green: conversational interaction politeness - sfu.cahedberg/discourse_structure.pdf · green:...

1

Discourse Structure 1

Green: Conversational InteractionPoliteness

– Robin Lakoff (1973)• Rule 1: Don’t Impose

– Acknowledged power difference between participants

– Avoid, mitigate, ask permission for making A do anythingA does not want to do.

– Treat addressees like objects with no feelings.

• Rule 2: Offer Options

– Equal status and power but not socially close

– Hedging, allow A not to obey request, etc., indirect speech

• Rule 3: Encourage Feelings of Camaraderie

– Intimates or close friends

– No mincing of words, personal topics, nicknames


– Examples of Rule 2:• This style comes in a size 14 too.

• Some people think buying a Japanese car is an insult to allthe unemployed American autoworkers.

• I was wondering if it would inconvenience you if I asked touse your telephone.

– Example of subtle politeness difference:• You must have some of this fruitcake.

– A wouldn’t impose on S by wanting it.

• You should have some of this fruitcake.

– A has an obligation but didn’t know it, S is superior.

• You may have some of this fruitcake.

– S has authority to grant permission, implies A wantssomething S has.

• Would you care for some fruitcake?

2


– Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987)• Politeneness is seen as a trade in a commodity they call face.

• Negative face is the freedom to act unimpeded (autonomy)

• Positive face is the satisfaction of having one’s values approved of(approbation).

• When S contemplates an act which he believes may threaten A’sface, S is confronted with calculating how much he is risking inperforming the face-threatening act.

– Closeness of S and A, social power of S relative to A, extentto which A will consider the act to be an imposition.

• Strategies:

– (a) perform the act without mitigation (“baldly on record”)

– (b) positive politeness, make A good.

– (c) negative politeness, hedge, apologize, offer options

– (d) perform act by implicature (“off record”)

– (e) forego performing the face-threatening act.


– Differences between Lakoff and Brown & Levinson• B&L allow a large power, small distance relationship (parent-child)

to count the same as medium power, medium distance (doctor-patient) in determining negative politeness strategy.

• B&L: when there is a large power difference, participants will usedifferent politeness strategies.

– There are cultural differences, and individual differences inhow speakers apply politeness strategies.

– Examples• Formal situation: disadvantaged, defecate, urinate

• Informal situation: in difficult circumstances, go to the bathroom.

• When taboo topics are not threatening: poor, pee

• Rough language positive politeness: shit, piss

– Other cultures: falsetto voice, deferential forms,intimateversus polite pronouns, mother-in-law language.

3


– Japanese:• Watashi-no gusoku-ga anata-sama-ni shachoo-no

I-GEN son(HUM)-NOM you-HON-DAT president-GEN

go-shisoku-ni o-kome-o o-okuri-shite-itadaki-tai toHON-son-DAT HON-rice-ACC HUM-send-HUM-have(HUM)-want that

mooshite ori-mas-usay(HUM) PROGRESSIVE(HUM)-FORMAL-present

‘My son (says he) wants you to send some rice to thepresident’s son.’


Taking Turns

– Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson (1974)• At Transition Relevant Points (TRPs):

1. If the current speaker (S) selects the next speaker (N) in thecurrent turn, S is expected to stop speaking, and N is expected to speak next.

II. If S’s utterance or behavior does not select the next speaker, then any other participant may self-select. Whoever speaks first gets the floor.

III. If no speaker self-selects, S may continue.

4


– Participants can distinguish:• (a) brief GAPS occur when the right to speak is transferrred by

rule I or II,

• (b) longer gaps occur when rule III is invoked,

• (c) PAUSES occur at non-TRP.

• (d) SILENCES occur when selected speaker fails to speak.

– Ann: Didn’t you go to Haverford, Dan? (0.1)Dan: Yeah.

– Jo: Well, I think we should spend it all on the camping trip. (0.7)Jo: I mean, if we’re gonna do something , we should do it right.

– Jo: That class is really (0.5) boring.

– Jo: I want you to come straight home from school this afternoon and clean your room (1.5)

Jo: You got that?

