Abstract
Two picture-matching-game experiments investigated if lexical-referential alignment to non-native speakers is enhanced by a desire to aid communicative success (by saying something the conversation partner can certainly understand), a form of audience design. In Experiment 1, a group of native speakers of British English that was not given evidence of their conversation partners’ picture-matching performance showed more alignment to non-native than to native speakers, while another group that was given such evidence aligned equivalently to the two types of speaker. Experiment 2, conducted with speakers of Castilian Spanish, replicated the greater alignment to non-native than native speakers without feedback. However, Experiment 2 also showed that production of grammatical errors by the confederate produced no additional increase of alignment even though making errors suggests lower communicative competence. We suggest that this pattern is consistent with another collaborative strategy, the desire to model correct usage. Together, these results support a role for audience design in alignment to non-native speakers in structured task-based dialogue, but one that is strategically deployed only when deemed necessary.
Highlights
How we talk may feel unique but is not always original
Feedbackgroup participants who interacted with the native confederate first showed similar overall alignment to Feedback-group participants who interacted with the non-native confederate first, while No-feedback-group participants who interacted with the native confederate first showed 25% more alignment than No-feedback-group participants who interacted with the nonnative confederate first
The main analysis revealed that participants produced more dispreferred responses overall when they interacted with the non-native confederate (40%) than when they interacted with the native confederate (31.1%) – that is, there was more alignment with the non-native than with the native confederate
Summary
How we talk may feel unique but is not always original. We sometimes mimic aspects of the utterances of our conversation partners, a phenomenon known as alignment If lexical-referential alignment is used as a tool to ensure successful comprehension, of which feedback of listener understanding, when it occurs, provides direct evidence, alignment may be used as an audience design strategy to a greater extent (or only) when the possibility for feedback is reduced or absent. These results are consistent with alignment driven by an intention to aid communication because speakers adapted their lexical choice to a greater extent to a partner they judged as less communicativelycapable (such as a virtual agent as opposed to a human) They imply that visual feedback of the conversation partner’s behavior can eliminate this difference, presumably because being able to see one’s conversation partner gives greater certainty of comprehension success (reducing the need for lexical alignment to ensure this success). Alignment to non-native speakers in Bortfeld and Brennan’s study could have been greater (possibly greater than that to native speakers) had the non-native speakers produced more nativelike expressions
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