Research Article

Article

Discourse Studies 12(5) 665–681

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Corresponding author: Zarina Othman, The Centre for General Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Bangi 43600, Selangor, Malaysia. Email: [email protected]

The use of okay, right and yeah in academic lectures by native speaker lecturers: Their ‘anticipated’ and ‘real’ meanings

Zarina Othman Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia

Abstract This article demonstrates the ‘patterning’ of the ways discourse markers such as okay, right and yeah are used in academic lectures by native speaker lecturers. It presents an analysis of a) what the lecturers thought they would say and b) what they actually say in comparison to what the lecturers actually do say. In other words, it focuses on the differences between expectations of what would be said and speech, that is, what is actually said. The data comprise verbatim lecture transcriptions of four native speaker lecturers of different disciplines, analysed using a discourse analytical approach. The findings and discussions exhibit the reasons for the differences between the ‘anticipated’ and ‘real’ meanings of the use of these discourse markers. They also reflect upon the significance of non- verbal features in determining the actual functions of these markers. In short, this article highlights the reality use of okay, right and yeah as interactive conversational markers in academic lectures.

Keywords academic lectures, discourse analysis, discourse markers, interactive markers, lecturers’ perceptions, meanings, native speaker, uses

Introduction In recent years, the exploration of the use of discourse markers has reached into various more specific areas of spoken discourse. There have been research investigations mainly on the use of discourse markers in various speech contexts such as in telling stories (Fox Tree, 2006), in social interaction (Bolden, 2006) and in interviews (Fuller, 2003c). Though there

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has been research on the speech context of academic lectures (Morell, 2004), the research focuses on several elements other than just discourse markers. An exception is Schleef (2005), who researches discourse markers as sociolinguistic variations in academic lectures.

Other researchers have focused on the use of discourse markers in various speech contexts and different speaker participants. Discourse markers have also been explored in languages other than English across countries from the West to the East. From the West, Vlemings (2003) studied the discourse use of French donc (inferential use), while Jayez and Rossari (2001) studied the causal markers of French dece fair and du coup. Among others are the studies of Portuguese pronto to mean ready, quick, pronto and complete (Da Silva, 2006) and Bulgarian hedging function of xadje that means come on, let’s and why don’t we (Tchizmarova, 2005). Moving to the East, there have been studies on the Japanese dakara, similar to so and in other words (Matsui, 2001), hao in spoken Chinese which is a marker of closure to reflect something is good (Wang and Tsai, 2005) and also kan (similar to English tag question) and iya/ya (you know) in Indonesian (Wouk, 1999).

Biber et al. (1999: 1046) view interactive conversational inserts as one major group of discourse markers that ‘can stand alone or attach themselves to larger discoursal units’. They mention three categories of inserts:

• Oh, right, yeah and okay • Well and now • You know and I mean

Biber et al. treat these markers as different categories of subtypes of discourse mark- ers though they are markers that indicate generally turn-takings in conversations. What separates them from each other is according to their analyses based on the fact that oh, right, yeah and okay act as interjections and response forms, well and now as utterance introducers whereas you know and I mean are observed as formulaic clausal forms. It is worth noting that Biber et al. treat oh, right, yeah and okay as subtypes of the same cat- egory, which is what this article will focus on except for oh. This is because such a marker is almost non-existent in terms of its frequency in my data.

Based on Fuller’s (2003a: 25) remark that ‘discourse markers are indeed used in dif- ferent ways depending on the roles and relationships of the interlocutors’, it is thus worth exploring how discourse markers are used in a monologic type of discourse such as lec- tures in comparison to conversational setting.

Literature review In defining discourse markers, Fuller (2003a) poses two significant questions:

• What are they? • How do we know they are discourse markers?

The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999: 1086) describes discourse markers as inserts which tend to occur at the beginning of a turn or utterance and combine two roles, namely:

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a) to signal a transition in the evolving progress of conversation; b) to signal an interactive relationship between speaker, hearer and message.

It is interesting that these markers are seen as ‘inserts’, as this suggests that they are items that should be syntactically independent, and also their absence should not affect the sentence meaning.

All studies of the effects of signalling cues or discourse markers in lecture compre- hension (Chaudron and Richards, 1986; Flowerdew and Tarouza, 1995; Jung, 2003; Olsen and Huckin, 1990; Thompson, 2003) report the positive effects of the use of these linguistic features in aiding students to gain better comprehension of the lectures. Although they discuss similar issues, that is, the positive role of signalling cues or dis- course markers, each differs in the types of signalling cues they investigate.