– Mo: We’ll go see Blazing Saddles then. (16.0)Mo: Did I tell you someone stole my bike last week?


– In face-to-face conversation, next speaker can be selectedwith eye gaze.

– Speakers who have self-selected regularly select theprevious speaker as next speaker, using brief questionsand repetitions inviting elaboration.

– Speakers who are not ready to give up the floor, maypreface a pause with a conjunction (And, But, Or), orwith a vocalized pause (Uhhhhh).

– Ethnomethodologists have also studied adjacency pairs inconversation: question-answer, greeting-greeting, offer-acceptance, summons-answer, and preferred anddispreferred second parts of such pairs.

– Ethnomethodologists reject as unverifiable and prematuretheorizing all references to plans, intentions, andinferences, but Green thinks they rely on these things.

5


Functions of Questions in Discourse

– Sincere questions:• When was Sandy Smith’s application for admission received?

• Is my brown suit at the clean ers?

– Rhetorical questions• Who understands Piaget?

• Is the Pope Catholic?

• What makes people do a thing like that?

• Why is the sky blue?

– Clarification questions• What?

• Eks said whose job would be on the line?

• A hundred fans to move air, or a hundred admirers?


– Confirmatory questions• University Avenue is south of Church St., right?

• You did put the mayonnaise back, didn’t you?

• Really?

– Questions used for positive politeness or to facilitatesmooth flow of conversation

• Boy, we really beat them good, didn’t we?

• Remember when we played baseball on the Midway without aball or bat?

– Questions encouraging A to keep talking.• Is that so?

• Yeah?

• He did?

6


– In general, there is not any one-to-one correspondencebetween question forms and question functions.

– Nor between particular question types and politeness.

• And then you told Officer Bailey you’d never seen the .45 withyour fingerprints on it, didn’t you?

• And the verb has to agree with the subject, doesn’t it?

• Don’t you think that’s a naïve attitude?

• Do you want to put some salt in there? (suggestion)

• Do you think you could hand me that wrench? (request)

• Why are your crayons still all over the floor? (demand for action)

• Don’t you think you had better pick them up?


Grosz & Sidner: Attention, Intentions,and the Structure of Discourse

– A discourse: a piece of language behavior that typicallyinvolves multiple utterances and multiple participants:

• ICP: Initiating Conversational Participant (of a discourse segment)

• OCP: Other Conversational Participant

– Linguistic Structure, Intentional Structure, Attentional State(section 2)

– Two examples (section 3)

– Referring Expressions (section 4.2)

– Interruptions (section 5)

– Cue Phrases (section 6)

7


Linguistic Structure

– The utterances in a discourse are naturally aggregatedinto discourse segments.

– It is possible for two utterances that are nonconsecutiveto be in the same discourse segment.

– Mann reported that subjects segmented dialoguesapproximately the same; Chafe found differences inpause length at segment boundaries, Butterworth foundthat speech rate is slower at the start of a segment.

– The linguistic structure consists of the discoursesegments and an embedding relation that can holdbetween them.


– Linguistic expressions indicate discourse segmentboundaries

• Cue phrases: in the first place, incidentally

• Intonation

• Changes in tense and aspect

– The discourse segmentation affects the interpretation oflinguistic expressions

• Referring expressions

– There are different constraints on the use of pronouns andreduced definite-noun phrases within a segment than acrosssegment boundaries.

8


Intentional Structure– Discourse Purpose (DP): the intention that underlies

engaging in the particular discourse.

– Discourse Segment Purpose (DSP): specifies how thesegment contributes to achieving the overall discoursepurpose.

– The recognition of the DP or DSP is essential to its achievingits intended effect.

– Examples:• Intend that some agent intend to perform some action.

• Intend that some agent believe some fact.

• Intend that some agent believe that one fact supports another.

• Intend that some agent intend to identify an object.

• Intend that some agent know some property of an object.


– Two structural relations play an important role in discoursestructure:

• Dominance• Satisfaction-precedence

– An action that satisfies one intention, say DSP1, may beintended to provide part of the satisfaction of another, sayDSP2.

• DSP1 contributes to DSP2

• DSP2 dominates DSP1

• The dominance relation imposes a partial ordering on DSPs.

