Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of reaction signals by Japanese and English speakers. After collecting data from Japanese and English speakers, American and British, I checked them and decided to be concerned with five of them: ah, eh, oh, m, and ${\partial}:m$. At first I thought that the first three of them resembled in form and in their tones and meanings, while the others occur frequently only in English. But as I was reading the data more in detail I found the reason for too frequent use of the signal eh by Japanese. It is also found that the signal eh is a kind of substitute for a real word, the similar linguistic phenomenon is seen in the use of m, and m seems to be different from ${\partial}:m$ in its function, according to whether the speaker is talkative or not. And American students learning Japanese started their Japanese with an English reaction signal and the reverse phenomenon was found with Japanese students speaking in English, so much so that reaction signals are used spontaneously, though they have various tones and meanings.