Wachsmuth Ipke et al. (Editors). Alignment in Communication: Towards a new theory of communication

John Benjamins, 2013. — viii, 231 pages. — (Advances in Interaction Studies, Book 6). — ISBN: 9027204608.Alignment in Communication is a novel direction in communication research, which focuses on interactive adaptation processes assumed to be more or less automatic in humans. It offers an alternative to established theories of human communication and also has important implications for human-machine interaction.A collection of articles by international researchers in linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and social robotics, this book provides evidence on why such alignment occurs and the role it plays in communication. Complemented by a discussion of methodologies and explanatory frameworks from dialogue theory, it presents cornerstones of an emerging new theory of communication. The ultimate purpose is to extend our knowledge about human communication, as well as creating a foundation for natural multimodal dialogue in human-machine interaction. Its cross-disciplinary nature makes the book a useful reference for cognitive scientists, linguists, psychologists, and language philosophers, as well as engineers developing conversational agents and social robots.Introduction: Why a new theory of communication?
Methodological paradigms in interaction research
A multidimensional activity based approach to communication
On making syntax dynamic: Th challenge of compound utterances and the architecture of the grammar
Automatic and strategic alignment of co-verbal gestures in dialogue
Interaction phonology – A temporal co-ordination component enabling representational alignment within a model of communication
Communication as moving target tracking: Dynamic Bayesian inference with an action-perception-learning cycle
Language variation and mutual adaptation in interactive communication: Putting together psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives
“The hand is no banana!” On communicating natural kind terms to a robot
Interactive alignment and prediction in dialogue
What is the link between emotional and communicative alignment in interaction?