While sociologists Schegloff et al. (1977) made claims on the functions and meanings of okay and right used in conversations, Schleef (2005) focuses on the sociolinguistic variation of these markers in academic lectures. Schleef investigates ‘the contexts and social roles that influence the use of okay, right, like and you know’ (2005: 179).

Schiffrin (1987) views discourse as a product of several interlocking components: exchange, action, idea structures, information state and participation framework which she refers to as a Model of Discourse Coherence. Below is a summary of Schiffrin’s (1987: 316) categories of markers used on each of the planes of discourse.

• Exchange structures are ‘the outcome of the decision procedures by which speakers alternate sequential roles and define those alternations in relation to each other’.

• An action structure is to ‘indicate that speech acts are situated – not only in terms of speaker’s identities and social setting, but in terms of what action precedes, what action is intended, what action is intended to follow and what action actually does follow’.

• An ideational structure is where ‘the units within this structure are semantic: they are propositions, or what I’ll just call ideas. Three different relations between ideas contribute to the overall configuration of idea structures: cohesive relations, topic relations, and functional relations.’

• The participation framework is ‘the different ways in which speaker and hearer can relate to one another . . . because of their mutual presence and shared respon- sibility for talk, they are also related to talk – to what they are producing’.

• The information state is where ‘we also find speaker and hearer playing a central part, but unlike the participation framework, they do so not in their social interac- tional capacities, but in their cognitive capacities’.

Her study on discourse markers (1987: 102) cited Schegloff and Sacks’s (1973) inter- pretation of okay as similar to well and so, denoting a pre-closing device that ‘offers its recipient a chance to reinstate an earlier topic or to open another round of talk prior to conversational closure’. This, according to Schiffrin, applies to a more global level of conversational organization.

Fuller (2003b: 190) remarks that such discourse markers ‘suggest a distinction between reception markers, which indicates the speaker’s reaction to information con- tributed by another speaker (e.g. yeah, oh and okay) and presentation markers, which

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modify the speaker’s own contribution (e.g. like, you know and I mean)’. Schleef (2005) believes that these particles such as okay and right are hearer-guiding structures which are extremely important in making the understanding of a discourse more transparent. Jucker and Ziv’s (1998) interpretation, on the other hand, suggests a context that demands two participants at least interpret the meanings of okay/right as reception markers. This seems applicable with the uses of okay/right in a lecture context, though it is a monologic type of discourse as the context could still rely on there being two participants, the lec- turer and the students.

Schleef (2005) lists four main uses of okay/right in lectures based on Holmes’s (1984) study of okay and right. The following are Schleef’s categories that form the basis of my analysis:

• Transition markers: marking information state transitions to express discourse structure.

• Modal question tag: asking for confirmation or information. • Progression check question tag: checks whether the audience is following without

necessarily expecting a verbal response. • Backchannel signal.

Method The study adopted a discourse analytical approach that encompasses primarily a textual analysis of the lecture transcriptions. The discourse markers were analysed based on their location of occurrences in the transcribed text and their meanings were then inter- preted based on Schiffrin’s framework of analysis on uses of discourse markers. These findings were later cross-referenced with interview responses from the lecturers them- selves. As Jorgensen and Philips (2002) explain, text analysis ‘concentrates on the for- mal features (such as vocabulary, grammar, syntax and sentence coherence) from which discourses and genres are realised linguistically’ (2002: 69).

The corpus studied The data comprise a small-sized corpus of a total of 12 lectures, each lasting one hour, by three lecturers, and one hour and a half by one lecturer as its primary data. The sec- ondary data were compiled from the responses elicited from two interview sessions with the respective lecturers. The lecturers were first interviewed to elicit general information on delivering lectures and use of language in lectures. The second phase was to obtain their feedback on their uses of these markers as well as to access lecturers’ interpretations of their use of these markers.

The lecturers The lecturers involved in this research were four male lecturers at Lancaster University from various subject disciplines. They were lecturers of Macro-Economics, Physical Geography, Environmental Science and Advanced Corporate Finance, and I refer to the

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lecturers as Lecturers A, B, C and D in my discussions. I use the acronyms LA, LB, LC and LD to mark individual lecturers’ sampled extracts, especially in the analysis section. A brief profile of each of the lecturers is presented in Table 1.

