Thai University Students’ Use of Yes/No Tokens in Spoken Interaction

Adopting the interactional linguistic framework, the study aimed at exploring the range and frequency of interactional functions of yes/no tokens used by Thai university students of A2 proficiency in their English conversation, and contrasting their use with that of English native speakers (ENSs). The data was derived from 83, two-three party role-play conversations of approximately three–five minutes long obtained from conversation classes that were transcribed and analyzed. The findings revealed the students’ use of yes tokens in the following order of functional frequency: acceptance, confirmative response, positive alignment, acknowledgment, topic shift and self-confirmation. By contrast, no tokens were employed most often to disconfirm/disagree, followed by doing disappointment, restatement and negative alignment. Additionally, the students appeared to overuse yes tokens to fulfill certain functions for which ENSs usually deployed other expressions, and had difficulty giving grammatical short answers with the tokens. Furthermore, unlike ENSs, they often used these tokens alone, repeatedly or redundantly with other expressions of the same functions. It was suggested that students be made aware of grammatical expressions that can co-occur with yes/no tokens in giving short answers, and especially of a wider range of expressions commonly used in a specific context and various contexts in which an expression can be appropriately used.


Introduction
The majority of Thai university students have studied English as a foreign language since kindergarten, but their speaking proficiency remains low. There are several reasons for this, one of which appears to be that the main focus of most English courses is on written grammar. The students were mostly taught how to form sentences based on a number of prescribed rules. Often engaged in writing-oriented activities and exercises, the students barely had opportunities to extensively practice speaking English in class. In fact, grammar for talk-in-interaction has hardly ever been focused on in any classes, and neither have students explicitly been made aware of differences between written and spoken language. This might partly contribute to their lack of confidence and spontaneity when they interact with non-Thais in English.
Spoken language contains features that are rather diverse from those of written language features (Biber, Conrad, Leech, & Finegan, 1999;Sinwongsuwat, 2018). It is full of colloquial and vernacular expressions. Speakers prefer using slang expressions, phrasal verbs and idioms in their talk, and most of the words or sentences in spoken language are often in reduced forms. For example, how is it going? becomes howsitgoin? There are also many eliciting and reactive tokens which reflect the co-constructive nature of talk. Examples of eliciting tokens are you know; you know what I mean; really?; what for?, while reactive tokens include mm, yeah, and ahh, sometimes referred to as back-channeling cues or continuers. Grammatical features found in talk such as modal auxiliaries, adverbials, and many clausal complements allow speakers to express their feelings, attitudes, and assess others, making their personal stances known. Spoken language is also marked by several pauses, fillers (er and uhm), and repeats such as yes yes yes; no no no; wait wait wait (Schegloff, 1987;Wong, 2000) because speakers not only have limited time to think about what they want to utter but also are not able to edit their utterances in advance. Finally, language, especially in conversation, contains a large number of shorter phrases, single words and fragments not acceptable in written language.
Common tokens in talk such as yes/no could pose a serious challenge to students in conversation owing to not only their various functions not found in writing but also their pronunciation which can vary greatly. For instance, such derivatives of the tokens yes and no as yeap and nope occur considerably more frequently than yes and no in spoken interaction (Bartley, 2006;Biber et al., 1999;Eggins & Slade, 1997). The variety of yes utterances also includes yea, yeah, yep, yay, yup, yeeeeees, yessssss, yiss, y, yaaaaas, and yassssss, referred to as the yes token in this study. On the other hand, the variants of no sounds in causal interactions such as nope, nah, and naw are referred to as the no token.
Because of their wide range of functions and pronunciation, yes/no tokens are ones of the most crucial elements in talks that not only help conversations flow smoothly but also shape speakers' next turn. However, without explicit instruction, students might not be able to fully master their uses. Therefore, the study aimed at exploring the functions of yes/no tokens produced in conversation by Thai university students mostly taught prescriptive grammar. It attempts to identify the most prevalent functions of yes/no tokens and to compare them with those of yes/no tokens used by English native speakers. Therefore, the threefold purposes of the study are (1) to unveil the functions of yes/no tokens Thai university students frequently use in their spoken English interaction; (2) to investigate which functions of yes/no tokens are most prevalent in the Thai students' talks and (3) to determine whether the students' use of the tokens is different from that of English native speakers.
It is hoped that via the interactional linguistic lens, the findings of the study will reveal how the yes/no tokens are used by Thai students differently from those used by English native speakers, raise students and teachers' awareness of different uses of the yes/no tokens in spoken English, and help inform teachers when they design conversation lessons to cover the functions for which the tokens are mostly used by native speakers of English.

