Acknowledging Strong Ties between Utterances in Talk: Connections through 'Right' as a Response Token

Abstract

Right is a response token in English that has been little studied. Its main uses in Australian English (and British English) are different from North American Englishes. The data used for this study was primarily a dietetic interview at an Australian hospital of 46 minutes, which was fully transcribed. A larger corpus of Australian, British and American data supplemented this core data set. The distinctiveness of the Australian/British use is to acknowledge that the talk to which it is responding is in a strong dependent relationship with some prior talk. This is most typically a rhetorical relationship (cf. Mann, Matthiessen and Thompson, 1992) such as one of contrast, expansion/exemplification or of cause and effect, though other rhetorical relationships have been found. Right is also used to acknowledge citations of some talk from earlier in the interaction. This study adds to our understanding of the common set of response tokens in English, which include Uh huh/Mm hm, Mm, Yeah/Yes, Oh, Okay and Alright. It has emerged that each of these is used in distinctive, if complex ways, dependent most crucially on their prosodic shape, their sequential placement and the timing of the utterance. The wider significance of the study of such tokens is that they are amongst the few vocalizations in talk that reveal the stance of a listening participant (at that point in the talk).