Dialogue Structure Research Articles

Young Greeks’ Social Representation of Protest: Dialogical Structure and Ideological Function

Young Greeks’ Social Representation of Protest: Dialogical Structure and Ideological Function

A Multilingual Neural Coaching Model with Enhanced Long-term Dialogue Structure

In this work we develop a fully data driven conversational agent capable of carrying out motivational coaching sessions in Spanish, French, Norwegian, and English. Unlike the majority of coaching, and in general well-being related conversational agents that can be found in the literature, ours is not designed by hand-crafted rules. Instead, we directly model the coaching strategy of professionals with end users. To this end, we gather a set of virtual coaching sessions through a Wizard of Oz platform, and apply state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques. We employ a transfer learning approach, pretraining GPT2 neural language models and fine-tuning them on our corpus. However, since these only take as input a local dialogue history, a simple fine-tuning procedure is not capable of modeling the long-term dialogue strategies that appear in coaching sessions. To alleviate this issue, we first propose to learn dialogue phase and scenario embeddings in the fine-tuning stage. These indicate to the model at which part of the dialogue it is and which kind of coaching session it is carrying out. Second, we develop a global deep learning system which controls the long-term structure of the dialogue. We also show that this global module can be used to visualize and interpret the decisions taken by the the conversational agent, and that the learnt representations are comparable to dialogue acts. Automatic and human evaluation show that our proposals serve to improve the baseline models. Finally, interaction experiments with coaching experts indicate that the system is usable and gives rise to positive emotions in Spanish, French and English, while the results in Norwegian point out that there is still work to be done in fully data driven approaches with very low resource languages.

The ethics laboratory: an educational tool for moral learning

This article introduces the Ethics Laboratory as an inter-sectorial and cross-disciplinary dialogical forum which can be viewed as an educational tool for moral learning. The Ethics Laboratory represents a platform for the informal, collaborative investigation, in strict confidentiality, of ethical questions that have social consequences and/or legal concerns and bridges boundaries between research communities, institutions and patients. Its methodological structure proposes an experimental, open-ended way of unpacking implied assumptions, underlying values, comparable notions and observations from different professional fields. In connection with a large social science project on precision medicine, we conducted four Ethics Laboratories followed by eight interviews with a selected number of participants. Through these interviews we learnt how this exploratory dialogical forum heighten moral awareness on issues that are shared among stakeholders who work to implement precision medicine in Denmark. Though the framework was developed specifically to foster ethical reflection within precision medicine, its dialogical structure lends itself to other professional areas and can easily be adopted and carried out.

FAtiMA Toolkit: Toward an Accessible Tool for the Development of Socio-emotional Agents

More than a decade has passed since the development of FearNot!, an application designed to help children deal with bullying through role-playing with virtual characters. It was also the application that led to the creation of FAtiMA, an affective agent architecture for creating autonomous characters that can evoke empathic responses. In this article, we describe the FAtiMA Toolkit, a collection of open-source tools that is designed to help researchers, game developers, and roboticists incorporate a computational model of emotion and decision-making in their work. The toolkit was developed with the goal of making FAtiMA more accessible, easier to incorporate into different projects, and more flexible in its capabilities for human-agent interaction, based upon the experience gathered over the years across different virtual environments and human-robot interaction scenarios. As a result, this work makes several different contributions to the field of Agent-Based Architectures. More precisely, the FAtiMA Toolkit’s library-based design allows developers to easily integrate it with other frameworks, its meta-cognitive model affords different internal reasoners and affective components, and its explicit dialogue structure gives control to the author even within highly complex scenarios. To demonstrate the use of the FAtiMA Toolkit, several different use cases where the toolkit was successfully applied are described and discussed.

