A Study of Backchannels in the Tianjin Dialect of Chinese: Focusing on Frequency, Form, Location and Occurring Situation

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of backchannels (known as aizuchi in Japanese) in Chinese, focusing on Tianjin dialect speakers by describing frequency, form, location and occurring situation. In previous studies, it has been argued that in conversations of Chinese speakers, backchannel utterances appear less frequently than in Japanese or English conversations, and that backchannels seldom appear in the middle of primary speakers’ utterances. In this study, we see that backchannels appear frequently in various forms in conversations between Tianjin dialect speakers, and suggest that the style of communication taken by Tianjin dialect speakers may be related to Tianjin culture. The analysis confirmed that backchannels are used frequently in some situations of conversation in Chinese.