Assignment #7

1. softball game today was fuuun!! :-) my tummy hurts... too much chocolate for today.

This quote contains several CMC conventions: the emoticon ":-)", the intentional misspelling "fuuun", the extra quotation marks "!!", and the use of "..." as an emotional indicator. I think that this away message could be characterized as both an expressive and assertive speech act. The CMC conventions used to convey emotion and the use of emotional words ("fuuun" and "hurts") suggests that the message is an expressive one. However, since this message also serves to relay current information to others, it could be an assertive speech act as well.

2. Let what we do in here fill the streets out there; let us dance for You

This away message requires common ground to completely understand it. It is not immediately clear that this message is a quote, since there are no quotation marks around the words. In addition, common ground is required to understand that when the word "you" is capitalized and written as "You", the interpretation should be that it refers to "God" rather than "another human". Although this away message is a quote, I think that it can accurately be interpreted as a directive, since this person probably did not put the quote up only because he identifies with it, but rather because he wants other people to be encouraged to take action based on those words.

3. around, gimme a call if u need me

This away message contains two speech acts. The first part of the message, "around", is assertive since it serves to inform others of a current state. The second part, "gimme a call if you need me", is directive, since it calls the reader to the action of giving this person a call.

4. The dawn is breaking A light shining through You're barely waking And I'm tangled up in you Yeah <3

This away message contains both a common ground based convention and a CMC based convention. First, it must be common ground that these phrases are quotes from a song rather than a literal statement of events happening to this person. Since this quote does not have quotation marks around it, however, people who do not share this common ground could take the statement literally, characterizing the away message as an assertive speech act. On the other hand, someone with access to the common ground knowledge of the song would characterize the away message as an expressive speech act. Rather than thinking that this person is literally tangled up in another person at the moment, the characterization of this away message as expressive means that this person chose this quote because they emotionally identify with the song. Another interesting feature about this away message is that it contains the CMC convention "<3". This emoticon of the sideways heart indicates that this quote was probably directed towards another individual.

5. I'm feeling kind of old right now... it's kind of sucky.

This message is clearly an expressive speech act, written in order to give others a glimpse of this person's emotional state. She writes that she is "feeling... old", and this is "kind of sucky", emotional words used to give a clear picture of her feelings.

In coding my friends' away messages, I found that some of the speech act categories were overly simplified. For instance, the phrase "it's been a long day" could be interpreted as both an expressive and an assertive speech act. I also found that commissive acts are not at all common in my friends' away messages; this is probably due to the fact that people believe when others read their messages, the future event has already occurred. For instance, assertive messages such as "at the mall" are more common than "going to the mall". It is unfortunate that Nastri et al do not analyze quotes in their article. In looking at my friends' away messages, I found that a significant number of people had quotes on their away messages. It would be interesting to analyze the ways in which these quotes can be interpreted. Regarding quotes in away messages, the following questions can be asked: Can away message quotes be seen as a direct representation of the person's own thoughts and feelings? On the other hand, should quotes not be taken literally, but rather be seen as only reflecting the person's fondness for a certain song or book? Which venues are most common for quotes (books, famous people, professors, friends, songs, religious texts), and what is the significance of this?

Away messages are silly

Five away messages

1. Ya nye znayu tochni li vesi, no mnye nye xochet'sya ikh proveryat'. Mnye slishkom nravit'sya eta kartina. (i don't know if the scales are accurate or not, but I don't want to check them. I like the picture too much.) — (quotation)


2. "It's not a beer belly, it's a fuel tank for a sex machine!" — (quotation)


3. b-bALL — assertive (?)


4. nevermind the gym....relaxing before tarble and the library.... — assertive / commissive


5. hmm, monday...and i'm not in the mood for ta-ing today either... — expressive / commissive

(1) is a quotation from the Russian song "Vopros" by the group Кино. It was transcribed as it is shown here. It may be a comment on what the speaker is feeling, in which case it would be an expressive act; it may be a statement of what music the speaker is listening to at the moment, in which case it would be an assertive act; or it may be something else entirely.

(2) is another quotation which I can't properly source. It seems to be a popular phrase intended as a joke. As with (1), it may be a statement with any number of actual meanings, but I cannot readily conceive of an intended meaning that would involve a speech act of a type other than assertive.

(3) is difficult to understand; it appears to assert that the reason that the speaker is (nominally) away from their computer has something to do with basketball. It could be that they are interested in a game which is currently being played, that they have a passive interest in some series of games being played or the sport as a whole, that they are involved in playing a game, that they would wish to play a game, &c. Without further context, it is not possible to determine the exact meaning of the content of the message.

(4) is a simple assertive message stating why the speaker is absent. It is also, after a fashion, commissive, as it states the speaker's intended future location (and, to those in the know, activity).

(5) is expressive, stating the speaker's feelings towards the day and the activity in which they are (presumably) obliged to partake. It also has a commissive character, implying that the speaker is obliged to act in some capacity as a TA on Mondays and will, however grudgingly, fulfill this obligation.

With respect to the Nastri in general, I take greatest issue with the stated assumption that categories of speech act are mutually exclusive. This is shown to be questionable by (4) and (5), above, as there is implicit meaning in a given assertive or expressive statement that commits the speaker to some future action if the assertive or expressive aspect of the message is taken to be true. It may be argued that the primary meaning of a message is of one character or another, but the acknowledgement of primary versus perhipheral meaning already throws mutually exclusive character of speech acts into question. One might also argue that a speaker may intend only to make a particular speech act with a given utterance and that other meanings are simply implications of the statement making the act, but such an argument needs to take into account intentionally ambiguous statements and statements which, arguably, have no proper interpretation as a speech act.

It seems that many away messages do not have content that is of any significant value. For a given away message this may be the case in general, or it may be that an away message has informational content for a subset of those who may read it and is nonsensical for all others. Take, for example, an away message not listed above because it is impossible to categorize without further context:

Coolyss (12:41:58 AM): ok hold your breath ok

Coolyss (12:42:00 AM): i'm going to tell you

Coolyss (12:42:05 AM): i burp sometimes

This may be meaningful to those who are mutual friends of the one posting this away message and of Coolyss, but otherwise it does not carry much significant informational content at all. When such an away message is posted, whether it be a quotation intended to edify or an inside joke to which the reader is not privy, the content of the message is less important than the symbolism of being away and having posted such a message. Writing an away message involves taking into account the ability of those reading it to understand it; part of this process of comprehension involves being able to ground the message properly. Much as I won't write an away message in proper Russian because I know that no one using the stock AIM client can read Cyrillic encoding, I won't write an away message that requires contextual knowledge which no one reading the message can be expected to have, if I want them to be able to understand the message's content. A message is intentionally difficult to ground or otherwise hard to understand may be called cryptic. It is possible to post a cryptic away message in order to elicit a response, but when the practice of posting cryptic messages becomes commonplace, it is impractical for actors with many buddies to follow up on the meaning of the content of a given message, and the content of the away message ceases to be as significant as the simple act of posting the message and choosing to give it cryptic content.