The dialogue structure in the poetry of Bushra Al-Bustani (Eve’s Correspondence Poem) as a model

The areas of critical study have become very many and separate from each other, such as intertextuality, narrative structure, vision, dialogue structure, poetic, aesthetic, etc. of modern critical terms that can be studied in several fields such as painting, poetry, theatre, novel, story, and music. Therefore, this research deals with the dialogical structure in Bushra Al-Bustani’s poetry since the dialogue is a well-known technique in modern Arabic poetry, and Bushra Al-Bustani’s poetry is not devoid of this technique as we note with other poets. In Bushra Al-Bustani’s poetry, several modern techniques were employed because of the poet’s culture and artistic depth that made her use symbol, legend, dialogue, intertextuality, displacement and other critical visions that made the poet’s poetic language with an internal rhythm that addresses the feelings of the reader. So, we had to stand at the dialogue as a narrative technique in poetry Bushra Al-Bustani, and the poem (Eve’s Dialogue) will be a model for this technique so that Eve is evoked to be a conversational voice through which the image of Eve becomes apparent in a coherent artistic structure. A new language characterized by the poetic poems of Bushra Al-Bustani to form a bouquet of poetry in an artistic language with poetic techniques with multiple visions.

The Structure of Emotion Dialogues: Maternal Reminiscing Factors Differentially Relate to Child Language and Socio-Emotional Outcomes

Mother-child reminiscing about past emotional experiences is one aspect of emotion socialization that facilitates child socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes. To advance understanding of the multidimensional nature of this clinically significant transdiagnostic process, the current investigation examined the structure of maternal reminiscing and how emergent factors related to child outcomes across two diverse samples (total N = 337). Sample one included 102 mothers and their preschool-aged children from community agencies, and sample two included 235 mothers and their preschool-aged children, the majority of whom had experienced substantiated maltreatment. Dyads completed a reminiscing task coded for multiple aspects of maternal reminiscing style (frequency and scale-based coding), assessments of child receptive language and internalizing and externalizing problems, and measures of parenting. Factor analyses confirmed that maternal reminiscing was best defined by three factors: (1) structural elaborations, (2) emotional attributions, and (3) sensitive guidance, and this three-factor structure was invariant across samples, maltreatment, maternal race, and child sex. When controlling for other dimensions of caregiver-reported parenting behavior, reminiscing sensitive guidance was significantly positively associated with child language and negatively with child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In contrast, emotional elaborations were associated with higher child internalizing concerns. When controlling for caregiver-reported parenting and observed maternal sensitivity, structural elaborations negatively and emotional attributions positively related to child internalizing symptoms, whereas reminiscing factors did not significantly predict child externalizing symptoms nor child language. Distinct aspects of maternal reminiscing behavior are differentially related to child outcomes. Limitations and implications for understanding and measuring emotion socialization interactions are discussed.

Inter-annotator Agreement Using the Conversation Analysis Modelling Schema, for Dialogue

ABSTRACT We present the Conversation Analysis Modeling Schema (CAMS), a novel dialogue labeling schema that combines the Conversation Analysis concept of Adjacency Pairs, with Dialogue Acts. The aim is to capture both the semantic and syntactic structure of dialogue, in a format that is independent of the domain or topic, and which facilitates the computational modeling of dialogue. A labeling task undertaken by novice annotators is used to evaluate its efficacy on a selection of task-oriented and non-task-oriented dialogs, and to measure inter-annotator agreement. To deepen the “human-factors” analysis we also record and examine users’ self-reported confidence scores and average utterance annotation times. Inter-annotator agreement is shown to be higher for task-oriented dialogs than non-task-oriented, though the structure of the dialogue itself has a more significant impact. We further examine the assumptions around expected agreement for two weighted agreement coefficients, Alpha and Beta, and show that annotators assign labels using similar probability distributions, small variations can result in large differences in agreement values between biased and unbiased measures.