Data Collection
The data examined in this study were video-recorded conversations taken from two corpora. The first corpus was developed as part of a research project investigating the use of Conversation Analysis (CA) to enhance Thai university students' English conversation skills: A study of CA as instructional, exploratory, and diagnostic tools. The data in this corpus was obtained from an elective English conversation course offered at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Thailand. The participants were second-to fourth-year students from different faculties such as Management Sciences, Pharmaceutical Science, and Engineering. They were asked to role-play phone calls according to situations provided such as calling to break off the relationship, deliver good news, make a request, and to order some takeout. Students were given about 10 minutes to prepare for their roleplays. The data examined include 42 telephone conversations, each of which lasts about two or three minutes. There are approximately 30 -25 turns in each conversation. On the other hand, the second corpus was obtained from a fundamental English listening and speaking course taught by one of the researchers, of which the participants were mostly first-year students from the Faculty of Management Sciences. Allowed only 10 minutes to study a situation card, they were assigned to perform unscripted role play in front of the classroom based on a lesson topic given on the card. Their conversations were video-recorded and the data were transcribed, making a corpus of 17 face-to-face conversations, each of which is about three to five minutes long with approximately 40-50 turns.

Data Analysis
This study is contextualized within the interactional linguistic framework. Being one of the descriptive approaches to studying talk-in-interaction, IL is focused on understanding the nature of talks in social interaction through their recording and transcription. Interactional linguists believe that the most basic features of natural language are formed and motivated by the home environment in co-present interaction (Schegloff , 1996), and that turns, social actions, and their sequences can only be accomplished and interpreted through the systematic use of linguistic resources (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 2018). Accordingly, IL aims at describing and explaining how linguistic structures shape interaction and vice versa.
In conversation, interactional practices and language have an impact on each other. We use conversation to build social relationships, to negotiate identities, to pass along cultures, and get things done. When we do these, we not only deploy forms of linguistic communication, but also exchange non-verbal language and sometimes silence, and to make sense of these devices, we need to comprehend the context that shapes them, whether linguistic or nonlinguistic and at a macro or micro level (Sinwongsuwat, 2018). To understand the use of yes/no tokens, it is therefore essential to understand the fundamental conversation mechanisms that shape them.

Turn-Taking
Turn-taking is one of the most important features that occurs fluidly in conversation. Usually, only one person speaks at a time, and when the current speaker finishes speaking in his or her turn, others can be a next speaker. During transition from a current speaker to another speaker, there might be some gaps and overlaps (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998;Liddicoat, 2007). Without any turns, interaction will not happen (Wong & Waring, 2010). Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) proposed that the turn-taking system in conversation is both context-free and context-sensitive and is governed by two components: (1) a turn constructional component and (2) a turn allocation component. Turn construction units (TCUs) are made of a variety of grammatical units which can be words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is true that people do not only talk in sentences, but also in a wide range of diverse structures. This can be illustrated in the extract below.
(1) [Liddicoat, 2007, p. 55, modified]  In excerpt (1), there are four turns, each of which consists of one TCU. All of the TCUs are sentences, except the TCU in line 4, which is a prepositional phrase (PP). The phrasal TCU is treated as a complete, meaningful contribution to the conversation by the talk participants. Namely, once Joy's turn in line 4 is underway, with his interactional competence Harry can project where it will possibly end especially via syntactic and intonational completion cues given; i.e., a PP with a falling intonation at the end of the unit in this case. These cues alongside with actional completion make speaker change possible, rendering a transition relevance places (TRP), where turn transition between speakers can occur. These properties of projectability and transition-relevance place creation are considered essential for the organization of turn-taking (Liddicoat, 2007).

