Listeners are usually considered recipients in conversational interaction, whose main activity is to take in messages from other speakers. In this view, the listening activity is separate from speaking. Another view is that listeners and speakers are equal co-participants in conversations who construct the talk together. In support of this latter view, one finds a group of vocalisations which are quintessentially listener talk - little conversational objects such as uh-huh, oh, mm, yeah, right and mm-hm. These utterances do not have meanings in a conventional dictionary sense, but are neverthe |