‘Yeah’: The speech act of agreement in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE)

Abstract

The selection of authentic linguistic realisations in language teaching is important for learners to acquire how the target language is used in real-life communication. With the availability of corpus data collected in natural contexts, the authenticity of EFL materials could be improved. In this paper, the speech act of agreement in workplace communication in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English is examined in terms of its frequency and its linguistic realisations in different contexts. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted, including manual annotation of the spoken data, frequency generation using SpeechActConc, and analysis of the features of expressing agreement in authentic communicative situations. The findings show that the forms of expressing agreement, such as ‘yeah’ or ‘that’s right’, are very different from common formulaic expressions, including ‘I agree’ or ‘I agree with you’. Instances of agreement are observed across six spoken business genres: informal office talk, interview (job and placement), meeting, Q&A session, service encounter (airport and hotel), and telephone and conference call, with the highest frequency in informal office talk. It is concluded that corpus data serves as a valuable resource for exposing EFL learners to naturally occurring expressions of agreement, thereby facilitating the acquisition of authentic English usage.