Differential Use of Reactive Tokens in Japanese In Turn Management and by Gender

This study investigated the distribution of Reactive Tokens in natural conversation by male and female speakers of Japanese. According to Clancy et al. a reactive token (RT) is "a short utterance produced by an interlocutor who is playing a listener's role during the other interlocutor's speakership" (1996, p. 355). Clancy et al. classify RTs into five types: backchannels, reactive expressions, collaborative finishes, repetitions, and resumptive openers. This study investigated the distribu...