Pane, Widi Syahtia. 2017. Turn-Taking Mechanism and Backchannel Signals Used by Hosts in Barack Obama’s Interviews (Under the supervision of Dr. Bibit Suhatmady, M.Pd and. Sunardi, S.S., M.Hum) Samarinda: Unpublished Thesis Mulawarman University.

This study analyzed the backchannel signals and turn-taking, along with their Prosodic Feature in their TRP (Transition Relevance Place) of turn-taking, and BRS (Backchannel Relevance Space) of backchannel from native and non-native speaker of English in doing interview with Barack Obama. Jake Tapper was a CNN journalist. He was the native host in this study. Meanwhile Putra Nababan was an Indonesian journalist from Indonesian TV channel, RCTI. This study used qualitative research as the design and Conversation Analysis (CA) as the approach. In doing this qualitative research, the researcher used turn-taking theory proposed by Sacks, Schegloff& Jefferson (1974) and backchannel theory suggested by Maynard (1997).

From the analyzed data in this study, it was found that Jake Tapper as native host utilized all kinds of Turn-constructional construction (Lexical, Phrasal, Clausal and Sentential Construction) but only used Self-Selection in matter of Turn-allocation Components in turn-taking. Meanwhile Putra Nababan used all of kind of Turnconstructional

construction and used both of Turn-allocation Components, SelfSelection and Other-Selection,
although the Self-selection was dominant. Both hosts preferred to apply Lexical construction and self-selection since one of their responsibilities as hosts was to control the interviews by asking Obama’s answers or comments, in form of completed sentences or questions-formed sentences. From the result of backchannel analysis, both hosts used all of categories of backchannel. The most applied backchannel that Tapper used was Strong Emotional Response signaling by laughter, in order to respond Barack Obama’s humorous arguments , and for Nababan he used Continuer more often while listening carefully to Obama’s explanation enthusiastically. It was also found that Tapper as the native speaker of English rarely used verbal backchannel, meanwhile Nababan as non-native speaker used backchannel more often. In the matter of Prosodic Feature—which was intonation, in the TRP of turn-taking and BRS of backchannel, it was found that they used the four kinds of intonation (falling, rising, falling-rising, rising-falling intonation). As for the BRS, Tapper used three kinds of intonation which were falling, falling-rising, rising-falling intonation. Meanwhile Nababan used falling, rising and rising-falling intonation. Making BRS was apparently the way of the hosts to hold their turn. The difference between both hosts were not significant, it could be implied in this study that the terms ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speaker of English are seemingly more ‘blurred’ for now days.
Keywords : Backchannel, Turn-taking, Conversation Analysis, Interview