The lectures The lecture corpus includes four different subject areas of the two main disciplines of the Management School and the Faculty of Science and Technology. Below are brief descrip- tions of the course and discipline, student composition and the length of individual lec- tures. I recorded three hours of lectures from each lecturer. Though this may seem limited, it gives ample length of lecture transcriptions, with an average of 32,498 words per hour lecture.

An overview of the different lecturers, their areas, length of their lectures, the aca- demic level and the student population attending the lectures is presented in Table 2.

Data collection

Audio-video recordings

My first procedure was to video-record all the lectures of the respective lecturers after agreeing with them the sessions which I would attend and record. I recorded most of the sessions myself. I used a video camcorder which had a microphone attached to it and a tripod. I also set up an audio recorder with stereo microphones simultaneously as a pre- cautionary measure to preserve back-up recordings of the events.

Interview sessions I conducted a face-to-face interview with the lecturers. The interview focused on the lecturers’ perceptions of their use of discourse markers to be triangulated further with the researcher’s interpretations of what had been said.

Table 1. Lecturers’ profile

Lecturer A Lecturer B Lecturer C Lecturer D

Age 45–50 40–5 40–5 40–5 British English native speaker Yes Yes Yes Yes Hometown/regional background Cardiff Nottingham Suffolk Southeast Brought up in a bilingual context Yes

Native Welsh-speaker

No No No

Educational background: British educational institution

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Been teaching exclusively in Britain

No USA, Australia and Beijing

No USA Scotland

Yes No France, Portugal

Years of teaching experience 25 12 13 12

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a) I prepared task sheets with a selection of several short excerpts from lecture tran- scriptions that displayed frequent use of markers. Two task sheets were prepared. Task sheet 1 had blank spaces at the locations of occurrence of the discourse markers, whereas task sheet 2 was a copy of task sheet 1 except that the blank spaces contained the actual discourse markers used. Lecturers were first asked to read the excerpts and to fill in the blank spaces with markers that they believed should be in place of the blanks.

Example 1 Lecturer B:

Table 2. Overview of the different lectures

Lecturers Subject discipline Length of lecture Academic level Number of student population

Lecturer A Macro-Economics 1 hour @ 3 Undergraduate 200–220 Lecturer B Physical Geography 1 hour @ 3 Undergraduate <100> Lecturer C Environmental

Science 1 hour @ 3 Undergraduate &

postgraduate 60–70

Lecturer D Advanced Corporate Finance

1½ hours @ 2 MSc postgraduate 70–80

Actual excerpt Task sheet response

Uhm ...and (a) that was from a general scientific point of view.

Uhm...but that was from a general scientific point of view.

Actual excerpt Task sheet response

And (b) it’s very mathematical rather than verbal

And so (b) it’s very mathematical rather than verbal

And (d) a lot of the philosophy of science has been done has been dealing with more specific end of physics than any other branches of sciences

So (d) a lot of the philosophy of science has been done has been dealing with more specific end of physics than any other branches of sciences

b) This was then followed with a playback of the excerpts to check the markers that the lecturers had actually used. This was to check the actual markers that had been used during the lectures.

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c) I then observed the differences between the actual words used in the original transcript and those that the lecturers had filled in. This was to enable me to analyse what the lecturers thought they had said versus what they had actually said.

In the following stage, an informal discussion was conducted with semi-structured questions on what they perceived the functions of the discourse markers to be, and their reasons why the particular markers were used at certain points of occurrence.

Analytical procedures

Lecture transcriptions

A verbatim transcribing of the audio-video recordings were done to produce transcripts of the lectures. To ensure the reliability of the data, I enlisted a native speaker to check all my transcriptions. Details of the non-verbal features were included as they play a significant role in assisting the interpretations. Birdwhistell (1970) observes the possible roles of kinesics communication where he observes the scale eye and facial movements of lecturers. Crawford Camiciottoli (2004) similarly observes the non-verbal behaviours of speakers where the behaviours may co-occur with verbal interaction, such as one which she identifies as the gaze directed towards the audience.