Categorization of utterances is not as simple as dividing them into mutually exclusive speech act categories. Furthermore, the analysis used in Nastri, et al, simply ignores the capacity for speech that references itself or its medium explicitly or implicitly in such a manner so as to make straightforward categorization of an away message dependent upon its recipient.

#7: Speech Acts

Assignment 7- Speech Acts

In Nastri’s article on speech acts, he “examined how people use language to construct their away messages in an effort to accomplish the goal of providing awareness” as well as how the use of language conventions affect away messages. In particular, Nastri used Searle’s five speech acts model—assertive, directive, commisive, expressive, and declarative—to analyze away messages.

The following are five away messages taken randomly from my AIM buddylist; I coded them in the way that Nastri did.

A: I'm studying! be proud.

This can be broken down into two separate speech acts—“I’m studying!” and “be proud”—the first part of which is an assertive while the second part is, quite surprisingly, a directive. The first part informs the audience (i.e. causes the audience to be aware) of what this person is up to. In the second portion, the person who wrote this message is telling, or directing, the receiver to be proud of her that she is studying.

No language conventions are used.

B: GRAB

It is unclear what is intended by this away message. If taken as the capitalized version of the word “grab”, this would take on the literal meaning of “grab” and expressed in a way that probably mean “grab firmly” (due to the capitalization). In this case, the author of the away message might command his audience to grab firmly onto something…though that doesn’t make much sense. So the audience is forced to come up with an alternative. Perhaps this is an acryonym for something. What’s the acryonym? One suggestion might be that only those close to the author would know. Thus, he is using common ground shared between his close friends to relay a message that others wouldn’t understand.

C: brushing teeth

Assertive. No conventions used.

D: Head's not in good shape. I'll have to readjust it later on.

This away message can be, again, broken down into two parts. The first part is an assertive—the author is informing the receiver of the condition of his head. The second part is a commissive. By saying “I’ll have to readjust it later on”, the author is commiting himself to “readjusting” his head “later on”, whatever that might entail. No language conventions are used.

E: around

Assertive.

Nastri made three hypotheses: 1.) Away messages are mainly assertive, commissive, and expressive speech acts. 2.) The more involved IM users are in group activities, the more likely they will use common ground based conventions in their IM away messages. And 3.) Greater experience with IM should correlate with increased use of CMC conventions in away messages. While hypothesis 1 is proven, hypothesis 2 and 3 are invalid. For hypothesis 2, there was no correlation between the number of group activities that the user is involved in and the likeliness they will use common ground based conventions in their away messages. For hypothesis 3, a negative correlation was found between the experience a user has with IM and his/her frequency of using CMC conventions in away messages.

I agree with Nastri in that I also think the purpose of away messages is to inform others of your whereabouts or of the current happenings, or any other relevant information that would indicate the germaneness of the away message. As a result, it is only logical that assertive speech acts would make up the majority of away messages, followed by commissives and directives. Of course, there is no guarantee that all away messages will be like this, as, often, the information found in away messages are actually uninformative and barely reveal any information at all about the author.

A#7 - Away Messages

M1: work..leave me a cool voicemail or text msg for when im on break!

-This message has two speech acts: an assertive and a directive. The assertive is the statement of “work,” which is a fact that this person is working. The rest of the message is a command for people reading the away message to do something. The CMC convention used is “msg.” No common ground was used in this away message.

M2: scheduling/homeworking

-This is an assertive as it states facts about what this person is doing. No CMC conventions or common ground used.

M3: It's always the crazy times...

-This is a quotation from a song. Common ground of the song is needed to know this, though upon speaking with this person, I found out the person didn’t expect anyone to know anything about the song. The common ground is therefore in knowing (as I did) that this person almost always quotes a song in his/her away message.

M4: First day back and already going nuts!!!!

-This message has two speech acts: an assertive and an expressive. The assertive is the assertion of the fact that it’s this person’s “first day back,” while the expressive is the showing of emotion about “already going nuts.” There are no CMC conventions or common ground used.

M5: classes, errands, lifting

-This is an assertive about activities this person is doing. There are no CMC conventions and common ground is needed to know that “lifting” means lifting weights.

I found it fairly easy to code for the speech acts. Simply determining which speech act is being used is not very difficult. Determining common ground language conventions was a little more difficult, as it can be unclear if some conventions are meant to include a specific audience with common ground (for example, a sentence like “I’m eating bananas” could be an inside joke and/or refer to the person’s current action as an assertive). However, determining the CMC conventions was straight forward. Determining humor must be very difficult considering the common ground aspect of humor as well as the fact that there is no way for the person writing the message to show he/she was trying to be funny – it’s a product of common ground and the reader’s personality and mood.

The approach taken in this paper overlooks a few keys elements of away messages, partly through oversimplification. For one, the idea that speech acts alone are useful seems to be an oversimplification. The use of punctuation, capitalization, fonts, text and background colors, emoticons and even text-based drawings, are not included in this analysis. These other parts of away messages can add emotion – an effective of sorts – to even the simplest of assertives. For example: lifting? Lifting :-<>

Overlooking declarations may have been troublesome as well. What if a person is announcing the winner of his SECRET NCAA tournament pool? That would be a verdictive. The same goes for effectives, as a person could easily announce: “Edit meeting at 7 or you’re fined,” having instructed someone or some people to check the away message.

I found the idea that participating in activities would create more common-ground-based messages to be a tenuous one. Just because one could use away messages for expressions doesn’t mean one would want to express your inside jokes with activity groups to the whole world. Furthermore, away messages are likely to be directed at people who would talk to you online, and participation in an activity doesn’t mean you would normally talk to those people who are in the activity with you online.

It makes sense to me that assertives would be the most commonly used speech act, and I think the conclusions about the functions of away messages were also very accurate. However, I think that the analysis of humor would have better been served by asking the participant post-analysis if there was humor intended. (Is that okay, showing the participants which messages were analyzed?)

