Pragmatic Alignment on Social Support Type in Health Forum Conversations

Abstract

Linguistic alignment, such as lexical and syntactic alignment, is a universal phenomenon influencing dialogue participants in online conversations. While adaptation can occur at lexical, syntactic and pragmatic levels, relationships between alignments at multiple levels are neither theoretically nor empirically well understood. In this study, we find that community members show pragmatic alignment on social support type, distinguishing emotional and informational support, both of which provide benefits to members. We also find that lexical alignment is correlated with emotional support. This finding can contribute to our understanding of the linguistic signature of different types of support as well as the theory of Interactive Alignment in dialogue.