Expressing Agreement in Swedish and Chinese: A Case Study of Communicative Feedback in First-Time Encounters

This paper is a case study that explores how communicative feedback for expressing agreement is used by Swedish and Chinese speakers in first encounters. Eight video-recorded conversations, four in Swedish and four in Chinese, between eight university students were analyzed. The findings show that both Swedish and Chinese speakers express agreement more multimodally than unimodally. The Swedish participants most frequently use unimodal vocal-verbal feedback ja and nej (equivalent to yes and no in English respectively), unimodal gestural feedback, primarily head nod(s), multimodal feedback ja in combination with head nod(s) and up-nod(s). The Chinese participants most commonly use unimodal vocal-verbal feedback dui and shi (equivalent to yes in English), followed by the unimodal gestural feedback head nod(s), and multimodal feedback dui and shi in combination with head nod(s) to express agreement. Also, the findings indicate that the expression of agreement varies between both cultures and genders. Swedes express agreement more than Chinese. Females express agreement more than males. The results can be used for developing technology of autonomous speech and gesture recognition of agreement communication.