Assignment #7- Speech Acts

Here are the five away messages:
Message 1: work
This message is assertive because it states that the AIM user is working. An expression like this is often found in away messages.

Message 2: freshie girls sg 9:00 PM nanticoke 111
This message is also assertive, although to some people it may be seen as a directive (ie, go to this event). Some common ground is required to understand this message. Something has to be known about this person to understand that sg stands for "small group". Also it may take a college student to pick up on the fact that "nanticoke 111" refers to a building and room combination on a campus. Unlike the examples in the paper, these words are not slang (like "libe" but are merely places known only to those who have been to the campus.

Message 3: I am away from my computer right now.
This is an assertive message that is one of the default away messages on AIM. As such, it can be considered a CMC convention.

Message 4: watching requiem for a dream
This is another assertive message, and one of the few which give details on what the person is doing. Interestingly enough, it is ambiguous as to whether he is actually away from the computer- he may be watching the movie right on the computer.

Message 5: i need to buy someone a big ol' present for being the best
This is a commissive message since it states that the person needs to get something done. Common ground would be required to figure out who the "someone" is and whether the person who put up the away message is being humorous or sarcastic or is actually gone shopping at the moment, or something in between.

I found that the messages are fairly easy to code, although I had to keep certain principles in mind. For example, I think that sharing common ground with someone can interfere with looking at the message holistically, as the different levels of understanding can lead to questioning the intentions of the message owner.

Also, it seems that most messages don't have either common ground based conventions or CMC conventions. This may further support the evidence that experienced IM users use fewer CMC conventions than new users, but it also makes the convention categories not very useful. Maybe every message has to go into one of the two categories, but in that case I would be hard-pressed to choose one for any given message.

Assignment 7

Following are the five away messages I chose to code:

1. First day back and already going nuts!!!!

This away message contains two speech acts. The first ("First day back") is assertive and is based on common ground, because it is not immediately apparent that it is her first day back at college. The second speech act ("already going nuts!!!!") is expressive - it describes the way she is feeling. It also contains emphasized punctuation, a CMC convention.

2. Time for food......:-D hit up da cell..... Muah!

This message contains three speech acts. The first ("Time for food......:-D") is assertive and contains the CMC conventions of ellipses and emoticons. The second ("hit up da cell .....") is directive and contains ellipses and an intentional misspelling - both CMC conventions. The final speech act ("Muah!") is expressive; she is conveying her emotions.

3. Sleeping - will wake in x hours, where x is a real number on the interval [0,2]

This contains two speech acts. The first ("Sleeping") is assertive. The second part is commissive - he is committing himself to waking up within the specified amount of time.

4. class, work

This message is comprised of two speech acts. The first ("class") is assertive – he is saying that he is currently in class. The second is open to interpretation, but most likely commissive. One assumes that the "work" will take place after class, and he is thus committing himself to working sometime in the future.

5. eating dinner... be back later

This contains two speech acts. The first ("eating dinner...") is assertive and contains ellipses, a CMC convention. The second ("be back later") is commissive.

Coding the away messages was fairly easy. There were a few times when the interpretation was a bit ambiguous (like with "Muah!" from #2), but the categories seemed to do a good job of associating each message segment with a speech act. However, as with normal language, problems can certainly appear. For example, one away message that I chose not to code is as follows: “reading an analysis of the predictive power of credit rates in the recovery of the 1994 currency crisis in Mexico.” This is clearly assertive, but should it also be coded as being based on common ground? The basic meaning of statement is completely understood without knowing the author; there are no “foreign” words that are only in the lexicon of people who share the same common ground. Crucially, however, the intended tone and effect of the message is entirely dependent on the author. It can be a completely serious statement, or it could be meant to be ironic. Would the message, therefore, be coded as containing humor and/or being based on common ground? If so, coding would require an intimate knowledge of the people writing the away messages. Should this bias be a part of the study?

Additionally, there was one other type of away message that I was surprised to see did not end up in the study - the question, or interrogative speech act. For example, an away message could say, "mike, when do you want to meet?" This person is awaiting a response from Mike, and will be able to see it when he returns to his computer. It is clear that this contains an element of common ground; however, the speech act itself cannot be classified by the categories listed in the paper. Why was this omitted? Was it for some reason assumed that this sort of question would not appear?

#7

1.
"Jorge's AIM study Homework ... I might be studying you right now as you read this...



Just kidding!"

Three speech acts:
* "Jorge's AIM study Homework ..."
Assertive: asserting that the user is doing homework, and which homework. For full understanding, assumes that reader is also in 450.
* "I might be studying you right now as you read this..."
Assertive and humorous: the user is asserting the possiblity that he is studying the person reading his away message as they read it. No conventional content.
* "Just kidding!"
Expressive and humorous: the user is expressing a light-hearted feeling and negating his previous speech act. No conventional content.

2.
"back into quarantine"

One speech act. Commissive. Assumes that you know this person is sick.

3.
"I'm not here right now"

One speech act. Assertive. No conventional content.

4.
"Ah child of countless trees
Ah child of boundless seas
What you are, what you're meant to be"

One speech act. Quotation. Assumes the common ground of having knowledge of Grateful Dead lyrics.

5.
"class"

One speech act. Assertive. No conventional content.

I believe the study's approach accurately captures the generally informative nature of away messages well, particularly with humor and common ground (e.g. inside jokes), but glosses over some interesting complexity in some areas. In my experience, people use quotations in away messages in a variety of ways, and I think simply grouping quotations as one category of speech act is over simplifying. A quote could be assertive, expressive, or any of the other categories of speech act. For example, somebody might conventionally use the away message "once more unto the breach" to signify that they are taking an exam: this is an assertion which relies upon convention (a friend's knowledge of what this quote as an away message signifies), and could also be called humorous (comparing an exam and war). On the other hand, people often quote song lyrics to express how they are feeling. I think the method of the study could have been much improved by using 'quotation' as a binary characteristic of the message, much like 'humorous', as opposed to a category of speech act.

Assignment #7

Following are the five away messages I coded.

Away message 1: it feels like we've been back at school for longer than a week

This message is Expressive, because it is stating the feelings (exhausted, sick of school) of the girl who left the message. This message also includes common ground, because it requires the knowledge that she was a college student who had been on spring break two weeks ago.

