Chapter 9 - Applying the Technology of Conversation to the Technology for Conversation

Abstract

This chapter focuses on insights of conversation analysis (CA) that have been useful to designers of interactive technology. Insights into the organization and control of dialogue are provided by at least eight different disciplines. Complex interactions exist between the insights offered by each discipline, such that any individual piece of work is likely to combine insights from several sources. The function of repair in conversation appears to facilitate mutual understanding between participants. The turn-by-turn organization of conversation is such that participants must repeatedly exhibit their own understanding of prior utterances, especially when those utterances expect some direct response, as with adjacency pairs. The fact that repair itself is subject to the same kind of monitoring means that mutual misunderstanding can almost always be resolved to allow the conversation to proceed. Thus, dialogue between users and the advice system is characterized by alternating turns at talk which vary in size, content, and distribution over time. Turn constructional units (TCUs) are employed to segment what each party says, and turn allocation techniques are used to control turn transitions between segments. Continuous or discontinuous talk can result from this, depending on whether or not the pauses between TCUs are filled with talk by the other party. The overall length of the conversation is not specified in advance and repair mechanisms exist for dealing with various kinds of error.