Disability Daily Drawn: A Comics Collaboration

Disability Daily DrawnA Comics Collaboration Joann Purcell (bio) and Simone Purcell Randmaa (bio) My daughter Simone was the first person I met with Down syndrome. I was forty-two years old. This is an astonishing statement for many reasons, but primarily because I had worked as a nurse in downtown Toronto, Canada for fifteen years. When Simone was born, the delivery room went silent. The presumed tragedy of disability, medically avoidable, had permeated the room. Simone was not a child—she was a child with a disability. The chasm was wide. I remember being as devastated by her diagnosis as the rest of our family and friends, but we got on with our lives, largely because of our four-year-old twins. We loved Simone; we didn't love Down syndrome. She needed a lot of extra help to coordinate her muscles to crawl, walk, and eventually tie her shoelaces. She endured weekly visits from the physiotherapist, the early interventionist, and appointments with a myriad of specialists at the local children's hospital. It is undeniable that Simone is different, but I am also struck by how her way of being does not align with the stereotype I held previously. She is emotionally astute, a joyful child whose different way of knowing the world is creative, generative, and meaningful. There is a disconnect between our lived reality and the socially prevalent conceptions of Down syndrome. I began this comics project with the intention to amplify Simone's voice, to share her intellectual, affective, and communicative differences, and significantly, to share without speaking for her. Feminist scholar Linda Alcoff outlines the issues around speaking for others, in particular speaking for those who are or have been historically silent (6). The privilege of the speaking voice over another results in silences and erasure. Normative forms of communication dominate the sociocultural landscape, and thus the voice of a person with Down syndrome, who might be less vocally articulate, speak more slowly or with a focus that does not follow a logical conversation, may be dismissed. Artist, curator, and disability scholar Amanda Cachia writes, Developmentally disabled people are able to engage in modes of dialogical or socially engaged art practices in ways that express their way of knowing and understanding the world. These practices are particularly effective insofar as they emphasize the always-already inter-subjective and inter-corporeal nature of all embodiment. (122–23) [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 98] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 99] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 100] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 101] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 102] In choosing a platform, I landed on a comics practice for its dialogical structure and unique ability to showcase subjugated knowledge and to serve as visual witness to a life lived outside normative lines. I drew a four-panel comic every day beginning when Simone was ten years old, to the accumulation of 1095 pages. I distilled our exchanges and documented the mundanity of our life together. Over time, this daily practice became part of the fabric of our family's life. The element of time was integral to the project. The commitment to a daily entry over three years worked on many different levels. I found shorthand ways to draw, and my rusty drawing skills improved. Drawing, a skill I had let go of with the busyness of life, was now given the time, space, and purpose to develop again. Notably, this meant I regularly paid attention to the small details of our routine and repetitive life together. The need for content in the nightly transcription forced me to observe Simone more closely. I could see her, hear her, sense her in a new way. Our relationship grew. My perception of her vulnerability gave way to observations of her profound agency. The method for creating these comics was to employ sensory ethnography and mimesis. Sarah Pink writes about "doing ethnography that takes as its starting point the multi-sensoriality of experience, perception, knowing and practice" (1). This is a skill that requires time and...

Discursos de celebração e estratégias de apagamento enunciativo Uso e sistema

relationship between linguistic system and use is central to the construction of the discourses as communicative practices. This is the theoretical framework from which we propose to analyze how certain grammatical structures are at the service of strategies of enunciative erasure (French effacement énonciatif), as linguistic mechanisms where the voices of discourse are constructed but pretending that they do not exist. It is through the analysis of the structure Há quem X that we intend to show this interrelationship between discourse and system anchored in the concept of dialogism. Our objective is, specifically, to analyze the use of this structure as a discursive strategy of enunciative erasure, in a speech celebrating the Centenary of the Portuguese Republic, held in the Portuguese parliament. It stands out in the analysis that Há quem X is a complex dialogic structure, which serves a strategy of erasing the enunciative voice of the speaker, but also the erasure of other voices, an enunciative process with implications for discourse organization, namely argumentative and illocutionary dimensions, within the ongoing global process of referencing.

