The aim of this analysis was to explore the modalities of micro-feedback that are re- lated to different types of understandings in eight audio- and video-recorded Swe- dish–Chinese intercultural communication dialogues in the English language. The unimodal vocal-verbal, unimodal gestural, and multimodal micro-feedback as well as its relation to sufficient understanding, misunderstanding, and non-understand- ing have been investigated. Two research questions have been investigated. First, how are the auditory and visual modalities involved in micro-feedback expressions that are related to sufficient understanding, misunderstanding, and non-understanding?
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Second, what are the typical unimodal and multimodal micro-feedback expressions that signal sufficient understanding, misunderstanding, and non-understanding?
First of all, in the data focused on, it has been found that most of the micro- feedback expressions signal sufficient understanding; a few convey non-understand- ing, and fewer still are in relation to misunderstanding. This suggests that compared to sufficient understanding and non-understanding, misunderstanding is least sig- nalled through micro-feedback and is most difficult to observe in spontaneous com- munication. The view that misunderstanding is ubiquitous in conversation (see Fra- ser, ; Dascal, ) is not supported by the present analysis of micro-feedback. Further, the results show that sufficient understanding is signalled more through unimodal micro-feedback than multimodal, with roughly the same numbers of uni- modal vocal-verbal and unimodal gestural micro-feedback expressions. Misunder- standing involves more multimodal micro-feedback than unimodal vocal-verbal, and it is not signalled through unimodal gestural micro-feedback at all. Besides this, non-understanding is mostly shown by means of multimodal micro-feedback ex- pressions and rarely by unimodal expressions.
When signalling sufficient understanding, the data suggests that the most com- mon unimodal vocal-verbal micro-feedback expressions are yeah, okay, m, ah, yes,
yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah, ah yeah, yeah okay, ah okay, and okay okay. Among them, yeah, okay, m, ah, and yes are comparable with the five most frequent backchannel
expressions found in other corpora and studies (Jurafsky et al., ; Ward & Tsu- kahara, ). These vocal-verbal micro-feedback expressions are always used to communicate “I hear you, I perceive and understand what you have said, and I would like to continue the conversation with you” (CPU), and sometimes to express emo- tions and attitudes, for instance, of agreement, disagreement, certainty, amusement, interest, and surprise. The most common gestural micro-feedback expressions are single and repeated head nods, which corresponds well with other studies of com- municative feedback (i.e., micro-feedback) in several languages, such as Swedish and Finnish (Navarretta et al., ), Danish (Paggio & Navarretta, ), and Japanese (Ishi et al., ). The most frequently used unimodal gestural micro-feedback sig- nalling sufficient understanding includes nods, nod, smile, up-nod, up-nods, head shakes, head tilt, and eyebrow rise. The top five multimodal micro-feedback expres- sions signalling sufficient understanding are yeah+nods, chuckle, yeah+nod,
m+nods, and laughter. Many of them are not only used to communicate CPU but
also express the emotions and attitudes of certainty, confirmation, sympathy, sur- prise, amusement, and interest as well as the evaluative opinion of agreement. Be- sides these, unimodal head movements are found to exclusively signal sufficient un- derstanding.
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In relation to misunderstanding, the data studied show that unimodal vocal-ver- bal micro-feedback expressions have occurred three times; they are eh yeah eh, yeah, and a participant’s name, which are usually expressed with hesitation or uncertainty. No unimodal gestural micro-feedback expression occurs. The participants tend to use a multimodal micro-feedback expression that consists of a repetition of the per- ceived vocal-verbal message (usually a noun phrase) and an assertive gesture nod for information confirmation related to misunderstanding. Half the multimodal expres- sions contain nods together with yeah or a noun phrase. As discussed earlier, asser- tive micro-feedback expressions such as yeah and nod are also sometimes related to misunderstanding. In such cases, the interlocutor always believes he or she has un- derstood the information communicated. However, it usually turns out not to be true sooner or later in further contexts. Besides, a misunderstanding can result in further misunderstandings between the interlocutors back and forth in the dialogue.
Regarding non-understanding, in the data, two unimodal vocal-verbal micro- feedback expressions are used, sorry and what do you mean, which communicate un- certainty and elicit further information from the other interlocutor. Two unimodal gestural micro-feedback expressions have also occurred, which are eyebrow rise and gaze at. The most frequently used multimodal expressions consist of eyebrow rise or frown, head forward, and gaze sideways together with sorry, what, or huh. The inter- locutors use them to express uncertainty, hesitation, and thoughtfulness about the perceived information, and interest in and eagerness to know more. Sometimes, a multimodal micro-feedback chuckle and smile are also used to signal non-under- standing, through which the interlocutors often express politeness and embarrass- ment.
Furthermore, concerning how different modalities of micro-feedback are re- lated to sufficient understanding, misunderstanding, and non-understanding, there were some differences between the Swedish and the Chinese participants that emerged from the data studied. For instance, the Chinese participants seemed to be more expressive in using unimodal vocal-verbal micro-feedback than the Swedes; only they used unimodal vocal-verbal micro-feedback in relation to misunderstand- ing and non-understanding in the studied data. Equally important, the Swedish par- ticipants were found more expressive when using multimodal micro-feedback to sig- nal sufficient understanding in the data. They used unimodal vocal-verbal micro- feedback only to express sufficient understanding, and they had a tendency to use more up-nod(s) as the gestural component for multimodal micro-feedback than the Chinese. These findings in the current study cannot be generalised for Chinese and Swedish speakers in general; rather, they can be only applied to Chinese–Swedish intercultural spontaneous communications to various extents.
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Results of prosody analysis
In this chapter, based on the empirical interaction data, the prosodic features of the vocal-verbal micro-feedback, that is, pitch, pitch range, pitch contour, and duration, will be investigated in relation to sufficient understanding, misunderstanding, and non-understanding.
The following research question will be addressed. What specific prosodic fea- tures of vocal-verbal micro-feedback are correlated to sufficient understanding, mis- understanding, and non-understanding?