Backchannel Behavior in Interview Discourse: A contrastive study between Japanese and Indonesian

摘要

Many studies of backchannels have focused mainly on verbalized backchannels, such as 'soudesuka', 'hontou', 'really', 'yeah' etc. But, in this research, we analyzed backchannel verbally and non-verbally in Japanese and Indonesian language in the interview setting. The interview interactions are quite different from everyday conversation. First, participants 'roles are well defined; they have restricted obligation and creates an asymmetric interaction. The host act as a topic controller and listener in the conversation will make much more listening behavior. In this present study, How Japanese engaged highly backchannel in their conversation than other languages also observed. This research is using conversation analysis method of Otsuka's framework, which examines 20 pairs of Japanese and Indonesian native speaker's dyad. The participants were asked to be a host and a guest in an interview setting and give an answer in the prepared question. Analysis of the present study revealed a high frequency of backchannel behavior by the host occurs in both languages. The findings indicate that the differences in the use of listening behaviors produced in the frequency of backchannel. The host in both languages acts as most as a topic controller so somewhat gives backchannel verbally and non-nonverbally more than the guest. This study also confirms that The Japanese native speaker is an active listener so that backchannel is an essential communicative tool in Japanese, regardless of the context.