Loulou Kosmala, Ludivine Crible
The present paper deals with the study of alignment and affiliation in spontaneous face-to-face interactions within the context of feedback responses. While these concepts are not systematically distinguished in the literature, alignment is more often concerned with structural understanding, while affiliation is more associated with affective appreciation. Using a videotaped corpus of semi-spontaneous interactions between French university students, this paper explores how alignment and affiliation may structurally and formally differ, combining robust quantitative annotations with detailed qualitative analyses. Our annotation scheme comprises several categories, ranging from modality, type, and value, following previous corpus-based models. Our findings show that alignment tends to be more frequent than affiliation, where listeners seem to prioritize comprehension signals over agreement or emotional responses. The visual-gestural modality also plays an essential role, especially in disaffiliative feedback, which tends to include solely visible elements, while misalignment remains mainly verbal. Recurrent forms, such as nodding or the French interjection “ah” point to the multifunctionality of feedback markers whose meaning and function are largely based on contextual features. Overall, while alignment and affiliation often overlap, systematic annotations as well as micro-analyses of the data can highlight subtle distinctions. This study bridges conversation-analytic and cognitive perspectives on multimodal feedback, offering insights into how listeners’ feedback is essential to shape ongoing interaction.