On Analysis Of Backchannels From System-functional Approach

Being an essential linguistic phenomenon to the conversation, backchannelshave received much attention at home and abroad since the1960s. Many researchersdefine backchannel from various perspectives, such as linguistics, psychology,sociology, and social intercourse. In linguistic level, enormous studies are focusingon highlighting the importance of backchannels and comparing the backchannel indifferent languages from pragmatic angels, such Japanese and American, Japaneseand Korea, Mandarin and Australian English. In addition, domestically, previousstudies on backchannels are based on the English samples or Chinese samples, whilethe most frequent Japanese backchannels have been overlooked. In this paper, wewould like to adopt Japanese backchannels as samples to analyze backchannels.Halliday defines three meta-functions of the language including the ideationalfunction, interpersonal function and textual function. The ideational function servesfor the expression of the content; the interpersonal function serves to establish andmaintain social relations; the textual function enables the listener or reader todistinguish a text from a random set of sentences. In this paper, we try to discussbackchannels from the new perspective of the Halliyan system-function grammar.The purpose of the research is the methodology not the result. Therefore, thebiggest contribution is the enlightenment of the new approach and angel to apply theHalliday’s system-functional grammar into analyzing backchannels. In this paper, wealso would like to suggest, a laboratory-conditioned experiment should be conductedto make backchannels data with more popularity and validation.