Interview responses The responses from the first phase interview were coded based on the structure of the semi-structured questions posed during the interview. It was a face-to-face interview that lasted for an average of one hour with each lecturer. Appointments were made long before the interview to schedule an interview date. As lecturers are busy, it was crucial that my interview appointments were according to their available times. Questions were asked in a semi-structured pattern as given in the Appendix. A table was devised to indicate indi- vidual lecturers’ responses to gather the general responses elicited as shown in Table 3.

Field notes of observations The descriptive and demographic notes were recorded mainly to add details to my lecture transcripts such as the physical set up and ambience of the lecture room, while the reflec- tive ones were intended as supporting details to support my interpretations.

Wordsmith list of keyword frequency and concordance The Wordsmith tool was run on the completed transcripts to obtain the list of frequencies and concordances of discourse markers. The list enabled me first to investigate the posi- tion of discourse markers as most frequent words, and second to observe their frequency of occurrence. The results displayed the frequency-count of all word items regardless of their functions in context. This meant that these word forms may have several meanings, as they are not always used as discourse markers. In order to determine these differences, one has to then observe the surrounding context in which the word occurs.

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Analysis

The meanings and uses of okay?, right? and yeah? (with a rising tone)

I will first present the detail breakdown of the two distinctive uses of okay. The detail breakdown of the two distinctive uses of okay shows that the mean frequency of occur- rence for okay?, with a rising questioning intonation, is 3.4 per 1000 words and is higher than okay with falling intonation (3.0 times). The use of okay? in tag question forms has a higher frequency count than those of non-tag question forms. The significance of these differences indicates a pattern that okay? in tag questions is a more popular use in this type of discourse and justifies the reason why it is one of the selected discourse markers to be analysed.

Okay? marks a progression or confirmation check, as Schleef similarly observes. Although I have identified similar functions to those identified by Schleef, I have how- ever observed further sub-uses of this category of use through my analysis of their poten- tial meanings based on its location of occurrences in the texts. I find that it marks:

• a response elicitor; • a seek of assurance; • partitions of different points of information.

Table 3. Coded response from Interview 1

Perceptions on lectures in general

Style of lecturing Use of language

Use of discourse markers

Lecturer A A performance to get message across

A style that tries to bring the students in

Language that explains; eye contact plays a part

Not really conscious about them when using

Lecturer B The lecture is the place where students acquire information

A theatrical presentation; students treat his lecture like a TV programme

Simple language

Not really conscious about them when using but conscious of the paragraphs

Lecturer C Should allow question and answer through elicitations of information from students

A lecture that incorporates task-based activities to sustain their attention span

Simple language

Not really conscious about them when using

Lecturer D A lecture where students acquire information and able to gener- ate students to think about topics discussed

A style which is informal: talking to the students

Language that students can easily understand

Not really conscious about them when using but is often aware of what is going to be said

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I include here the discussion on right? and how it differs from okay?. While okay? marks a progression or confirmation check, right? functions on the information state structure where its use marks a sense of shared knowledge between the lecturer and the students. This shared knowledge may concern a general knowledge, knowledge of the outside world or knowledge that relates to subject content that students are already familiar with.

Okay? is usually known as a response elicitor from the speaker to the hearer in con- versations. This is also the case with its use in lectures except that lecturers may not necessarily expect a verbal response from the students with their use of okay?. In Excerpt 1, I noted the lecturer’s use of okay? along with his eye gaze towards the audience.

Excerpt 1

[LD] So you’ve done it, now, then I’ll take it in the end. (b) Just one per company, I don’t need two per company, okay? < L1 looks at students

Lecturer D’s use of okay? marks his progress check on the students, and his non-verbal gesture of looking at the students as he uses okay? adds weight to the meaning of a prog- ress check and is therefore crucial in the interpretation of what okay may mean in this context. By looking at the student audience, he is perhaps waiting for any possible response or questions from the students, and is also checking that they have understood him. Okay? has the sense of a pre-closure and signals the lecturer’s readiness to move on to the next point. This interpretation is supported with Lecturer D’s perception that he uses okay? as a signal to indicate ‘can we move on or not?’.

The analysis also suggests that as a check of progression, okay? partitions different points of information as illustrated in the excerpt below. Excerpt 2 illustrates Lecturer B’s and D’s use of okay? as progression check markers where they also act like a break to give a clear indication of the lecturer’s intentions to confirm that he has given clear explanations of each point.