The Writings: Psalms

The WritingsPsalms Christopher T. Begg, Thomas Hieke, and Fred W. Guyette Christopher T. Begg Catholic University of America Thomas Hieke Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz Fred W. Guyette Erskine College and Seminary 492. [Psalm Quotations on Aramaic Magic Bowls] Siam Bhayro, "The Use of Quotations from the Psalms in the Aramaic Magic Bowls," You Who Dwell in the Shelter of the Most High, 69-82 [see #782]. My paper first discusses certain problems that have arisen in the history of the study of Jewish magic before proceeding to investigate the engagement of rabbis and scribes with magic in late antiquity. It then turns to a consideration of the use of biblical quotations on Aramaic magic bowls, with a particular focus on quotations that are drawn from the Psalter. Finally, my paper focuses on a specific textual problem, i.e., a problematic quotation from Ps 24:8 that occurs in a formula attributed to Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa in connection with which I cite a new text that features a quotation of Ps 24:8 that accords with the MT. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] [End Page 164] Google Scholar 493. [E. Zenger's Psalms Commentary] Christoph Dohmen, "Vom Buch der Psalmen zum AT-Kommentarwerk: Die Bedeutung von Erich Zengers Psalmenauslegungen für 'Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament,'" Mit meinem Gott, 33-48 [see #781]. With his conceptualization of "Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament" (HThKAT), Erich Zenger not only pursued great goals for OT studies, but also set new standards for commenting on biblical texts. This essay attempts to show that Zenger's hermeneutics for a Bible commentary was largely determined by his exegesis of the psalms. Giving priority to larger textual contexts and perceiving the "Tiefenprofil" of the texts in a reflective manner are already prominent in Zenger's early interpretations of the Psalms. These characteristics are also manifest in his program for the exegesis of the Psalter as a whole, as is his practice of a "diachronically reflected synchrony" in his treatment of the psalms. [Adapted from published abstract—T.H.] Google Scholar 494. [The Psalms in Judaism] Carl S. Ehrlich, "Judaism and the Psalms: Life and Liturgy," Mit meinem Gott, 446-63 [see #781]. In this essay, E. surveys the presence of the Psalms in Jewish life and in the Jewish liturgy. His first part deals with questions of the relationship of the Psalms to the Torah and the Psalms' attribution to King David. The second part analyzes the use of the Psalms in the context of daily Jewish prayer, while the third part studies the recitation of psalms on special occasions in Jewish life. The fourth and last part addresses the problem that certain passages in the psalms occurring in the liturgy appear difficult from a modern point of view. [Translated and adapted from published abstract—T.H.] Google Scholar 495. [Psalms; Reception Aesthetics] Dorothea Erbele-Küster, "Reception Aesthetics of the Psalms: A Third Space for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue," Mit meinem Gott, 415-32 [see #781]. Understanding the "psalms as breath of the world" (Erich Zenger) opens a horizon for intercultural and interreligious dialogue. This is the basic hypothesis of E.-K.'s contribution, which is based on a reception-aesthetic reading of the Psalter. A second hypothesis is based on the history of reception: the Psalter and its language constitute a shared tradition in the so-called Abraham-Sara-Hagar religions. With the help of reception aesthetics and intercultural hermeneutics, E.-K. attempts to relate both these approaches to each other, and to identify both opportunities for and difficulties of dialogue. She highlights the dialogical structure and poetry of the psalms, especially the role of doxology. All this constitutes a third space that is open for a common address to God beyond the places of division and dispute. [Translated and adapted from published abstract—T.H.] Google Scholar 496. [Reading the Psalms Christologically] Daniel J. Estes, "How Reading the Psalms Christologically Resembles Where's Waldo? And How It Does Not," BS 177 (2020) 269-85. In the Book of Psalms, there are some clear appearances of Christ, as well...

On the problem of interrelation of notions “communication” and “conversation”

Summary. The purpose of the article is to analyze such social problems as communication and communication in the European space in connection with modern integration processes. Methodological basics of the research are logical method, which allows conducting the in-depth interrogation of notions of “communication”, “technical means of communication”, “conversation”, “signal means of connection”. The critical method was applied to reveal the problematic practical borders on interrelation of those notions. Scientific novelty. The importance of research of the notions of ‘communication’ and ‘conversation’ points at a need of exploration and practical preservation of the dialogical form of relations between “I” and another person rooted in the basis of their just and equal treatment in social relations. In this case communication as a form of social interaction allows preserving an autonomous individuality for each person and provides a space to draw the principles from own personal experience and understanding of the world. Conclusions. Development of informational and communicational technologies in XXI century has led to the new communicative situation. On the one hand, it has enhanced the importance of communication in the social, political, cultural spheres of human life; while on the other hand, it revealed the contradiction between possible ways and limits of communication. It can be noted that the messages of communication bear the monologues character, while the conversation possess the dialogical structure. At the same time, communication has an altar-individual character and embraces order, formalization and standardization of social relations and connections. Communication belongs to every single sphere of human life and preconditions the social interaction. At the same time, conversation reveals itself in the process of formation of social and media networks, which aim to monopolize interpersonal communication. Rationality and use of technical means determine the ways of communication as social phenomena nowadays. Thus the main quality of communication is external manifestation of the process of conversation, which is expressed in socially accepted, effective, rationally picked means and forms of information transfer and exchange between the subjects of social interaction.

