2026-06-112026-06-112024Knight, D. et al. (2024) 'Indicating engagement in online workplace meetings: the role of backchannelling head nods', International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 29(3), 389-416.1569-9811https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.24060.knihttps://hdl.handle.net/10395/3607Amid COVID-19 and the so-called ‘digital pivot’, online virtual communication has been placed at the heart of our daily lives, both professionally and privately. As we move into a post-COVID context, the affordances of the digital turn have shown that we can operate professionally online but there is a need for a better understanding of communication in the online workplace. This paper first contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of indicators of engagement in multi-party communication online, as evidenced by a small-scale but in-depth corpus-based multi-modal study. Second, it showcases the importance of building naturally-occurring spoken corpora that go beyond written transcription of the spoken word and include annotation of non-verbal behaviour. The work pays particular attention to the incidence, frequency, position and function of spoken and head nod backchannels, exploring the coordination/co-occurrence of these features in online talk. Findings point to a changing profile of how engagement is displayed in online workplace meetings and this appears to be linked to the functionality of the platforms.enSubmitted version of work approved by John Benjamin Publishinghttps://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.24060.kniBackchannelsResponse tokensVirtual communicationOnline workplace meetingsMulti-modal corpus linguisticsArticle