Excerpt 2

(A) [LB] (a) And the difference is just like the difference between an analogue camera, an old fashioned camera and a digital camera. Okay? (b) Most air borne data and all satellite data is digital. (c) You can’t actually take pictures on a satellite and then send them physically down to the ground ’cause you’ll never know where to go to catch them, okay?

(A) [LD] (a) If there is such thing as the right thing you’ve done the right thing, then your report is going to be pretty boring but if you’re uh, I don’t know sort of go off it now, if you’ve done something that you later regret you have more to explain in your report, I’m sure of that, okay? (b) So you’ve done it, now, then I’ll take it in the end.

While Lecturer B ensures that the students note the two points he is making on the ‘dif- ference’ in (a) and the ‘digital data’ in (b), Lecturer D asserts the possible outcome of

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their report in (a). Okay? not only signals whether the lecturer can move on but it simultaneously checks whether what the speaker has explained is understood by the listeners.

Lecturer D’s use of right? in excerpt 3 marks a sense of shared general knowledge about ‘life’ in (A) and ‘Bill Gates’ in (B). We can also see the switch – using right? in place of okay? – when he proceeds with a general knowledge point, ‘Life’s not like that, right?’. The functions of both markers seem to vary. We could test this by substituting them and it indicates a subtle difference in use. Right? marks the lecturer’s assumption that the stu- dents are familiar with what he says. His use of okay? in (A) indicates his readiness to move to the next point as well as checking that students are certain of the classroom task.

Excerpt 3

(A) [ LD] (a) So I just want what I really wanna do is make sure the first negotiations are complete before you move on to the second negotiation, okay? (b) Because uh, I don’t want you to sort of renegotiate A once you’ve got the information from B. (c) Life’s not like that, right?

(B) [LD] But you know suppose you’re Bill Gates right? (b) And there’s a market for Microsoft shares, then what’s the value of this shareholder. He’s got some cash he’s got a lot of cash, he’s got some units in Microsoft, he’s actually got quite a lot of units in Microsoft, right? (c) So what evaluation should he use?

.

There are occurrences of Alright? instead of right? with some of the lecturers. Lecturer A uses this form most frequently. I find that right? and alright? do not work in the same way. Alright? marks the completion of the lecturer’s attempt to set the intended scenario before continuing with his lectures.

Excerpt 4 (A) shows Lecturer A’s use of alright? to mark the end of his point. This is because so that prefaces the sentence (b) preceding alright? marks a sense of a conclud- ing remark to end his point following his explanation of the visual in (a). The occurrence of right? in (B) exemplifies my argument concerning its contrast with alright? in (A). The following sentence in (a) shows the lecturer’s progression to a new point whereas in (b) the following sentence is still a related point to the point that precedes right?

Excerpt 4

(A) [LA] <refer visual>To the right of the IS curve national income will tend to fall. (b) So that you’ve got market forces bringing you in towards the IS curve alright? National income will correct any excess demand or multi forces will correct any access demand or excess supply in the product market

(B) [LA] So, if you think to keep things simple, if you think that the only things that we produce in this economy is cans of baked beans, right? And we produce five

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hundred million cans of baked beans every year and they’re the only things that are produced the only things anybody buys is cans of baked beans.

Since yeah belongs to this category of discourse marker, I briefly include a discussion of it. Fuller (2003: 29) states in her analysis that ‘yeah is an affirmative response to a ques- tion was not counted’ and instead only those that are used as ‘a minimal response and a coherence marker within a turn’ were counted. I adopt a similar approach in this study in the selection of yeah? as a discourse marker where I eliminate those instances of yeah that could mean a ‘yes’ as in the following examples.

Example 1 L1: <LAUGHS> Oh dear I think you’re gonna get beaten up on the way out. I’m not going to ask anybody else. Anybody go away over the weekend? Yeah, where did you go? [LA2]

Excerpt 5 demonstrates the use of yeah? as a discourse marker that marks a progression check. Yeah? in Excerpt 5 (A) marks the lecturer’s intention to seek confirmation or mutual agreement that he had started looking at the money market last week. The use of yeah? in (B) differs slightly. Other than the use of yeah? to seek confirmation, it could also mean that the lecturer is confirming the shared knowledge with the students of what one would say if he had a billion dollars – which is ‘oooooh’. The use of yeah? seems to relate to only the preceding sentence rather than being the possible link to several sen- tences in the prior discourse – such was the case with okay? This suggests that yeah? operates more on the local level of idea structure whereas okay? could operate at a more global level of the ideational relations.

