Back-channeling in Celebrities Interviews: A Socio-discoursal Study

Conversation is an act in which two or more interlocutors take turns. Each one of them speak at a time; hence the act is not something arbitrarily done. However, there might happen some problems when certain interlocutor competes for taking the turn. Conversely, the interlocutor may contribute in some way to the conversation's success and continuance. They assist and facilitate the speaker's speech by employing backchannels. The current study aims to investigate and analyze backchannels used in the conversation of native speakers (celebrities). The purpose of this study is to look at how different genders employ this language phenomena. To achieve this goal, the researcher looks at a few chosen interviews with famous actors, fashion designers, and politicians. The results reveal that females tend to use backchannels more frequently than males do. Also, the use of verbal backchannels is proved to be more frequent than that of non-verbal.