– The dominance hierarchy

– For some discourses, the order in which the DSPs aresatisfied may be significant

• DSP1 satisfaction-precedes DSP2

– The range of intentions that can serve as DPs or DSPs isopen-ended.

9


Attentional State

– An abstraction of the participants’ focus of attention astheir discourse unfolds, a property of the discourse itself.

– It is inherently dynamic, recording the objects, properties,and relations that are salient at each point in the discourse.

– The attentional state is modeled by a set of focus spaces.• The collection of focus spaces available at any one time

– Focusing structure• The process of manipulating spaces

– Focusing

– Each discourse segment has an associated focus spacecontaining the salient entities.

– The focus space also contains the DSP.


– See figure 1• The focusing structure is a stack.

• Information in lower spaces is usually accessible from higherones (but less so than information in higher spaces); a hash-marked line indicates when this is not so.

• In part 2, FS2 has been popped from the stack, and FS3 hasbeen pushed onto the stack.

– The focusing structure is parasitic upon the intentionalstructure, in that the relationships among DSPsdetermine pushes and pops.

• The relevant relation may be represented linguistically withcue phrases like first.

– The focusing structure, like the intentional andlinguistic structures, evolves as the discourse proceeds.

10


– The dominance hierarchy provides a complete record ofthe discourse-level intentions and their dominance (andsatisfaction-precedence) relationships, whereas thefocusing structure at any one time contains informationrelevant to purposes in only one part of the dominancehierarchy.

– At the conclusion of the discourse, the focus stack willbe empty, while the intentional structure will be fullyconstructed.

– When the discourse is being processed, only theattentional state can constrain the interpretation ofreferring expressions directly.

– The focusing structure is the central repository for thecontextual information needed to process utterances ateach point in the discourse.


Example 1: Argument– Argument from a 1917 rhetoric text (see Figures 2-4)

– All the primary intentions for this essay are intentions thatthe reader (OCP) come to believe some proposition.

– Some of these propositions can be read off the surfaceutterances directly, others are more indirect.

– The DSP may come in any utterance in a segment, the DPI0 is stated directly only in the last utterance.

– Cue phrases indicate boundaries in (9), (11) (7).

– Aspect and mood: DS1-DS2, DS4-DS5, DS4-DS2

– Referring expression (3) versus (4).

– No linguistic marker at the beginning of DS7.

11


Example 2: A Task-Oriented Dialogue

– Dialogue from Grosz 1974 corpus (see figures 5 and 6).

– Most DSPs here are intentions of the segment’s ICP thatthe OCP intend to perform some action.

– The expert is the ICP of DS1 and DS5, while theapprentice is the ICP of DS2-4.

– It is a shared belief that the OCP will adopt the intentionto perform an action that the ICP intended him to.

– And the OCP also intends to perform whatever subactionsare necessary, e.g. loosen screws in removing theflywheel.

– Not all subactions are explicitly introduced into thediscourse.


– The satisfaction-precedence relations among I2, I3, and I4are not communicated directly, but depend on domainknowledge.

– The dominance and satisfaction-precedence relations forthis task-oriented fragment form a tree of intentions ratherthan just a partial ordering, but this is not alwaysnecessary.

– The intentional structure is neither identical norisomorphic to a general plan for removing the flywheel.

– Fewer cue phrases employed to indicate segmentboundaries: (1)

– Referring expressions: the screw in the center in (25)refers to the center screw of the wheelpuller, not one ofthe two setscrews mentioned in (18).

12


Referring Expressions

– The focus space structure limits the information that mustbe considered in identifying the referents of certain classesof definite noun phrases.

– (25): “Loosen the screw in the center”. FS5 is on top andso is considered first for the referent of “the screw in thecenter”. FS4 with the setscrews is not considered.

– Backwards-looking center, for pronoun reference, isrestricted to the current focus space. Note that pop-backmay focus an entity and make it accessible to a pronoun.

– “topic” is used ambiguously for both the DSP of a segmentand the center: discourse topic vs. sentence topic.


Interruptions

– Interruptions are pieces of discourse that break the flowof the preceding discourse.