Excerpt 5

(B) [LA] (a) And the demand for money is a bit of a difficult thing to get a hand along when you think about it. (b) You know, if...if I ask you how much money do you demand? You’d say ooooh billions of dollars, yeah? (c) Loads of money. (d) So, what do we mean when we talk about the demand for money?

The next section discusses okay with a falling intonation, often located in initial sen- tence positions. Based on the analysis of this section, the general overview indicates that okay?, right? and yeah? share similar features of use in terms of their function as a ‘partition’ of thoughts in speech. However, they vary in the purposes of why they are being used. For instance, a substitution of these words in the respective locations of occurrences seems to display a different meaning to the reason for which it is being used.

The meanings and uses of okay, right (with a falling tone) Okay with a falling tone in lectures is observed to function as an attention-getter, espe- cially when there are transitions between activities within the lecturers’ talk. It ‘opens to a new round of talk’ as illustrated in Excerpt 6.

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Excerpt 6

[LD] (a)Is there anybody who needs another copy of A <SHOW COPIES>, I’ve got some spares here, I’ll leave it these in the front if you need, okay <slight pause> (b) Okay, any questions about it so far? I’ll go over the second negotiation in the second session. < L1 clicks on computer to change slide> (c) Right, Let’s go on to the penny market.

The excerpt shows the start of a lecture, where the lecturer first discusses the group’s assignment to get it sorted out before he proceeds to begin his talk with Right, Let’s go on to the penny market. Okay in (b) functions in a similar way to right in (c) where it prefaces closure to what has been said. As it prefaces a question addressed to the students its function tends to be similar to that of okay? as a tag form. It is used as a progress check but due to its falling intonation, it maintains its status as a non- progress check.

His use of right in (c) serves a similar function as a marker to move on to a ‘new’ topic which is simultaneously marked with his action to click on the computer to change the slide. The change from okay in (b) as a sentence opener to right in (c) indi- cates a different use of okay and right. Okay seems to relate to what has been said previously whereas right indicates a sense of forward reference that marks the lectur- er’s readiness to move on without seeking any permission from the students if he could move on. It suggests the use of right to signal an assumed mutual agreement that the lecturer could move on.

Right may also act as an attention-getter to gain control over the noise students make when the class engages in certain activities such as the passing of handouts as in Excerpt 7.

Excerpt 7

[LC] < students busy passing handouts> (a) Okay, Have we got any more of the regulations handouts on this side? <Classroom noise>. (b) Right. <high pitch> Can I just get your attention?

While okay in (a) serves a similar function as in Excerpt 7, Lecturer C’s use of right in a loud voice marks right as a sentence initiator where the lecturer clearly indicates his intention by literally requesting for the students’ attention in (b). This has a positive effect as the classroom noise then subsides, indicating that the students responded to the signal.

The lecturers’ perceptions Table 4 shows an overview of the actual functions of this category of markers as inter- preted in the various occurrences of these markers throughout the speech texts.

These findings are based on the analysis of the speech itself; that is, what was actually said. They show the differences in meanings and uses of okay and right. In this section, I present the lecturers’ perceptions on the reasons for their use of the specific markers. This information was gathered from their second phase interview session. Their perceptions

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reveal what they thought of the meanings and uses of the markers when they were used. I will present their responses in sequence beginning with Lecturer A.

Lecturer A Lecturer A perceives the use of okay and right as a device to check on students’ under- standing. He says that he usually looks at the audience often when he uses these markers: ‘I make a point to look at them in the eye.’ If he gets no response from the audience, he tends to go over it again and this he believes is ‘real interactivity’. This interaction is consistent with his statement that ‘I don’t believe in teaching at people, I believe in com- municating with people.’

Lecturer B Lecturer B perceives the use of okay and right as similar to so. As he comments on his use of so, a means of ‘clearing his throat’, he also states that ‘I would also be inclined to use right or okay for this purpose.’ This is an interesting point since Lecturer C has written okay in his task sheet where in the actual excerpt he had used so. He believes that both words can be used and he further comments that the reason is because there is no logical sequence between the sentences or to what has been uttered previously. He claims that he was using it like a ‘break word’ and also as a ‘starter’. This suggests he perceives both so and okay perform similar functions, which as such, is similar to the perceptions of Lecturer B.

