Resisting supervisory advice: students’ “yeah” during extended advising turns

Response tokens are widely understood as listeners’ tools to display understanding, alignment and affiliation. Using conversation analysis, this study investigates how students use the response token “yeah” during supervisors’ extended turns in 135 advice sequences from supervision interactions. With a focus on the sequential positioning and other production features of “yeah” produced by students, this study identifies how it projects advice resistance in three sequential contexts: (1) delaying uptake: using “yeah” as a belated acknowledgement; (2) projecting stance-shift: using “yeah” to suggest incipient speakership; (3) withholding commitment: using “yeah” to replace expected responses. Findings reveal that while “yeah” often serves as a minimal response token, it can be used strategically to display advice resistance and to assert agency. This study contributes to research on advice resistance by showing how a single minimal response token can be used to project resistance during supervisors’ extended turns in academic supervision. Implications for supervisory practice include fostering greater sensitivity to subtle forms of resistance, promoting more responsive and dialogic student-and-supervisor relationships.