Dialogical Structure Experience in Basic Design Studio at Online Education

In this study, the structure of the basic design studio that started with face-to-face education and had to end with online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was set over Bakhtin's dialogic concept, is discussed. The three main components of the basic design studio; studio space, studio process and studio content and the combination of these components have changed in the transition from face-to-face education to online education. With these changes, dialogic relations are defined in the basic design studio's setup that extends from the face-to-face to the online education, and a structure that is shaped not as a sharp transition but as a flow has been developed. The basic design studio structure, which is shaped by the concept of dialogue, is presented as an approach proposal for online education, which is still ongoing and is expected to continue.

Faux Amis, Vrais Amis? Amis.

Recent commentaries on the relation between Deleuze and Foucault often operate with an implicit idea of compatibility or consistency that postulates systematic harmony as the decisive criterion for the affinity between them. Accordingly, the predominant question is whether Deleuze and Foucault are “true” friends philosophically and politically. Although the assessments differ, they share a likewise implicit notion of the friend as familiar that excludes any form of ambivalence in amicable relations and consequently cannot fully account for the dynamics and variability of the relation between Deleuze and Foucault. This article tries to address this problem by suspending the notion of the friend-as-familiar, effectively posing the question of what concept of friendship we would have if the ambivalent relation between Deleuze and Foucault would be the model. For this, the reconstruction begins with the early encounters and follows their relationship until the supposed split in the context of the desire-pleasure-debate. What becomes apparent is the dialogical structure of the philosophical friendship between Deleuze and Foucault that entails convergences as well as divergences, which will eventually be related to their own and fundamentally different concepts of friendship. Deleuze and Foucault, as will be argued, are neither “vrais amis” nor “faux amis” but simply amis that practised a form of philosophical friendship, lasting for more than 15 years.

Reading Dostoevsky and Polyphony from the Neuroscience Perspective

Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy all his life. It is known that the characters with epilepsy and the epileptic seizure held an important key in his story. While interpreting his illness and works from a neuroscience perspective, this short essay goes further and examines the structure of polyphony advocated by Bakhtin about Dostoevsky's works. Neuroscientific significance could be found in the polyphonic structure of his work consisting of the multi-layered structure of dialogue and narrative.

The role of title and epigraph in the essay “The Vision of Mirza” by Joseph Addison

The object of this research is the essay “The Vision of Mirza” by Joseph Addison. The relevance of studying J. Addison's essay is substantiated by undue attention to his works in the Russian literary studies, as well as the need for tracing the dynamics in the genre of vision in the Age of Enlightenment. The subject of this research is the title and epigraph as parts of the work that determine its structure and artistic distinctness. Analysis is conducted on the images of the viewer, visionary hero, and his guide, chronotope of the essay and allusive links. The essay is based on the combination of systemic-structural, comparative-historical, and hermeneutic methods. The novelty consists in the fact that the comprehensive examination of the role of the title ensemble within the structure of the essay allows reconstructing the link of the essay with the traditions of the medieval genre of vision manifested in the traditional topic and consistent motifs, imagery system, space and time arrangement, and dialogical structure of the text. The author provides interpretation to the allusive links between J. Addison's essay and Greco-Roman mythology, epic poem “The Aeneid” by Virgil, and psalms from the New Testament, and “The Voyage of St. Brendan”. It is established that the dialogue set by the epigraph passes through the entire plotline of the essay and reveal the characters of its participants. The extensively presented Christian theme alongside the images from ancient mythology and Virgil’s texts are essential for the author to express the enlightening program.

Developing a Conversational Agent's Capability to Identify Structural Wrongness in Arguments Based on Toulmin's Model of Arguments.

This article discusses the usefulness of Toulmin’s model of arguments as structuring an assessment of different types of wrongness in an argument. We discuss the usability of the model within a conversational agent that aims to support users to develop a good argument. Within the article, we present a study and the development of classifiers that identify the existence of structural components in a good argument, namely a claim, a warrant (underlying understanding), and evidence. Based on a dataset (three sub-datasets with 100, 1,026, 211 responses in each) in which users argue about the intelligence or non-intelligence of entities, we have developed classifiers for these components: The existence and direction (positive/negative) of claims can be detected a weighted average F1 score over all classes (positive/negative/unknown) of 0.91. The existence of a warrant (with warrant/without warrant) can be detected with a weighted F1 score over all classes of 0.88. The existence of evidence (with evidence/without evidence) can be detected with a weighted average F1 score of 0.80. We argue that these scores are high enough to be of use within a conditional dialogue structure based on Bloom’s taxonomy of learning; and show by argument an example conditional dialogue structure that allows us to conduct coherent learning conversations. While in our described experiments, we show how Toulmin’s model of arguments can be used to identify structural problems with argumentation, we also discuss how Toulmin’s model of arguments could be used in conjunction with content-wise assessment of the correctness especially of the evidence component to identify more complex types of wrongness in arguments, where argument components are not well aligned. Owing to having progress in argument mining and conversational agents, the next challenges could be the developing agents that support learning argumentation. These agents could identify more complex type of wrongness in arguments that result from wrong connections between argumentation components.