• D!: John came by and left the groceriesD2: Stop that you kids.D1: and I put them away after I left.

– Strong definition (“true interruptions”, digressions):An interruption is a discourse segment whose DSP isnot dominated nor satisfaction-preceded by the DSP ofthe preceding segment.

13


– Weak definition (“flashbacks”): An interruption is adiscourse segment whose DSP is not dominated norsatisfaction-preceded by the immediately precedingsegment.

– It naturally follows from the stack model that the focusspace for the interruption will be popped after theinterruption, and that the focus space for the interruptedsegment will be at the top of the stack because its DSP isyet to be satisfied.

– We also might want to look at clarification dialogues anddebugging explanations.


• Type 1: True Interruptions– Discourses D1 and D2 have distinct, unrelated purposes

and convey different information about properties,objects, and relations.

– The focus space for D2 is pushed onto the stack abovethe focus space for D1.

– D1 is not accessible from D2 (hash marks on diagram).

– The DSPs are unrelated.

– Change to DS2 is indicated by change of mood andvocative; change back is indicated by change of mood,so pronouns now refer to entities in DS1.

– Change of intonation and shift of gaze also indicateshift to DS2.

14


• Flashbacks and Filling in Missing Places– ICP interrupts the flow of discussion to bring in some

purposes, propositions or objects that haven’t yet beendiscussed.

– The flashback is defined as a segment whose DSPsatisfaction-precedes the interrupted segment and isdominated by some other segment’s DSP.

– The DSP for the flashback bears some relationship to theDP for the whole discourse.

– Linguistic indicator indicates some comment aboutsomething going wrong, and audience remains the same.


• OK. Now how do I say that Bill isWhoops I forgot about ABC.I need an individual concept for the company ABC…[remainder of discourse segment on ABC]…Now back to Bill. How do I say that Bill is an employee ofABC?

• DP DOM DSPABC

DP DOM DSPBill

DSPABC SP DSPBill

• The focus space for the flashback — FSABC — is pushed ontothe stack after an appropriate number of spaces, including thespace for the outer segment —FSBill, have been popped fromthe main stack and pushed onto an auxiliary stack.

• Expressions from FSB to FSA are available, but not those fromFSBill to FSC until there is a pop and all spaces from theauxiliary stack are returned to the main stack.

• Whether this more complicated auxiliary stack model isrequired has not yet been determined.

15


• Digressions– A strong interruption that contains a reference to some

entity that is salient in both the interruption and theinterrupted segment.

• Speaking of Bill, that reminds me he came to dinner last week.

– A new focus space is formed and pushed onto the stack,but it contains at least one entity from the interruptedsegment’s focus space.

– Like the flashback, it must usually be closed with anexplicit utterance like getting back to ABC, or anyway.


• Noninterruptions — “Semantic Returns”– Entities and DSPs that were salient during a discourse in

the past are taken up once again, but are explicitlyreintroduced.

• Remember our discussion about Jack at the party? Well, a lot ofother people thought he acted just as badly as we thought he did.

– There is not popping of the stack, the focus stack can beempty. There is a push onto the stack of a new spacecontaining, among other things, representations of thereintroduced entities.

• #Remember our discussion about him at the party.

16


Cue Words

– Occasionally speakers explicitly refer to changes inattentional state or to intentional structure:

• Now let’s turn our attention to…

• Now I want to explain the theory of dynamic programming.

– More often speakers provide cue phrases: abbreviated,indirect means of indicating these changes. These canallow the OCP to determine:

• That a change of attention is imminent;

• Whether the change returns to a previous focus space orcreates a new one.

• How the intention is related to other intentions.

• What precedence relationships, if any, are relevant.


– Figure 10: DSP X dominates DSP A; now the ICPshifts to a new DSP, B, that is dominated by A.

– Figure 11 shows the space with DSP B being pushedonto the stack: cue phrases communicate that there is anew space being created rather than a return, and thatDSP B is dominated by DSP A:

• For example, to wit, first and second.

– Cue phrases can also exhibit the existence of asatisfaction-precedence relationship: If B is the first ina list of DSPs dominated by A.

