Running Repairs: Coordinating Meaning in Dialogue.

Gregory J Mills,Arash Eshghi,Christine Howes,Patrick G T Healey

doi:10.1111/tops.12336

Abstract

People give feedback in conversation: both positive signals of understanding, such as nods, and negative signals of misunderstanding, such as frowns. How do signals of understanding and misunderstanding affect the coordination of language use in conversation? Using a chat tool and a maze-based reference task, we test two experimental manipulations that selectively interfere with feedback in live conversation: (a) "Attenuation" that replaces positive signals of understanding such as "right" or "okay" with weaker, more provisional signals such as "errr" or "umm" and (2) "Amplification" that replaces relatively specific signals of misunderstanding from clarification requests such as "on the left?" with generic signals of trouble such as "huh?" or "eh?". The results show that Amplification promotes rapid convergence on more systematic, abstract ways of describing maze locations while Attenuation has no significant effect. We interpret this as evidence that "running repairs"-the processes of dealing with misunderstandings on the fly-are key drivers of semantic coordination in dialogue. This suggests a new direction for experimental work on conversation and a productive way to connect the empirical accounts of Conversation Analysis with the representational and processing concerns of Formal Semantics and Psycholinguistics.

Highlights

People do not use the same words in the same way
A full answer to this question requires comparison of specific interactional phenomena in each case, but the initial plausibility of this approach derives from the observation that many basic conversational mechanisms, such as clarification questions and self-repairs, do naturally occur in text-based interactions
The results suggest the potential for a productive new interface between Conversation Analysis, Formal Semantics, and Psycholinguistics

Summary

Introduction

Differences in life history, cultural background, individual physiology, and social communities can all contribute to differences in people’s language use (Clark, 1998). This apparently simple observation has significant consequences. It raises foundational questions about what it means to say that two people speak the same language or mean the same thing. How can people communicate if there really are widespread individual differences in language use? This paper engages with these issues through an experimental investigation of how different kinds of feedback contribute to the coordination of language use in conversation. We investigate what signals of understanding and misunderstanding contribute to people’s ability to coordinate their descriptions of locations in a simple schematic maze (Anderson & Garrod, 1987)

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Discussion

Conclusion