Away message 2: around until chess club...

This message is Assertive, because it states what the author was doing at the moment. It also includes a common CMC convention, ellipses, which help to provide ambiguity about what the person is actually doing at the time, or where they actually are.

Away message 3: I'm here leave me a message

The first part of this message is an Assertive, and the second part a Directive. The first part states where he is, and the second part tells the reader how they “should” react, by leaving him a message.

Away message 4: away game...be back around 6 or 7ish

This message is also Assertive, stating what the user is doing at the moment, and giving information about when he will return. This message includes common ground, requiring the knowledge that he plays on a baseball team. This also includes ellipses, a CMC convention, but also just a form of shorthand.

Away message 5: zzzzzzz

This message is again Assertive. It states, indirectly, that the user is sleeping/napping. It includes a CMC convention, intentional misspelling. This isn’t really a word, but simply an attempt at conveying a sound, in text.

Coding these messages for the different types (Assertive, etc) was not too difficult, and I think that the 6 different categories do a good job at breaking the away messages up into the different meanings they have, and the different reasons people having for using away messages. By eliminating quotes, you find that most Assertives are simply statements of what a person is doing at that moment. The fact that the majority of away messages were Assertives supports the idea that an important function of away messages is to note availability, and to indicate virtual presence (or absence). I feel that adding quotes into the analysis would have brought in more interesting and complicated results.

Common ground and CMC conventions were both slightly more difficult, and complicated. Common ground can be found in many different types of messages, and it is not very clear what common ground in away messages indicates. Although I observed two messages which seemed to contain common ground, the messages would still be understandable, to a slightly lesser degree, to someone who did not share this common ground. So, perhaps common ground is simply a shortcut, so people do not need to elaborate with unnecessary details; people might try to write messages that the most people can understand, while putting forth the least amount of effort, and this might just bring about something that looks like common ground.

CMC conventions were also present in many of my observed messages, and the reason for this was also not very evident. In two examples, people used ellipses, but for apparently very different reasons (ambiguity and shorthand). Also, one person’s away message just was zzzzzzz. This could be looked at as a CMC convention, but it also is just a way of writing a sound we would make (snoring), that is associated with sleeping. Since I would guess that most people would interpret this message the way the user indicated, is he really using a convention? Or is this simply the right way to write his intended message? This away message is much more complicated than it appears, and the way it is coded does not give a good indication of what the away message actually is. It is much more interesting to consider how much we interpret this message, and get meaning out of a non-English string of characters.

Assignment #6

A relationship between individuals extends beyond intermittent exchanges and extends to the mental representations which they keep of each other. Preserving face is a practice that entails purposeful manipulation of what another sees in order to alter the composited makeup of a representational model of oneself as held by another. Different actions may or may not be consciously acknowledged; the use of euphemism in one circumstance but not in another is probably an example of a face-preserving practice that is not fully conscious.

Ambiguity is important in exchanges because it provides a basis for plausible mistruths about one's behavior. These can be used to obfuscate motivations and the "actual" meaning of actions when to explain in full detail would be detrimental to the relationship. There is an implicit element of trust involved: to say, "I did not return your call because I was busy," asks that the one being spoken to trust that whatever the speaker was busy with was, indeed, important. There is an appreciable difference between, "My cell phone battery died" and, "I had a hangover and didn't want to hear your nasal voice." Using the former explanation in place of the latter as an excuse as to why someone couldn't get through to you one morning ostensibly places the onus on equipment failure. While it is still the user's responsibility to keep a cell phone's battery charged, the focus of fault is shifted onto the phone, and there is maintained an element of ambiguity such that it is conceivable that it was through happenstance or circumstances beyond reasonable expectation that the call did not go through.

I have utilized situational ambiguity to avoid contact with someone recently by leaving up an away message in my AIM client that claimed I was doing laundry. At the outset, I was, but I left it up while playing a game with my brother in order to keep from having to speak with some people who would otherwise be able to demand my attention and whom I could not brush off with the excuse that I was playing a game. By leaving up an away message that I had set some thirty minutes before while performing a mundane chore, someone trying to contact me would not be able to determine if I was still engaged in the chore, away from the computer for an otherwise legitimate reason, purposely leaving the message up to avoid communicating, or simply not engaged in chatting and leaving the message up because I hadn't checked to take it down yet.

It is also possible to utilize ambiguity with regards to the technical status of a communication channel to avoid communication. I have claimed difficulty in understanding someone through interference on my end in a cell phone conversation in order to force a finish to a call that I didn't want to spend my time on.

Assignment #1, a bit late

The division of joint action into entry, body, and exit appears a bit arbitrary, but it is certainly not without merit. Any analysis of such a construct is more or less fair game, as it is one that exists only in the mind of an analyst, and if it serves to capture or illustrate a particular aspect of joint actions in an illuminating fashion, then it is justified.

IRC (Internet relay chat) is a protocol for chat that provides for one-on-one and group discussion in rooms, which are commonly called "channels." It is a mediated setting that allows for some unique discussion behaviors, as popular rooms on large networks will have in excess of one thousand users logged on simultaneously. Many will be sitting idle, but if even a small fraction of them is engaged in discussion, there is a great deal of cross-talk. In many of the
channels on Freenode, a network centered around discussion on open source and free software projects, there exist a number of large channels whose primary purpose is to help users of a particular project to troubleshoot problems they encounter. Conversations weave through each other with participants dropping in and out. There are markers that signify beginnings and ends to helping an individual with a particular problem, but passive listeners are free to jump into an ongoing conversation at any time and are just as free to drop out again. Typical transcripts include exchanges such as:

-!- A (user@hostname) has joined #gentoo
<A> i cannot emerge gcc 5.3 -- it shows up in portage but can't
    find the tarball anywhere when i try to emerge it
<B> what you should do is check it out from CVS
<C> A:  when was the last time you did an 'emerge sync'?
<A> hello can anyone help me with this?
<B> A: please read the topic
<B> D: the ebuilds tend to lag behind because the maintainer's lazy;
    i'm trying to take it over so that we aren't stuck with old
    versions
<D> okay
<A> C: last weekend
<C> A: okay, check the URL in the topic. there's a bug in the ebuild,
    that version number is wrong.
<A> thanks, i'll look at it
-!- A (user@hostname) has quit [Default quit message]

Along with issues that are typical to other Internet real-time chat systems, such as replies to comments becoming interleaved with each other, there is the issue of determining who exactly is involved in a conversation. In the above example, A joins a channel with a specific question in mind and asks it. This is considered polite behavior, as the channel is there to field such questions and it is considered a waste to ask if one can ask a question or to give any sort of
introduction. There are already several conversations going on, and the first line subsequent to A's request for help has nothing to do with him. A, in asking his question, is waiting for a response from anyone in the channel. In a crowded channel in which text scrolls steadily, a single line may go unnoticed, so it is common practice to preface comments targeted at a particular individual with their name. Once dialog has been engaged, if there are several comments coming from both participants in rapid succession this name may be dropped, as with B's first comment in the sample transcript, as it is understood between both participants that any comment coming from the other individual will probably be targeted at them.

