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Perspectives on Multi-party Dialogue

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Research on Language and Computation

Abstract

Most research on dialogue has concentrated on dialogues involving two interlocutors. In this paper we consider the nature of multi-party dialogues. We discuss whether some of the important characteristics that have been identified in two-party dialogues and the theoretical accounts that have been proposed for them are also applicable to multi-party dialogues. We argue that the way in which common ground is accumulated in multi-party dialogues differs from the way in which it is accumulated in the two-party dialogues that have commonly been studied. However, we argue that these differences are related to particular characteristics which tend to be associated with either two-party or multi-party dialogues but are not inherent to them. We show that these characteristics can account for differences between different types of two-party and multi-party dialogues, including effects of group size, and we propose that the same fundamental principles underlie behaviour in both two-party and multi-party dialogues.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, UK

    Holly Branigan

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  1. Holly Branigan
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Correspondence to Holly Branigan.

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Branigan, H. Perspectives on Multi-party Dialogue. Research Language Computation 4, 153–177 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-006-9002-2

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