Rezeptionssignale beim Prüfungsgespräch aus sprechwissenschaftlicher Sicht

Abstrakt

The article aims to describe the reception signals present in the German exam interview from the spoken communication point of view. Short (one- and two-syllable) feedback signals will be analysed, which represent the examiner’s attitude towards the statement heard. More specifically, the forms are “ja”, “hm_hm” and “hm”, which, depending on the prosodic implementation, may have different interactive functions. The analysis will take into account acoustic-auditive parameters: fundamental frequency/pitch, intensity/volume and duration/length. On this basis, four types of reception signals have been identified: confirmatory signals, signals of interest, signals encouraging to continue speaking, and perceptual signals. It has been shown that, depending on their phonetic realisation, the same signal can perform several different communication functions, and that individual signals have a similar phonetic form depending on their function during the exam interview.