Sequential Organization
Talk-in-interaction is usually composed of several turns. Talk participants take turns to keep their conversation going, to coordinate an interactional activity, and to understand each other. Turns in talk are clustered together into sequences. That is, each turn is connected to each other in a systematically organized way, and the relationship between turns is sequentially meaningful (Liddicoat, 2007). The way in which turns are organized in talk is called sequential organization. A question before an answer forms a simple example of a sequence. Other examples include a request followed by the decision made about it, an informative turn and its receipt, and a criticism before the reply to it. All of these different types of sequences are representative of a very firm type of sequence organization, known as the adjacency pair (Mazeland, 2006;Schegloff & Sacks, 1973;Schegloff, 1968).
Most of the turns at talk come in pairs. An adjacency pair might be a farewell paired with a farewell, a question with an answer, or invitation with acceptance/decline. These kinds of paired utterances are the fundamental units of conversation, and have a normative impact on the organization of conversation because they help set up expectations about how talk will continue.
Adjacency pairs have several main features. They are composed of two turns often formed by different speakers. The two turns are often sequentially delivered. That is, one of them always comes first being a contingency for the other one to follow. For instance, a question is uttered before the answer. The first turn is called the first pair part (FPP), whereas the second turn is the second pair part (SPP). The relationship between the two turns is controlled by a FPP. When a FPP occurs at talk, not just any SPP can follow in the next turn, but the SPP that is projected by the FPP. Therefore, a question (FPP) must precede an answer (SPP) not by a greeting or a farewell (Liddicoat, 2007).

Repair
Repair is the process through which speakers deal with problems in talk. It is deployed to make sure that an ongoing interaction does not freeze at the moment when a problem occurs (Schegloff, 2007). It not only corrects errors or mistakes in talk (Jefferson, 1987;Schegloff et al., 1977), but also treats unclear pronunciations, malapropisms, use of wrong words, unavailability of proper words in the right contexts, failure to hear or to be heard, problems on the part of the recipient in comprehension (Schegloff, 1987). A repair is of several types, such as (1) self-initiated self-repair, a speaker both identifies a problem and resolves it; (2) self-initiated other-repair, a speaker identifies a problem but a recipient revolves it; (3) other-initiated self-repair, a recipient identifies a problem and a speaker resolves it; and (4) other-initiated other-repair, a recipient both indicates a problem and resolves it.
A repair can also be placed in several positions. First, it can be in the same turn as the problem (same-turn repair). Second, it can be put in the transition space before the turn containing the problem (transition-space repair). Next, it can stay in the turn suddenly following the problem (second-position repair). Also, it can be in a third positioned turn (third-position repair). Finally, it can be placed in a fourth positioned turn (fourth-position repair).

Transcrition Convention
The data in this study was analyzed following CA principles based on our understanding of the aforementioned mechanisms. The analysis was aimed at discovering the functions of yes/no tokens used by Thai university students. The most prevalent functions of the tokens uttered were then determined and compared with those reported in the previous literature. The videotaped conversations were transcribed based on the following transcription convention, developed by Gail Jefferson (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998): (0.5) The number in brackets indicates a time gap in tenths of a second.
(.) A dot enclosed in a bracket indicates a pause in the talk of less than two-tenths of a second.
[ ] Square brackets between adjacent lines of concurrent speech indicate the onset and end of a spate of overlapping talk.
.hh A dot before an 'h' indicates speaker in breath. The more h's, the longer the in-breath.

