Speech and face-to-face communication – An introduction

Abstract

This issue focuses on face-to-face speech communication. Research works have demonstrated that this communicative situation is essential to language acquisition and development (e.g. naming). Face-to-face communication is in fact much more than speaking and speech is greatly influenced both in substance and content by this essential form of communication. Face-to-face communication is multimodal: interacting involves multimodality and nonverbal communication to a large extent. Speakers not only hear but also see each other producing sounds as well as facial and more generally body gestures. Gaze together with speech contribute to maintain mutual attention and to regulate turn-taking for example. Moreover, speech communication involves not only linguistic but also psychological, affective and social aspects of interaction. Face-to-face communication is situated: the true challenge of spoken communication is to take into account and integrate information not only from the speakers but also from the entire physical environment in which the interaction takes place. The communicative setting, the “task” in which the interlocutors are involved, their respective roles and the environmental conditions of the conversation indeed greatly influence how the spoken interaction unfolds. The present issue aims at synthesizing the most recent developments in this topic considering its various aspects from complementary perspectives: cognitive and neurocognitive (multisensory and perceptuo-motor interactions), linguistic (dialogic face to face interactions), paralinguistic (emotions and affects, turn-taking, mutual attention), computational (animated conversational agents, multimodal interacting communication systems).