In discussions such as these, the beginning of any discussion of a technical question is asking the question itself. Dialog may then be pursued between two or more participants as the actual body of the exchange. The primary marker indicating that one is answering another's question is by addressing them directly through use of their name. An actor may be engaged in multiple threads of conversation at a given time, either helping or receiving help from several other actors at once.

The end of an exchange may be signified by words of thanks (or of invective) and is often followed by departure from the channel.

Assignment #6 - Option 1

Due to the passive effects of mediation, ambiguities in non-FtF conversation naturally exist. Aoki and Woodruff argue that people today deliberately use these properties for their own purposes, creating active effects of mediation. This is just one of the "measures people take to preserve face for themselves and for others", which is one of the critical components of social interaction.

In my experience, I think even children are able to understand this concept in order to exploit the medium of the telephone for their own purposes. When I was in fifth grade, a boy in my class would call my house often. When I did not wish to speak to him, I would hang up the phone after my mother handed the phone to me. He would call back and ask what had happened, and I would tell him that I did not know. For older people, this action would be suspicious, but he did not question my intent at the time.

Nowadays, I think the ambiguity of a medium like the cell phone is so well understood that we automatically assume others will use this ambiguity for their own active effects. This can be illustrated in the following interaction between my friend and me:

Friend: [talks loudly on his cell phone while others around him are studying quietly]
Me: [playfully grabs his cell phone and hangs up]
Friend: "Hey! I was on the phone! [laughs] That's ok, I'll just tell him it got cut off."

In this instance, I assumed that my friend would not be offended if I hung up his cell phone, because I knew he would use the ambiguity of this medium to pretend that bad reception caused his call to stop abruptly. If I had known that it would appear as if my friend had hung up on his friend intentionally, then I would not have taken his phone.
However, since calls often end in this way because of bad reception, I knew his friend would accept this excuse.

Assignment #6- (1)

Aoki and Woodruff discuss the idea that ambiguity can sometimes be a useful technique for managing face. In a conversation that ends in a miscommunication (it is somehow interrupted or doesn’t come to a conclusion desired by both parties), everyone is better off if there is a reason for the miscommunication. This reason could be expanded upon and allow one person to justify ending the communication and the other person to accept it, while saving face and avoiding a potentially rude encounter. Ambiguity is necessary for such events, because it allows the parties to construct a reason that is logical and places blame on some external force (for example, the cell phone battery dying). It is especially useful in our modern world, where so many communication systems compete for our limited attention resources. One can’t assume an action is intentional if he or she hasn’t observed it and is forced to assume (or accept) an explanation.

One of my examples is the away message on AIM. It gives me great flexibility in managing potentially unwanted discussions. Sometimes I can make it clear that I’m not home (a message such as “class” or “Wegmans”), but I can also put up something like “leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” Here I’m free to choose who to respond to quickly and who to take my time with, without letting anyone know if I’m actually in front of my computer. In a way, it’s the opposite of a lease- it doesn’t give someone a right to contact me, but I can choose how long I would be expected to respond.

Another example, which is particularly flexible, is email. I often get 20-30 emails a day, and there are often a few which I’d rather not answer right away (I want to formulate an answer carefully because it is in response to a resume, or I just don’t want to reply to that person). So in order to not make myself feel guilty about ignoring the email, I leave it open on my desktop. When I can I go through the open emails and respond as I see fit, perhaps including an explanation for the delay. For an unwanted email I can say that I didn’t see it in my inbox, when really all this time it was open and available for me too read.

#6: Ambiguity

Aoki and Woodruff discuss ambiguity in communication as a face-saving mechanism and social necessity. Specifically, they focus on how communication technologies provide a great amount of flexibility in terms of interpreting unresponsiveness. They believe that ambiguity is an important part of preserving self-image and that communication systems should incorporate it into their designs.

In face-to-face conversation, A’s actions are directly observable by B. A cannot ignore B without an acceptable reason and still expect to save face. On the other hand, unresponsiveness over mediated (i.e., technology based) communication does not have to be explained. During a telephone conversation, for example, B is not privy to all of A’s actions. As a result, B is prone to respond to unresponsiveness in the most face-saving manner possible. For example, if B is talking to A on the phone and the connection is suddenly broken, B can respond by either blaming A or the connection. Whatever B actually believes, he is likely to act as though he thinks the connection was at fault. By doing this, he saves face by avoiding direct confrontation with A and maintains harmony between them.

One example involves a conversation I had using instant messaging. A friend sent me a link that I was not particularly interested in visiting at the time. Since, as discussed above, my friend could not directly observe my actions, I was free to use a white lie and say that I was working on a project and did not have time to click the link. My friend was free to believe – or even explicitly state – that I was lying. However, to maintain social harmony, he decided to ostensibly accept my assertion. To further preserve face by convincing him that I was not ignoring him, I told him that I would look at the link when I had time.

Another time, I received a text message from my friend that I did not feel like answering. When I met him later, he confronted me; I told him that my phone was accidentally set to silent mode, and I did not realize that I had received any messages. As in the above example, my friend was prone to accept my explanation in order to preserve our harmonious social relationship.

#6-Aoki and Woodruff's Ambiguity Analysis

Aoki and Woodruff explained that there are two factors that account for ambiguity in mediated communication settings. One is passive effects which the medium itself brings. In all media other than face-to-face, this is valid. Due to the fact that the communicators cannot see each other (separated by a medium), ambiguities, such as lack of facial expression feedback, are present. The other factor, active effects, are those that happen when "participants try to influence how others are accounting for their own actions". Because communication happens through a channel, the accuracy and precision of information can be altered by the participants to their advantage in social interactions so as to preserve face. "The idea is not merely to try to hide the truth, or to try to convince someone of an untruth, but rather to multiply the possible situations so that negative formulations can be avoided if mutually desired."

