Linguistic Repetition in Three-Party Conversations

Abstract

The conversational mechanism of repetition appears to be strongly connected to the development of common ground among conversation participants. We report on three-party game-based interactions where two players participate in a quiz supervised by a facilitator. We use a semi-automatic method to detect alignment between players by observing linguistic repetitions in the dialogue transcripts and investigate the relation of the alignment to the type of the facilitator’s feedback. Results suggest that the repetitions detected with this method have a function in the interaction, as it is reflected in the verbal and non-verbal behaviours of an interaction facilitator: Facilitators provided more encouragement than expected where alignment lacked evidence and less than expected where alignment was ample.