Back-channelling: The use of yeah and mm to portray engaged listenership

This paper is concerned with the use of back‐channels to portray engaged listenership. Specifically, the aim of the research was to investigate the uses of yeah and mm as back‐channelling utterances to show engaged listenership. The research focused on the different back‐channel functions that can be identified and the loc ations at which they occur. Data was analysed from the Griffith Corpus of Spoken Australian English (GCSAusE) and some data collected by the researcher. The key findings suggest that yeah and mm can function as continuers, alignment tokens and agreement tokens but mm seems to be weaker in respect to conversation al engagement. Also, the functions of yeah and mm can be ambiguous. Further research should investigate whether cultural or gender issues have an effect on how people portray engaged listenership by back‐channelling.