An example of ambiguity as it pertains to me is that sometimes when talking to someone, whom I don't really want to talk to, via instant messenger, I'll reply this person rather slowly, to indicate to him/her that either I'm busy, I'm not around, there are others around me, or other construals which the person might come up with. I do this because, in this communication setting, I can, meaning that there's a large chance the other person might not attribute the reason for my slowness in replies to the fact that I don't want to talk to him/her. This preserves face for me and him/her because direct confrontation/offense is avoided.

Another example is that in text messenging, I sometimes don't reply people whom I'm upset with. This causes ambiguity in their case because they don't know (for sure) if I'm avoiding them on purpose, or because I didn't get their message.

3-13 A6 - #1

Aooki and Woodruff explain that every conversation is potentially face-threatening encounter. There are many ways to deal with this potential threat, and as Aooki and Woodruff state, the medium of communication (or lack of it) can make some strategies for maintaining face more effective than others. In this study, the researchers looked at ambiguity in conversation as a means of maintaining face. Research has generally dealt with conversational means for saving face. Aooki and Woodruff, however, looked at the use of ambiguity that takes advantage of the various differences in (lightweight) communication technologies, in order to maintain face. This ambiguity can be intentional (active) or come about unintentionally (passive), but in both cases the ambiguity is a result of the medium chosen and can help maintain face. In terms of active ambiguity, a person can use the ambiguity in a medium to his/her advantage to make messages unclear, such as hanging up on someone on a cell phone and afterward saying the connection was lost. This kind of act is a form of plausible deniability.

Avoiding interaction is one way in which you can be ambiguous. The research refers to the use of hand-held radio devices and the delays in response of its users. This is the conversational level of ambiguity, in which the actual act of talking can be delayed.

I have used this level of ambiguity to my advantage on certain occasions, especially on the Facebook. On one occasion, I received a message through the web site from a person I barely knew, and didn’t really feel like responding to. So, I waited almost a month before I responded, and attributed the delayed response to being very busy with my job (it was the summer). Not only did I outright lie, but ironically, by ignoring this person I made him feel like I was altering my busy day to respond, and therefore made him feel more important, maintaining our (positive and his negative) face. I used the distance between us to my advantage to “release [myself] from responsiveness,” as well as the constraints of the medium to create plausible deniability, use the reviewability of the message, and the lack of mobility of the site. He would have little reason not to believe my assertion because these things create ambiguity, as he is unable to tell when I checked for the message or how long it took me to respond.

Another level of ambiguity is accomplished at the associational level, in which one person can control who he/she interacts with. This is a form of lease control in that the actual channel for communicating is made available (or not). The reading uses the example of a student, her cell phone, and her choice to make its number available or not.

Like the example in the reading, I control leases with my own cell phone. I rarely give out my cell phone number, and sometimes, I won’t answer if I don’t want to talk to the person. For example, one time my boss called my cell phone and I didn’t feel like answering because I thought I would be forced to do work that I didn’t have time to do. I called back the next day and said my cell phone had been off because it died. The ambiguity of the medium — because my intentions and actions were indeterminable — allowed me to pretend this, while maintaining my own face. I controlled who I leased to in this way.

#6 — Ambiguity in Communication

Aoki & Woodruff argue that ambiguity is a very useful thing in communication, as it allows flexibility in "accepted explanations" for face-maintaining maneuvers. For Aoki & Woodruff, what's important in potentially awkward situations is not the truth of the participants' intentions, but what they can claim their intentions are. For example, if person A decides they no longer wish to talk to person B online, they can simply ignore B's messages and claim they were away from their desk (if they just don't want to talk to them at a particular time), or block the person permanently, and claim they've stopped using AIM or aren't online much anymore (since people on your block list cannot see if you're online). If the cause of a delayed, lapsed, or nonexistent response to communication attempts is ambiguous, that ambiguity can be used by either or both initiator and receiver to avoid an embarrassing situation.

Earlier this year, the NOC revamped it's power infrastructure, so all of CIT's servers were powered down and taken offline for a few hours while the switchover of the infrastructure was done. My boss asked me to help out by being awake to check on all the server's when they came back up to make sure all of our services and applications were okay. Unfortunately, the servers were coming back online at 7 am on a Saturday morning. Halfway through checking out our servers, I fell asleep in front of my computer, which of course would be just about when my boss called me to report one problem he had found. The call woke me up, but I took a few seconds to really regain consciousness, so I called him back and told him I missed his call because I'd been in the bathroom to avoid admitting I'd fallen asleep when I was supposed to be doing work.

I have also used the standard avoidance strategies described in Aoki & Woodruff numerous times, both with cell phones and with AIM. If somebody ims me who I do not want to talk to, I will simply ignore their message and claim absence if I run into them later, or claim being busy if I neglect to pick up the phone or call someone back.

Assignment #6 - Design Critique

The case of the push-to-talk phones has many benefits in the case of allowing for ambiguity, but there are many problems it also causes. One feature of the phones is that as long as they are on, the phone will transmit a message. In one example, person A might send a message to person B, and person B may not respond. A doesn’t know why B isn’t responding, and this creates the ambiguity that the authors say is good for communication. The trouble with this, however, is that without a response, A doesn’t know how to act in return. If A assumes that B simply didn’t get the message because they were out of the room, they may continue sending B messages on a periodic basis, to see if B has returned. Or, A could assume that B was busy doing something else, and simply wait for B to respond. In the first situation, B might have gotten the message, and simply didn’t want to respond, and then he will have to listen to all of the following messages that A sends. In the second situation, B might have been in another room, never even heard the message at all, and would have no idea that A is waiting for a response. While this creates ambiguity, I would argue that this ambiguity is destructive to the conversation, because there is no way of knowing what the proper response should be.

I think this could very easily be corrected, by the addition of a simple feature to the phones that allow users to set their status, analogous to an away message on Instant Messaging programs. If the phones had a dial that you could set to a condition such as available, busy, or away, this would allow for ambiguity, but also eliminate the confusion illustrated above. If you left the room, you could set your phone to away, and then when someone tried to talk to you they would receive a signal that let them know you were away. Another setting would be ‘busy,’ when you were around your phone, but unable to take messages – perhaps in a meeting or in class. This still allows for ambiguity, because you could set your phone to say you were busy even if you were available, in order to avoid a call you did not want to take.