• First, in the first place.

• Later in the discourse: second, third, finally, popping B andinserting a new focus space above A.

17


– Cue phrases for true-interruptions express the intention tointerrupt.

• Excuse me for a minute, I must interrupt.

– Distinct cue phrases for flashbacks:• Oops I forgot about…

– Typical opening cue phrases for a digression:• Speaking of John, Did you hear about John?

– To mark the end of a discourse segment:• The End.

• Fine, OK.

• That’s all for point 2, the ayes have it.

– A cue phrase that indicates a push:• That reminds me.

– Pops to some other space back in the stack:• But anyway, anyway, in any case, now back to…


– Cue phrases that signal a change in the attentional state, butdo not distinguish between the creation of a new focus spaceand the return to a new one.

• Now, next.

– A pop of the focus stack may be achieved without the use ofcue phrases:

• A: One bolt is stuck. I’m trying to use both the pliers and the wrench to get it unstuck, but I’m haven’t had much luck.

E: Don’t use pliers. Show me what you are doing.A: I’m pointing at the bolts.E: Show me the 1/2” combination wrench, please.A: Ok.E: Good, now show me the 1/2” box wrench.A: I already got it loosened.

• The pronoun not referring to the wrench in the last utterance is a cuethat a pop is needed, but only the reference to the loosening actionallows the OCP to recognize the DS to which the utterance belongs.

18


Büring: On D-Trees, Beans, and B-Accents

• Introduction: A-Accent and B-Accent– Jackendoff (1972):

• “We presuppose…that there were a number of people and anumber of different things to eat, and that various people atevarious things. Speaker A in the discourse is asking questionsof the form Who ate what? And speaker B is answering. Forthe first intonation pattern, A is asking person by person:

(1) A: Well, what about FRED? What did HE eat? \/ \ B: FRED ate the BEANS.


“For the second pattern, A is asking about foods:

A: Well, what about the BEANS? Who ate THEM? \ \/B: FRED ate the BEANS.

“In such examples we find the typical fall-rise of a B pitch accentand the fall of the A accent, but in different positions: (1) has Bon Fred and A on beans, and (2) is the other way around.”

– The accents can’t be changed around in their contexts.

– A marks Focus (F), B marks Contrastive Topic (CT)

– People have addressed Focus with formal rigor, here contrastivetopic will be addressed with formal rigor, adapting Roberts (1996)theory of discourse structure.

19


• A Preview– The general issue is represented by the question:

• Who ate what?

– This question can be split up into sub-questions in twodifferent ways:

• Who ate the beans? Who ate the carrots? …

• What did Fred eat? What did Joanna eat? …

– Question and sub-question form what Roberts calls astrategy.

• Sentences containing both an A- and a B-accent are related totwo contextually given questions at the same time, which form aquestion-sub-question-strategy.

• But Roberts treats both the A-accented element and the B-accented element as a “focus” and can’t distinguish betweenthem; here this problem will be remedied.


• Strategies and Discourse-Trees• How was the concert?

Was the sound good? No, it was awful. How was the audience? They were enthusiastic.

How was the band?How was the drummer? Just fantastic.And what about the singer? Better than ever.

Did they play old songs? Not a single one.So what did you do after the concert? …

• questionsub-question answersub-question answsersub-question

subsub-question answersubsub-question answer

sub-question answerquestion …

20


discourse

question

subq|

answer

subq|

answersubq

subsubq|

answer

subsubq|

answer

subq|

answer

question|…


– Each node in a d-tree will be called a Move. Each Move is asyntactic phrase marker representing a sentence, including CTand F marking.

– A theory of discourse is a generative grammar whichgenerates the set of all admissible d-trees.

– Constraints on well-formed d-trees:• Informativity: Don’t say known things, don’t ask for known things!

– Use Stalnaker’s notion of Common Ground to formalize.

• Relevance: Stick to a question until it is sufficiently resolved.

– For any move M, the question under discussion (QUD) is themove M’ immediately dominating it.

» An assertion A is relevant in a d-tree DT iff A is an answer tothe QUD for A in DT.

