Captioning the backchannel: How captions clarify and equalize sounds

When sounds in the background are captioned, they come forward. All sounds become equally “loud” on the caption track.
Source: Source: The Happening, 2008. DVD. The featured caption is an example of backchannel speech sounds that come forward when captioned: “[Man] I just walked down a quarter mile. It was clean.”
Source: Source: ource: The Happening, 2008. DVD. A compilation of backchannel sounds that come forward and compete with the foreground speech when captioned verbatim.
The only thing is, it doesn’t say who is chattering. Cultural notes: in my “hood” chattering usually refers to teeth, whereas a crowd would “murmur”.
Excellent point. Even as some sounds in the background are brought forward, other details about those sounds remain hidden.
Sean