Assignment #5

For my analysis, I chose an article from BBC News online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4781586.stm)
that spoke about an article in the China Daily; I compared this article with the actual article from China Daily (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-03/07/content_527423.htm). The China Daily article praised Ang Lee's award for Best Director, while also speculating that political motives could have been why his movie did not win for Best Movie. The BBC News article criticized the China Daily for leaving out part of Lee's speech in their article.

While BBC News presented the facts of the situation, then followed it by the reporter's opinion, China Daily relied on quotes from a variety of individuals to convey the meaning of the article. This quality made it appear as if China Daily was attempting to make it seem like the reporter's views were shared by many across the country. As a result of this method, the China Daily article contained much more coreferring expressions than the BBC News article. In speech, coreferring expressions should be more common than in text, as these expressions are a sign of the speaker's confidence that he has established common ground with his listener. Another reason for the abundance of coreferring expressions in the China Daily article can be attributed to the fact that since the newspaper is based overseas, the author of the article was probably unfamiliar with the conventions of English text. Possibly, he did not realize that it is crucial not to aim for efficiency or to assume common ground when addressing a wide audience through news articles.

For example, BBC News wrote that "Lee's film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won the best foreign language film Oscar in 2001, did well at the international box office but not in China." In the next sentence, rather than continuing with "he", the author refers to Lee as "The 51-year-old director". In contrast, the China Daily article writes that "Sai Ren, a film critic with CCTV6, a film channel, noted that Lee's achievement had little to do with Chinese cinema. He suggested that people watch the show just to enjoy it." In this situation, the "he" and "it" are very unclear.

Assignment #5 - Coreferences in Jon Stewart's Opening Monologue

Monk et al. explains that coreferencing expressions are third-person pronouns such as “it,” “that,” “they,” “he” and “she,” which refer back to a given noun. Rather than repeating these noun phrases, a speaker will use these coreferences to be more efficient in message length. More importantly, they are used by the speaker to show that common ground is thought to have been established by the speaker, and that the message can therefore be shortened to get straight to the point.

In Jon Stewart’s opening monologue, he does a brief overview of storylines related to the Academy Awards, while interjecting humor periodically. Since it was his opening lines of the show, I initially expected that they would be used rarely. Furthermore, given that there was humor involved, I decided that perhaps there would be even fewer coreferences because humor relies on everyone understanding what has been said, and the less ambiguity, the more likely the audience will understand the jokes and references. Furthermore, humor in this kind of speech is generally limited to a few sentences, as new topics are constantly being brought up, which I though also would limit coreferences.

I looked at the question, to what extent does Stewart use these coreferences in his opening monologue? I came up with the following numbers:

“it”: 11
“that”: 1
“they”: 1
“he”: 1
“she”: 0
“one”: 0
“him”: 0
“her”: 3
“them”: 2
“himself”: 0
“herself”: 0
“itself”: 0
“his”: 1
“hers”: 0
“its”: 0
“there”: 3
“their”: 2
“theirs”: 0

I found that my predictions were true very much so except for one expression — the word “it.” Stewart almost always used direct speech with pronouns, keeping his comments fairly short and moving topics fairly rapidly, which certainly contributed to his lack of coreferences. In general, he stayed away from them, which I think was a function of this speech being at the beginning of the show, Stewart wanting to be very clear and concise, and Stewart not having material to reference form earlier (as predicted by the interview posting). However, the word “it” was constantly being used, probably because Stewart was describing generalized trends or making general observations fairly often. Otherwise, with almost no exceptions, Stewart referred to actors, pundits and even the democratic party by their actual names, and never coreferenced them even if he was still referring to them in sentence. I believe that this has to do with the function of the speech and the lack of common ground previously established.

#5 — Professional and Amateur Media on the Academy Awards

I am looking at the difference in writing between professional media (newspapers) and amateur media (blogs) in Oscars coverage. Specifically, I am measuring coreferring expressions and explicit topic openings (Monk et al., 131) in a Times article and a Pajiba post.

My expectation is that, due to the more relaxed and casual nature of a blog, Pajiba will use more coreferring expressions than the Times. Due to fairly strict style guides used by professional journalists, I expect the Times will use more explicit noun phrases to identify its topics. I also expect this result because a blog post is more conversational in that it allows public feedback in the form of comments, so an author will generally not be as concerned with getting their piece exactly right the first time around.

	Coreferring Expressions	Explicit Topic Openings	Ratio (coref/explicit)
Times	24	24	1
Pajiba	10	17	0.588

One of the things I noticed while tallying the results was that coreferent expressions appeared much more frequently in quotes included in the articles. If the marks from quotes were not counted, the numbers were these:

	Coreferring Expressions	Explicit Topic Openings	Ratio (coref/explicit)
Times	16	21	0.761
Pajiba	4	14	0.286

Apparently my expectations were completely misplaced: not only was there a higher concentration of coreferent phrases in the Times, but a larger portion of Pajiba's coreferent phrases came from a quote than did the Times. A possible confusing factor is that while the Times article is centrally about the fight between Brokeback Mountain and Crash for Best Picture, the Pajiba post is a more wide-ranging rant about the awards. So, because the Pajiba post completely changed topic more frequently, more explicit topic identifier were necessary. The Times article, having a more thought-out structure and more overriding theme, had less need for explicit topic openers and could make better use of coreferring expressions.

Assignment #5- Comparing Track 2 in ftf and cmc

I would like to compare the CNN Larry King Live interview with Jon Stewart, which was conducted face-to-face, and an online chat session with Oscar nominee Keira Knightley, using the ideas in the Hancock and Dunham article. I would like to focus on the differences in where mistakes are made in terms of Clark's levels of communication and the kinds of mistakes and corrections that appear.
Both of these transcripts represent media where turn-taking is established to at least some degree. In FtF, naturally, turn-taking strategies are fairly clear and easily implemented because of the richness of the medium. The chat session, with its less clear structure, nevertheless also has some turn-taking rules. Simply having to press Enter to send the message and the fact that messages from all recepients scroll down in a single window forces all messages into a certain format. These messages also remain in the chat window for the duration of the conversation (or, at least long enough to allow for multiple replies and clarifications). This format seems to keep Track 2 utterances to a level nearly as low as in the FtF interview. What may also contribute to this is the relatively high level of formality- people talking with a movie star try to lay out their thoughts clearly and don't limit themselves to short, ambiguous messages.
The kinds of communication errors that do happen clearly vary by medium. In the Larry King interview, the errors were mostly at levels 3 and 4. Stewart almost always heard what King said, but may have misunderstood him and asked to clarify, as in this example:

KING: So, in other words this will be a set up?

