Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this study is to clarify messages and communicative functions that can be derived from tongue clicks. Through multimodal analysis, tongue clicks of Thai can be summarized in 3 categories: 1) cognitive behaviors, 2) emotional expressions and 3) operative utterance.

Paper long abstract:

Tongue clicks are generally perceived as negative behaviors in communication. In particular, Japanese are sensitive to tongue clicks in utterances. However, they do not recognize certain types of tongue clicks that only exist in the communication of other languages. Morita(2015: 172), for example, classified tongue clicks in French into 5 categories and described them as "expressions of a desire to continue communicating". For Thai, the frequency of tongue clicks in utterances was observed to be high(Hagiwara & Iketani 2015, 2016, 2017). Hagiwara & Iketani(2020) thus created two categories of tongue clicks: cognitive and emotional. So far, very few previous studies have used video data to explore tongue clicks. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to utilize video recordings to clarify messages and communicative functions that can be derived from tongue clicks. In so doing, multimodal analysis has been employed to investigate "chain and integrated relationship in interactions" (Takanashi2016: 62). The variables used in this analysis are 1)facial expressions, 2)gaze, 3)gestures and 4)speech. All 15 participants in this study are university students of Thai. They come in 5 groups and are asked to engage in three-person conversations. Participants are then asked to perform a set of 3 tasks in 50 minutes. The first task is to be conducted in Thai, and two tasks that followed are to be conducted in Japanese. All activities during the study are recorded by a video camera. The investigation revealed that tongue clicks were observed in 3 out of 5 groups. Of those 3 groups, there were 35 cases of tongue clicks in total. Only 1 out of 35 cases was connected to negative emotions; the rest of the 34 cases were the types of tongue clicks that did not exist in Japanese.

As discussed, my previous research with Iketani(2020) suggested two categories of tongue clicks for Thai. Findings of this current study allowed me to construct a new third category called operative utterance. In conclusion, tongue clicks of Thai can be summarized in 3 categories: 1)cognitive behaviors (e.g. thinking), 2)emotional expressions (e.g. good idea!) and 3)operative utterance (e.g. response/expansion).

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