A Study of Reactive Tokens in Spoken Language:Review and Prospect
Responses of recipients in conversation appear to be a universal phenomenon in languages all over the world.Reactive token is a type of response,and it is an important resource used by recipients to convey their responsive information and participation in interactive communication.It plays an important role in meaning construction,discourse advancement,and the development of an interactive relationship in communication.This paper systematically analyzes the historical background and latest research trends,both at home and abroad,on reactive tokens in spoken language from six aspects:concepts,categories,usage characteristics,linguistic functions,social cultural factors,and multimodality.Based on our analysis of the achievements and shortcomings of current research,we propose some issues and trends for future research on reactive tokens from an interaction perspective.This paper demonstrates that reactive tokens have given rise to communicative conventions in language.The usage characteristics of reactive tokens reflect the essence of human language dynamics and contextual dependence:language dynamically emerges from the process of interactive communication,which reveals that communication is the basic function of language.Additionally,lexical and non-lexical forms,prosodic patterns,as well as physical behaviors(i.e.,facial expressions,gestures,etc.)are basic constituent units of reactive tokens.Members of this category coordinate and cooperate with each other,sometimes functioning alone and sometimes working together.Within the informal context of daily interactions,especially in face-to-face communication,the verbal and non-verbal forms of reactive tokens must be seen as being guided by an interactive framework.Given its diverse manifestations in terms of forms,semantics,and pragmatics,a systematic and comprehensive category system of reactive token should be established in the framework of interactional linguistics.An extensive review of the literature shows that reactive tokens have rich patterns of manifestation,and they are different in terms of their usage characteristics.Previous works have also shown that we should not be limited to the internal mechanisms of language when working on a certain structure or discourse category.This requires us to reference additional relevant methodologies and theoretical perspectives from anthropology,sociolinguistics,cultural studies and even philosophy of language to supplement the gaps in our understanding of its discourse category and concomitant multimodality.Adopting the aforementioned perspectives to examine the construction of reactive tokens can not only help us clarify its usage characteristics,but also broaden our understanding of their functions in different communicative scenes and social contexts.