As an aspiring sidewalk linguistic I am very stimulating by this post and its comments. For a brief but significant period of my youth I was taught that the “mm

As an aspiring sidewalk linguistic I am very stimulating by this post and its comments. For a brief but significant period of my youth I was taught that the “mm-hmms” and “uhh-huh” that characterize the English version of “aizuchi” (a commenter has said that this is called backchanneling in English) was uncouth. That’s stuck with me. What’s striking me the most as I age is that “uhh-huh” and “mm-hmm” often serve as indicators to the speaker to continue with what they’re saying. This is important to me because what I’ve found is that, American English speakers have a habit of putting a tone on many of their speech patterns that could easily be taken in the form of a question (where the last word of the sentence has a slight pitch increase) or is a rhetorical question in and of itself (“Y’know?”). I understand how alternative interjections can communicate engagement with the speaker (“Wow”, “Really?”, etc) but have also observed instances where these interjections in general can suggest a sort of condescension against the speaker from the listener. Language is bonkers. I have a hunch that we are in a very chaotic age of communication dynamics.