متن کاملPerceptions of an Arabic Turn-Taking Cue 1 Running head: PERCEPTIONS OF AN ARABIC TURN-TAKING CUE American and Arab perceptions of an Arabic turn-taking cue
Languages differ in the way that speakers coordinate their interaction moment-by-moment, and this can cause intercultural misunderstandings. We explore this in the domain of listening behavior. One way that listeners show interest and attention is by producing back-channel feedback (short utterances such as okay and hmm) at appropriate times, and these times are determined, in part, by the inte...
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