Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Mather, Susan M

Titel

The discourse marker OH in typed telephone conversations among deaf typists. (Volumes I and II)

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1991

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This study examines the printed telephone conversations of deaf Americans whose native language is American Sign Language (ASL) in order to discover how discourse markers, especially OH markers, enable these users of Telecommunication Devices to compensate for the manual and nonmanual information lost when typing conversations in English. The peculiar qualities of ASL as a visual/gestural language used in "spoken" conversation and the limitations of Telecommunication Devices (TDs) are also described. Two hundred one conversations printed on TDs were collected from members of the deaf community. Occurrences of various OH markers were tallied and analyzed. Members of the deaf community were also interviewed to discuss their interpretations of the OH markers found in the data. The data reveal that of the total number of occurrences of OH markers, 67% were used as affective markers. Simple OH was the OH marker chosen 21% of the time, and OH I SEE was used 12% of the time. The unexpectedly high rate of occurrence of OH I SEE shows that even in situations that do not involve strong affect, deaf typists prefer to show involvement as well as polite acknowledgement. Analysis of the data further reveals that OH markers are used in TD conversations not only to accomplish coherence and provide smooth flow of information, but also to manage relative focus on interpersonal involvement. In conclusion, four significant roles of OH markers in TD discourse are described: as regulators of the flow of the typist's own information; as responses to information provided by the other typist; as external evaluative devices that allow the typist to reveal affect; and, lastly, as both controllers of information flow and delayed backchannel markers providing interactive responses in multitopic turns.