Dual feedback and the management of intersubjectivity in interpreter-mediated talk

Backchannel responses are the most basic form of positive evidence of understanding and are inherent in the management of intersubjectivity (Depperman 2015) in communication. They include verbal responses (e.g. mh hm, yeah, okay, right) and visual responses, such as facial expressions and head nods (Gardner, 2001). In comparison to the substantial body of literature on backchannel responses in same-language interaction, this phenomenon has received only little attention in research on interpreter-mediated interactions. According to previous studies, in interactions where the interlocutors do not share a common language and have to communicate with the aid of an interpreter “acknowledgment or acceptance turns are not easily found or identified” (Davidson 2002: 1277). In particular, mutual displays of understanding between the primary interlocutors appear to be delayed and often non-existent (Wadensjö, 1998) in interpreter-mediated talk. Thus, the main difficulty in conversing through an interpreter is based in the difficulty in managing intersubjectivity between the primary participants (Davidson 2002). However, few studies have taken a multimodal approach to study backchannel responses in this type of interactions (see Vranjes et al., in press). This paper focuses on a recurrent pattern of listener behavior in turn-medial position, which we refer to as dual feedback (Vranjes et al., in press). More specifically, it was found that listeners in interpreter-mediated talk regularly shift their gaze towards the other interlocutor while producing a backchannel response during the interpreter’s rendition. The paper studies those listener’s backchannel responses in turn-medial position that are accompanied by a gaze shift from the current speaker to the other interlocutor, as such forming a “composite signal” (Clark 1996). The analysis is based on a dataset of nine interpreter-mediated conversations between Dutch-speaking university counsellors and Russian-speaking students that were interpreted consecutively into both languages by qualified and experienced interpreters. The sessions were recorded with mobile eye-tracking glasses, which allow for a highly detailed analysis of gaze in ongoing communication (Brône & Oben, 2015). The analysis reveals that the basic dual feedback-pattern can be seen as a listener’s heightened display of understanding towards the ‘principal’ (Goffman, 1981) of the talk. As such, dual feedback appears to further the accomplishment of intersubjectivity and reciprocity between the primary participants who have no access to each other’s language. Dual feedback also shows how listeners orient to the differences in the knowledge states (or epistemics) of the speakers in their production of mid-turn backchannel responses. Moreover, when change in the state of knowledge is made visible, primary participants tend to orient towards the party with the ‘epistemics of experience’ (Bolden, 2013) in the interpreter-mediated talk. Finally, the redirection of gaze towards the nonspeaking participant provides for a subtle shift in the participation framework during its production, which helps to maintain a triadic interaction pattern. As such, dual feedback appears to be an active signal by the listener, trying to engage with the other knowing participant of the current talk. References Bolden, Galina B., 2013. Unpacking “Self”: Repair and Epistemics in Conversation. Social Psychology Quarterly 76 (4), 314-342. Brône, Geert, Bert, Oben, 2015. InSight Interaction. A multimodal and multifocal dialogue corpus, Language Resources and Evaluation 49, 195-214. Clark, Herbert H., 1996. Using Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Davidson, Brad, 2012. A model for the construction of conversational common ground in interpreted discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 34, 1273-1300. Deppermann, Arnulf, 2015. When recipient design fails: Egocentric turn-design of instructions in driving school lessons leasing to breakdowns of intersubjectivity. Gesprächsforschung – Online Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 16, 63-101. Gardner, Rod, 2001. When Listeners Talk: Response tokens and listener stance. Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam. Goffman, Erving, 1981. Forms of Talk. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Vranjes Jelena, Bot, Hanneke, Feyaerts, Kurt, Brône, Geert, 2017. Displaying recipiency in an interpreter-mediated dialogue: an eye-tracking study (in press). In: Oben B., Brône G. (Eds.), Eye-tracking in interaction. Studies on the role of eye gaze in dialogue. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wadensjö, Cecilia, 1998. Interpreting as interaction. Longman, London and New York