Conceptualizing the dialogical structure of mass communication: A comparison of the dialogical networks and mediated social communication approaches

Theoretical contributions conceptualizing dialogical processes and structures of mass communication are scattered, hence different disciplines work on the same issues without uniting their potentials. The mediated social communication (MSC) approach developed by German communication scholars and the dialogical network (DN) approach informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis share important characteristics. This paper contributes to interdisciplinary research by comparing the approaches, analyzing their similarities and differences, and discussing their integration. The MSC approach offers additional theoretical considerations; the DN approach provides pointers to the empirical analysis of dialogical structures in mass communication. Essentially, both approaches conceptualize journalists as mediators of the exchange between diverse (individual or collective) actors speaking for social groups. This journalistic mediation of various statements enables a shared society-wide discourse essential for the existence of any society. However, the actual performance of this mediation varies between countries and depends on editorial practices, norms, and resources, which differ across media types and outlets. Future research could use the theoretical conceptualizations of these approaches to investigate communicative actor relations more thoroughly and focus on how they develop in the context of journalistic mediation.

Dialogue

Abstract The article unfolds dialogue as the complex whole of human action and behaviour in the theory of New Science. The actual state of research in dialogue analysis seems to be a garden of a thousand flowers where scholars can pick out the flower they like. Can this be science? New Science is introduced as science of complexity which represents a new hierarchy of integrated components derived from the complex whole. The structure of dialogue as the complex whole allows us to describe and explain all pertinent components in one theory. The article briefly outlines the main components: action and grammar. New Science also means the end of unjustified assumptions which underlie most of the various current models of science and philosophy and calls for verification by neuro- and sociobiology.

АДРЕСАНТНО-АДРЕСАТНИЙ АСПЕКТ АНГЛОМОВНОГО ДИСКУРСУ ПРОГРАМУВАННЯ

The article offers an analysis of the interaction between the addresser and the addressee in the English programming discourse as a type of the so-called institutional or professional discourses. Both interactants are programmers. The research is performed in the context of anthropocentric paradigm in linguistics and is based on the analysis of modern English programming textbooks. It is established that the texts of the English programming discourse, along with a high amount of specific terminology and some programming language items, predominantly logical and consistent presentation of professional information, demonstrate a pronounced interactive nature aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of communication between specialists in this field. The conducted analysis confirms that the personalized manner of writing, various dialogical structures and rhetorical techniques are a typical element of modern English textbooks on programming. It is concluded that the construction of the English programming discourse is influenced not only by the personal experience, knowledge, emotions of the author of the text, but also the specific worldview and professional language culture of programmers as a special professional group, whose members are characterized by high intellectual abilities, perseverance, the desire to create their own world within the computing environment as well as the rejection of obstacles and prohibitions that exist in the real life.

Talking with NPCs: Towards Dynamic Generation of Discourse Structures

Dialogue in commercial games is largely created by teams of writers and designers who hand-author every line of dialogue and hand-specify the dialogue structure using finite state machines or branching trees. For dialogue heavy games, such as role playing games with significant NPC interactions, or emerging genres such as interactive drama, such hand specification significantly limits the player's interaction possibilities. Decades of research on the standard pipeline architecture in natural language generation has focused on how to generate text given a specification of the communicative goals; one can imagine beginning to adapt such methods for generating the lines of dialogue for characters. But little work has been done on the problem of procedurally generating dialogue structures, that is, dynamically generating dialogue FSMs or trees (more generally, discourse managers) that accomplish communicative goals. In this paper we describe a system that uses a formalization of backstory, character information, and social interactions to dynamically generate interactive dialogue structures that accomplish desired dialogue goals.