Affiliation:
1. Cardiff University
2. Mary Immaculate College
3. University of Nottingham
4. University College Dublin
5. University of Aberdeen
6. University of Limerick
Abstract
Abstract
Amid COVID-19 and the so-called “digital pivot”, online virtual communication is at the heart of our professional
and private lives. As we move into a post-COVID context, the affordances of the digital turn have shown that we can operate
professionally online but there is a need for better understanding of communication in the online workplace. This paper
contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of indicators of engagement in multi-party communication online, as evidenced by
a corpus-based multi-modal study. It showcases the importance of building naturally-occurring spoken corpora that go beyond
written transcription and include annotation of non-verbal behaviour. The work focuses on the incidence, frequency, position, and
function of spoken and head nod backchannels, exploring coordination and co-occurrence of these features in online talk. Findings
point to a changing profile of how engagement is displayed in online workplace meetings, which appears to be linked to the
functionality of platforms.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company