Lecturer C Another interesting perception gathered from Lecturer C is his perception that his use of okay? is a kind of an interactive feature, used to indicate his intention to challenge the students in some way, as in the following example:

Uhm somebody mentioned uh structure plans or local plans, think you’ll be able to read that. < L1 moves to another position> < writes on whiteboard>. Local plans, okay? Local plans have loads of good information in. [LC]

Table 4. An overview of the meanings and uses of okay/right

DM Uses Ideational relations Structural relations

Okay? A progress check a. Partitions different point of information

a. Response elicitor b. Seek assurance

Right? Confirmation of shared knowledge

a. Knowledge to subject content b. Knowledge of outside world

a. Response elicitor b. Seek assurance

Okay Attention-getter a. Sentence initiator b. Shifts lecture mode

Right Attention-getter a. Sentence initiator b. Shifts lecture mode

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Lecturer D

Lecturer D affirms that his use of okay? suggests that he is signalling to the students for assurance that it is okay to proceed. He adds that in contrast, okay with a falling tone is ‘definitely a closure’. Although the perceptions gathered from the lecturers are not as extensive as the perceptions gathered on the connective markers, their responses are in general parallel to my interpretations of these markers. Most rele- vant is Lecturer A’s response, whose lectures record a high frequency use of okay? in particular. His perception of the use of okay? along with his eye gaze in making his lecture interactive is highly relevant to the meaning of okay? as a progression check marker. Also, Lecturer C’s comment on okay being an interactive feature adds to further reinforce my argument that okay is an interactive conversational marker. Table 5 summarizes the lecturers’ perceptions of what they thought of the meanings of their use in their lectures.

The lecturers’ perceptions seem to indicate that the uses of okay? and okay to specifi- cally relate to structural relations. This differs slightly from my interpretations of the uses of these markers which are based also on ideational relations rather than just the struc- tural ones.

Conclusion The uses of okay, right and yeah in conversations mark them as conversational features where much focus would be on their effects in turn-takings. The findings show that such markers display important signalling features in non-turn-taking events such as lectures. They have functions that generally relate to the idea and structural organization of a lec- ture discourse in signalling intended information and intended actions of the speakers, the lecturers.

The cross-reference of the researcher’s interpretations and the lecturers’ percep- tions reveals a substantial gap in the ways these markers are used. Their explanations of the certain uses of individual discourse markers provided meaningful insights to the ways they perceive the uses of such discourse markers or the ‘anticipated’ meanings they have when giving lectures. In reality, based on what was actually said, it was shown that there was a wider range of uses that the lecturers themselves were not conscious of.

Table 5. Summary of the lecturers’ perceptions of the meanings and uses of okay/right

Functions Lecturers’ perceptions

Textual • To check students’ understanding • To seek allowance to proceed • Throat-clearing • A break or a starter • As an interactive feature

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Appendix: Phase 1 interview questions to lecturers

Part one

Lecture preparations:

1. How much time is spent in preparing your lecture notes? • Handouts • Visual aids – transparency/PowerPoint • Topic division – structure • Points of emphasis • Time allocation

2. What do students usually bring to the lecture and notes to take away? • course handouts • transparency notes • PowerPoint slides

Lecturer’s perceptions on lecture:

3. In (subject) what do you think are students’ expectations of the kinds of informa- tion they should get from your lecture?

• provide important information • explanation • clarification, e.g. understand graphs and diagrams/cause and effects

4. How would you describe your style of lecturing? • purpose for adopting such style • effects on students • different style for different kinds of student audience

Use of language:

5. How would you describe your use of language? • simplicity • lexical choice • formal/informal

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6. What are the techniques used to signal or give cues of important information that you’d like students to pay attention to?

• use of markers • questioning technique • repetitions

7. What are your measures of checking students’ understanding during lectures? • Using examples • Giving problem solutions

8. Do you think that there are students who may have difficulties in understanding your lectures? And how do you tackle this problem?

Zarina Othman is a senior lecturer and currently the Deputy Director for Language Proficiency at the Centre for General Studies in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia. She holds a B.Ed. (Hons) TESL (University of Kent, UK), Masters in ESL (University Malaya) and a PhD in Linguistics (Lancaster University, UK). Her current research includes areas on discourse analysis and language teaching, global English and employability skills in tertiary education as well as gender research.