Hh
An 'h' indicates an out-breath. The more h's the longer the breath.
(( )) A description enclosed in a double bracket indicates a non-verbal activity, or double brackets may enclose the transcriber's comments on contextual or other features.
-A dash indicates the sharp cut-off of the prior word or sound. : Colons indicate that the speaker has stretched the preceding sound or letter. The more colons the greater the extent of the stretching. Less marked falls in pitch can be indicated by using underlining immediately preceding a colon.
a: Less marked rises in pitch can be indicated using a colon which itself is underlined.

Under
Underlined fragments indicate speaker emphasis.

CAPITALS
Words in capitals mark a section of speech noticeably louder than that surrounding it.
° ° Degree signs are used to indicate that the talk they encompass is spoken noticeably quieter than the surrounding talk.
Thaght A 'gh' indicates that the word in which it is placed had a guttural pronunciation.
> < 'More than' and 'less than' signs indicate that the talk they encompass was produced noticeably quicker than the surrounding talk.
→ Arrows in the left margin point to specific parts of an extract discussed in the text.
[H:21.3.89:2] Extract headings refer to the transcript library source of the researcher who originally collected the data.

Functions of Yes/No Tokens Used by Thai University Students
To unveil the sequential functions of yes/no tokens used by Thai university students in their conversation, 59 face-to-face conversations obtained from the two sources previously mentioned were analyzed. The total number of yes and no tokens produced by the students in the entire corpus examined was 132 and 14 times respectively. The percentage of their functional frequency was also determined, and the findings are presented below in Figures 1 and 2. As seen in Figure 1, yes tokens were deployed by the students to serve six main functions, the first two of which that were most frequently found were acceptance (44.70%, n=59) and confirmative response (34.85%, n=46) respectively, followed by positive alignment (7.58%, n=10), acknowledgement (7.58%, n=10), topic shift (4.55%, n=6) and self-confirmation (0.76%, n=1). The functions that were not found in the corpus examined included the use of yes to show agreement and to signal incipient speakership. This is likely due to the fact that the role-play situation assigned was not conducive to these functions, and that the students were not aware especially of such functions as reserving turn space or showing incipient speakership.
Below are examples of the yes tokens used by the Thai students to serve each of the functions reported. Shown in (2), where both students were asked to role-play a phone call to order a takeout, student A was a server, while student B was a customer. Yes tokens were used three times in lines 3, 4, and 8 for the same function of acceptance. In lines 3 and 8, the tokens were deployed to accept the offer in lines 2 and 7 respectively. Yes in line 4, on the other hand, can be considered as acceptance of the request in line 3.
(2) [BT_VDO Phone: 10-06-2559 -00020] The other most frequently used function was confirmative response. In excerpt (3), student A was acting a role of a waiter in a restaurant, and student B was a customer who asked for a table next to a window. Yes in line 3 was employed as a confirmative response to the yes-no question in line 2.
( The rest of the functions less frequently found include positive alignment (7.52%), acknowledgement (6.77%), topic shift (4.51%), and self-confirmation (0.75%). Shown in (4), students A, B and C were classmates. Students A and B were asking student B to go swimming with them on the weekend. Student C in line 3 was informing student B that they would go swimming in the following weekend. Student A uttered yes in line 4 as positive alignment so as to not only closely align herself with the thought in line 3 but also show that she had the same idea as student C in line 3.  (6), an illustration of the use of the yes token to proffer a topic shift is provided. In this situation, the two speakers, who were friends who had not seen each other for a long while, are making small talk. Student Gap started the conversation with greeting, followed by introducing herself and asking a question to check if the interlocutor could recognize her. Wow! in line 2 shows that meeting Gap was a surprise to Ja. Not expecting to see Gap there, Ja positively confirmed that she could recognize her friend. However, instead of catching up with each other, the students chose to abruptly shift to the formulaic well-being inquiry sequence, lines 3-5, with Gap's yea::h-prefaced turn in line 3. The elongation of the word yea::h and the abrupt shift into a new sequence elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 12, No. 3;2019 apparently make this turn sound inappropriate, not fitting in with the context and diverging from the native speaker's norm, whereby yes is used to offer a shift into a new topic when the interlocutor finds the previous talk uninteresting or inappropriate (Jefferson, 1985;Fuller, 2003 In excerpt (7), the last function of the yes tokens used by the Thai students is self-confirmation. A, a waitress in a pizza restaurant, was taking an order from B. After having ordered his food and drink, student B was asked in line 9 if he wanted to pick them up by himself or to have the order delivered. B, however, seemed to be undecided. After a moment of thinking, via the use of Uh:m in line 10, he chose to go for a takeout, yet with the following micropause, he was apparently still not sure of his decision, thus using yes to make a final call. Such use of yes is apparently not common among native speakers conversing in a similar context.
To sum up, the yes tokens were evidently used by the Thai students for six main functions including acceptance (44.70%), confirmative response (34.85%), positive alignment (7.58%), acknowledgement (7.58%), topic shift (4.55%), and self-confirmation (0.76%). However, the use of yes to show agreement and to signal incipient speakership as reported in previous literature was not found in this study.
While the use of yes tokens was found in six functions, Thai university students used no tokens for three functions, shown in Figure 2. The most frequently found function was disconfirmative response (78.57%, n=11). The frequency of the other functions, including restatement and negative alignment, was equally noted (7.14%, n=1 each). The functions not found in this study consisted of a return to a previous topic, joke-to-serious no token/stance shift, repair initiation, a turn-negotiation token, command, and rejection to a command.

