Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
objects which fall into the general category of acknowledgement tokens. Her analysis demonstrates that
among those speakers who regularly use both 'Yeah’ (or 'Yes') and 'Mm hm’ the former is employed to
indicate a preparedness to shift from recipiency to speakership and the latter to exhibit 'passive
recipiency' 18 .
Our understanding of acknowledgement tokens is significantly advanced by Marek Czyzewski's (1995)
recent analysis of the use of 'mm hm' tokens by psychotherapists. In this study Czyzewski concentrated
exclusively on ‘mm hm’ and identified four different interactional devices based on a systematically
different use of this token. Cyzewski's data raises a number of interesting issues, not least the enormous
potential for ambiguity and misunderstanding and although his research deals specifically with
conversational interaction in a therapeutic setting, the framework established by Czyzewski may help to
shed light on the interactional problems that people who stammer experience with different conversational
partners. Given the difficulties that people who stammer experience, they need to be able to clearly
distinguish between those tokens that are designed to encourage further talk and those that are associated
with speaker transfer. Research into the differential deployment of 'mm hms' and other response tokens,
both within the speech therapy environment and during everyday conversation, has the potential to increase
our understanding of some of the factors that contribute to successful conversational interaction.
Of course, it is important to acknowledge that the type of encouragement to continue that certain
response tokens perform can also be offered non-verbally. To conclude this discussion, therefore, I would
like to examine a brief extract from a transcription that will serve both to illustrate this point and provide an
indication of what a full-blown piece of conversation analysis might look like.
Non-verbal displays of encouragement
Tetnowski and Damico (2001) provide an insightful demonstration of the way in which ‘continuer
latchings’ 19 are employed to facilitate interactional collaboration involving people who stammer. Their
analysis of a video-recording of a two-way conversation involving a person who stammers and a speech
and language professional (one of the authors) uncovered the systematic use of certain behaviours that
appear to be designed to encourage the speaker to continue the turn during despite moments of dysfluency.
As we can see from the transcription below, JT offers encouragement through the use of the
vocalization “mhm” and/or headnods (characterized by Tetnowski and Damico as ‘continuer latchings’), at
precisely those moments when ML is experiencing difficulty (e.g lines 54, 55 and 56).
Extract from Tetnowski and Damico (2001:30) [See Appendix for transcription notation]
x---------------M------------------------------smile-------------x
53 JT: I mean... you were on your best behavior, right?
54 ML: Best behaviour and really I didn’t think I stuttered at all un:::{{stoppage}}
JT: x-------head raise-----M--------------------------eyes blink---------------------head nod------------x
55 until her n..n..nephew which.. I met him a couple of days later..y.young
x-------------headnod/-mhm---------------------------------------------------------------head nod/-mhm
56 kid and when I spoke to him and he-.. hey you know you stutter, Huh?
-------------close eyes------M--------------------head nod--------------------------mhm------x
57 and I’m like…hm….I didn’t know ((laughs)).
----------M---------------------------------------------laughs--x
This example clearly demonstrates the collaborative nature of talk-in-interaction and indicates the
benefits that can be gained from analyzing the talk of people who stammer at this level of detail.
Moreover, the fact that JT was not conscious of using continuer latchings at the time, highlights the
importance of basing any such analysis on recordings of naturally occurring interaction. As Tetnowski and
Damico (2001:32) point out, ‘if we engage in careful and rich descriptions of authentic conversational
18 ‘Passive recipency’ refers to a situation where the person who produced the token is proposing that
his/her co-participant is still in the midst of some course of talk and should continue talking (Jefferson
1984:200).
19 The term ‘continuer latching’ derives from the ability of this strategy to operate as an encouragement
to continue the turn coupled with its typical location at the end of a speaker’s utterance (Tetnowski &
Damico 2001:30).
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