Lorenz Sichelschmidt

We present the rationale and the procedures of a corpus-based study designed to extend the 'interactive alignment' theory of conversation (which posits that automatic convergence of representations within and between interlocutors captures a significant aspect of dialogue structure) to mediated communication. The corpus is multimodal in that natural dialogue is supplemented by interlocutors' eye movement data plus audio and video footage. Findings from ongoing analyses suggest that local alignment (as indicated by unsolicited repetitions, collaborative completions, joint attention, etc.) is a prominent feature of dialogue tactics while global alignment (as indicated by long-term consolidation of discourse structure) merely is to be regarded as one among several dialogue strategies. mehr