Figure 2. Functions of No tokens
Below are examples of no tokens deployed in conversation by the Thai students examined. Shown in excerpt (8), a no token serves as a disconfirmation in line 6. Student B as a customer was making a dinner reservation at a restaurant where student A was a waitress. In this excerpt, student A asked Do you have anything else? in line 5 to make sure that student B did not want anything else to complete the reservation. In line 6, student B used a no token to disconfirm the question in the previous turn.
Similarly, in excerpt (9), in which three students were talking about their Saturday's examination, A asked how C had been preparing for the exam, and in line 5, C admitted not having done it with the no token, thus offering a disconfirmative response. The two other functions of no tokens found in the study were restatement and negative alignment in (10) below. B and C were accompanying A to a swim shop to get a new pair of goggles. Pointing to some imaginary glasses and asking if her friends think they are beautiful, B and C almost simultaneously declined it. B's no in line 2 can be treated as a disconfirmative response with which C's no in line 3 is aligned. A's no in line 4 restates C's uptake, functioning as a confirmative restatement calling the interlocutor's attention to other pairs of glasses. The functions of no tokens revealed in the study entail disconfirmation, restatement, and negative alignment.
Other functions reported in the literature but not found in the students' conversation included a return to a previous topic, joke-to-serious no token/stance shift, repair initiation, a turn-negotiation token, command, and rejection to a command. Besides unconducive situation prompts, the students' elementary English proficiency apparently limited their ability to take longer, multi-unit turns and construct more complicated sequences in which they could switch between various topics, make their opinions known, or negotiate for turn space. The students seemed to also have not yet mastered using no to self-repair, which is a very common means to resolve misunderstanding in natural talk.

Differences Between Thai University Students' Use of Yes/No Tokens and English Native Speakers
Seen in the previous section, Thai students' use of yes/no tokens were fairly limited to a few functions. The yes token in particular was deployed mainly to accept an offer or a request and to confirm facts in the preceding turn, whereas the no token was used primarily for disconfirmation. The students seemed to overuse the tokens while English native speakers (ENSs) may deploy other expressions to fulfill these functions. Apparently, with fairly limited sources in their repertoire, they had to rely particularly on the yes tokens even though ENSs vary their choice of expressions for the same function. Close analysis also revealed differences between their employment of yes/no tokens and that of ENSs in a similar situation. Occurring in single TCUs, the tokens were often used alone, repeatedly, redundantly or ungrammatically as discussed below.

