American and Arab Perceptions of an Arabic Turn-Taking Cue

Abstract

Languages differ in the way that speakers coordinate their interaction moment by moment, and this can cause intercultural misunderstandings. The authors explore this in the domain of listening behavior. One way that listeners show interest and attention is by producing back-channel feedback (short utterances such as okay and hmm) at appropriate times, and these times are determined, in part, by the interlocutor, who signals when such feedback is welcome with various cues. In Arabic these cues include a prosodic feature in the form of a steep continuous drop in pitch. This article shows that English speakers can misinterpret this, perceiving it as an expression of negative affect, and that this tendency can be substantially alleviated by training.