» A question Q is relevant in a d-tree DT iff at least one answerto Q is an answer to the QUD for Q in DT.

• Congruence: see following.

21


• CT-Congruence– Any subtree of a d-tree which is rooted in an interrogative

move is a strategy.

– CT marking indicates (presupposes) a particular stategy

– Informally (for formal definitions see the article), the CTsentence answers a subquestion of a relevant superquestion:

• Who ate what?What did Fred eat? FREDCT ate the BEANSF.What did Mary eat? MARYCT ate the EGGPLANTF.What did …

• Who ate what?Who ate the beans? FREDF ate the BEANSCT.Who ate the eggplant? MARYF ate the EGGPLANTCT.Who ate …


• Parts of Strategies– The contrastive topic of the first example

conventionally expresses “there are other questions ofthe form What did X eat?

– It is a standard conversational implicature to get to‘other people ate different things.’

• Informativity tells us that the questioner now wants to knowwhat someone other than Fred ate.

• Informativity and Brevity tells us that the answerer isn’t awarethat someone else also ate beans., and so is aware that someoneelse didn’t eat beans.

• Cancellability: but I don’t know what the others ate, or …andmaybe Mary ate beans, too.

22


– “Purely implicational topics”Q: Where were you (at the time of the murder)?A: ICT was at HOMEF.

– Choice of CT marking over plain I was at HOME serves toindicate the presence of a more complex strategy: Wherewas everyone (at the time of the murder)?

– The speaker might use it to suggest that anothersubquestion of that strategy should be discussed, i.e. thatother people might not have as waterproof an alibi.


• Implicit Moves– Q: What did the pop stars wear?

A: The FEMALECT pop stars wore CAFTAINSF.

What did the popstars wear?

What did the female pop stars wear? What did the male pop stars wear?

The FEMALECT pop stars wore CAFTANS

23


• Givenness– So far, CT marking on “Fred” and “female” is

obligatory.

– But if the sub-question is explicit, CT is optional:• What did the pop stars wear?

What did the female pop stars wear?

a. The FEMALECT pop stars wore CAFTANSF.b. The female pop stars wore CAFTANSF.c. They wore CAFTANSF.

– CT-marking is obligatory only with implicit sub-questions.

• Schwarzchild (1999): Every constituent which is not givenneeds to be marked.

• We should equate ‘given’ with ‘previously mentioned’.


– So far, we have isolated two principles of Congruence:• Every constituent which is not given is CT- or F-marked.

• CT in a sentence indicates a strategy.

• F and CT– Double F sentences:

• Q: I don’t get it. Did Carl sue the company, or did the companysue Carl?

A: I told you: CARLF sued the COMPANYF.A’: #I told you. CARLCT sued the COMPANYF.

– In the beans example, either “sortal key” [Kuno] ispossible: Who ate what; but in the pop stars example, onlythe pop stars sortal key is plausible:

– Double F treatment of the pop stars example is anomalous:• What did the pop stars wear?

#The FEMALEF pop stars wore CAFTANSF.

24


– If a constituent needs to be marked due to Givenness,CT-marking is preferred over F-marking, wherepossible.

– F+F is possible only in the absence of a strategy,otherwise CT+F or F+CT will be chosen.

– Do we find CT + CT patterns?• Not in German: no single B accents.

• But maybe in English:

– Can Jack and Bill come to tea?

– BILLCT can.


• Accenting– Steedman: F marks non-givenness, and non-givenness is

marked by F; CT marks strategies (new elementspreviously analyzed as within the CT are now marked F)

– Given elements within the CT must also be deaccented:• Who won the awards?

– Who’s the best FEMALE LEAD?The best FEMALE LEADCT is SUSAN SARANDONF.

– Who’s the best MALE lead?The best MALE leadCT is NICOLAS CAGEF

#the best MALE LEADCT is NICOLAS CAGEF

– New elements within the previous CT are marked F.Focus is marked H*, CT is marked H%.

(L+)H* L H% H* L H* L (L%)The best [MALEF lead]CT is [NIcolasF CAGEF]F

green: conversational interaction politeness - sfu.cahedberg/discourse_structure.pdf · green:...

Documents