Acknowledgment tokens in series

This study examined the ordering of acknowledgment tokens (brief utterances such as ‘mm hm’ and ‘uh huh’) produced by recipients during extended telephone conversations. The question was asked: When tokens appear in a series, is there a recognizable pattern to their arrangement? Twenty‐five series of acknowledgment tokens were analyzed and tabulated, and a mean ordinal value was computed for each token. Results showed that ‘mm hm’ and ‘uh huh’ tended to appear somewhat earlier in a series, and ‘oh’, ‘okay’ and short assessments such as ‘lovely’ tended to appear very near the end of a series. The data suggested that recipients produced a variety of tokens, in an observable pattern, as they moved from listener to speaker roles.