Stand-Alone Tokens
Yes/no tokens were employed alone in a single TCU turn by the Thai students, sometimes making it sound abrupt and inappropriate, and this can potentially offend English speakers. As shown in excerpt (11)

B: J-A-N-E
To make the turn sound more polite to the interlocutor, the yes token could actually be used with other expressions to accept an invitation or an offer such as yes please and yes thank you as shown in excerpts (12)  In (12), Anne was checking into a hotel. In line 1, after a greeting, the clerk invited her to check in, to which Anne responded not only with the token yes but the politeness expression please. Additionally, to accept an offer, NSs also often use politeness expressions without the token yes. As shown in excerpt (13), Elke not only suggests that Nico apply for the job but also offers to help her with it, elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 12, No. 3;2019 and Nico accepts Elke's offer by expressing gratitude, Many thanks, in line 7 without even using the yes token.
Not only can stand-alone yes tokens make them sound unnatural or impolite to English speakers, but their no tokens can also sound rude as in excerpt (14)  Thai students, therefore, need to be made aware of polite expressions and various other expressions they can use to appropriately accept an offer in English.

Repetitive/Redundant Tokens
Occasionally, the tokens were also unnecessarily repeated twice or more. In excerpt (39), B apparently used yes to strengthen their confirmative preface yeh and repeated part of their interlocutor's preceding turn. In (22) line 3, instead of saying yes, we/I do, A used the main verb instead, apparently appealing to their mother tongue which is an isolating language with no auxiliary use.
Based on these differences, it can be argued that although the Thai students' use of the yes/no tokens may be greatly influenced by the nature of their real-time moment-by-moment interaction, their limited interactional competence resulting from past learning experience and the mother-tongue influence cannot be understated either. The students should be taught how to construct appropriate, multi-unit turns not to sound rude to their interlocutors and how to efficiently maintain conversation such that their goals can easily be achieved. Additionally, they should be made more aware of the fact that repetition and redundancy in language use may be more tolerable among speakers of high-context cultures such as Thais but they are apparently less preferable among those preferring more direct and explicit communication of ideas such as English (Nishimura, Nevgi, & Tella, 2008).

Conclusion
This study examined the functions of yes/no tokens used in Thai students' English conversation and contrasted them with those often found in the discourse of English native speakers. The analysis results revealed six main functions of yes tokens deployed by the Thai students in the order of frequency, including acceptance, confirmative response, positive alignment, acknowledgement, topic shift, and self-confirmation. Notably, however, there were only two functions for which the yes tokens were most often used, acceptance and confirmative responses. On the other hand, there were only three functions of no tokens found in this study, namely disconfirmation, restatement, and negative alignment. No tokens as disconfirmation were the most frequently found among the three. Overall, there remained several other functions of the tokens found in ENSs' use such as the use of yes to show agreement and to signal incipient speakership, as well as other functions of no never unused such as nos as a return to a previous topic, a stance shift from joke-to-serious, repair initiation, a turn-negotiation token, a command, and rejection to a command. It was very likely that besides the unconducive nature of the role-play situation prompts, the students were not really aware of these functions and never taught how to use the tokens to fulfill those functions. Additionally, among the functions of the tokens found, problems occurred regarding the appropriateness of use as the yes/no tokens were often deployed alone with inappropriate intonation, unnecessarily repeated, and redundantly or ungrammatically used with other expressions, which may cause misunderstanding and make them appear rude to other English speakers.
Therefore, it was recommended that to enhance L2 interactional efficiency, students need to be taught any L2 expressions with reference to not only their actual context of use but their various possible functions and cultural implications. Particularly, via authentic examples of language in naturally-occurring conversation, the students should be made cognizant of intonation features of speech as well as other expressions that can possibly be used with the target expressions to construct turns to accomplish their interactional goals and especially of various sequential interactional contexts of talk in which these expressions can possibly be used. Further research may explore other problems in language use of these learners and examine their talk in various other interactional settings.