STEWART: What will be a set up?

KING: The winners. You will know the winner before it's announced?

If this has been a chat conversation, Stewart may have been able to understand what King is talking about by looking back to words that could be understood as "this will be a set up". So he heard the message and asked for a clarification (moving up on the joint action ladder), but he was unable to refer to what he said earlier.
In the chat, on the other hand, there was confusion over low level issues related to turn-taking procedures:

jazz: KEIRA,can I ask a question?

monkaholic: Are you excited for the luncheon tomorrow??

Liera: Keira - are the film festivals fun? You went to Sundance last year didn't you?

Keira Knightley: go Jazz

Many Track 2 messages here were clarifications such as asking for permission to ask a question. Very little was miscommunicated, because once the text was sent it was either a complete sentence that could be understood or it was noticed by the message author, who then sent a correction.
To summarize, it seems to me that different media can have nearly equal numbers of Track 2 messages, but their content and intent will be different. FtF is more likely to have higher-level problems and corrections, while CMC offsets the severity of low-level problems through message persistance.

#5 - Language In Conversation: the 78th Annual Academy Awards

In examining the 78th Oscar winners' thank-you speeches, I focused on the frequency of use of coreferring expressions. The question I will answer is this: are all uses of coreffering expression based on the fact that the speaker has already established common ground? I will illustrate my answer with a couple of examples.

In Monk's article about measuring language processes, he defined coreferring expressions as words that "refer to a noun phrase in the previous turn". For example, "it", or "this", or "that", or "they/he/she" can be coreferring expressions. He believes that the use of these expressions makes the message length more efficient, and "may be taken as evidence that the speakers are confident that they have achieved common ground." Well is this the case?

After analyzing several speeches, I found that indeed, the use of coreferring expressions does mean that the speaker has already established the previous noun phrase as common ground. It should be taken into caution that, sometimes "it", "they", "this", etc. may not be used as coreferring expressions. For example, in the beginning of my last sentence, "It should be...", the "it" is not a coreferring expression, that is, the "it" does not refer to something I've said in the previous sentence. But when they are, one can be sure that common ground has already been established.

Example 1: Best Original Score - Gustavo Santaolalla
"I want to thank Ang Lee for his vision, his support, his guidance..."

Here, the coreferring pronoun "his" refers to "Ang Lee's", which Santaolalla has already introduced in the beginning of the sentence. So, common ground has been established, the audience knows that "his" refers to "Ang Lee's" and it's also efficient to say "his" instead of "Ang Lee's" each time, for the three times that he referred to Lee.

Example 2: Best Director - Ang Lee
"...First of all, i want to thank two people who don't even exist. Or I should say, they do exist, because of the imagination of Annie Proulx and the artistry of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Their names are Ennis and Jack. And they taught all of us who made "Brokeback Mountain" so much about not just all the gay men and women whose love is denied by society, but just as important, the greatness of love itself..."

Here, the coreferring pronouns are "they" and "their" which refer to the "two people who don't even exist" and later defined by Lee to be "Ennis and Jack"--the main characters of Brokeback Mountain. The way Lee used coreferring expressions is a little different than the way they were used in the previous example. In this case, Lee defined who "they" are in the first sentence ("two people who don't even exist), then proceeded to modify it ("Ennis and Jack"). In doing so, he also established common ground with the audience and cut time by just referring to "they" in later iterations.

#5, Oscar Party!!!!!

I chose to compare the use of first- and second-person pronouns (specifically, "I" and "you") in the acceptance speeches of Oscar winners. I felt that it would be interesting to see who they referred to more - themselves, or the general "you." Could this lead to some information about whether people are, on a subconscious level, more altruistic or selfish while giving acceptance speeches?

These pronouns are, according to Monk, "surface features" of conversation. They are easily and objectively measurable. Monk notes that this kind of measurement is best accomplished from a direct transcript. Rather than attempt to do this myself, I pulled a transcript from Oscar.com. Here is the speech given by Gustavo Santaolalla, winner of best original score:

Thank you so much, members of the Academy. I'm so proud to have work in this movie "Brokeback Mountain." A movie that once again showed us that love is what makes us all very similar, in spite that we can be so different. I want to thank a few people. I want to thank Ang Lee for his vision, his support, his guidance. I want to thank Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry, Annie Proulx for their inspiration. James Schamus, and David Linde everybody at Focus. Kathy Nelson. Robert Messinger at First Artists, my coproducer and brother Anibal Kerpel. My orchestrater, David Campbell, Bob Bernstein, Ron Goldstein. I want to thank my family, my wife Alejandra, my kids Anna, Luna and Don Juan, and last but not least, I want to dedicate this to my mother, a mi madre, to my country, Argentina, and to all the latinos. Para todos Latinos, muchas gracias, thank you.

A quick count reveals that he said "you" a total of only two times, while he said "I" six times. Interestingly, he only said "thank you" twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. Most of the time, he chose to begin a sentence with "I want to thank..." rather than "Thank..." or "Thank you..." This is a bit surprising (one might expect an acceptance speech to be filled with thank you's), but entirely logical. He was just bestowed with an extremely high honor; it's natural to feel a sense of self-pride and to want to reference himself directly. I think that this would be an interesting area of study - how easily does subconscious pride manifest itself in direct, vocal conversation?

Assignment #5

I analyzed an interview with Reese Witherspoon, after she won the Oscar for Best Actress. It was a question and answer session, with her at the front, and lots of reporters asking her their individual questions. The question I was trying to answer was whether there were more coreferring expressions used by Reese when answering the posed questions, or more by the interviewers, who have common ground knowledge of her, her movie, and the other questions asked?

The method of measurement was coreferring expressions, discussed in the Monk et al reading. These are expressions like “it,” “she,” and “that” which are used to refer to previous noun phrases. One example from the interview questions was: “And you spoke a lot about your grandmother. Do you think she’d be particularly proud of you?” That “she” is used to refer back to Reese’s grandmother. In Monk’s article, he mentions that these coreferring expressions are often evidence that common ground has been achieved. My question was meant to see whether Reese uses these more to show her understanding of the question, or whether the interviewers use them more to show their understanding of her background in regards to the movie and her answers to the other questions.

Here is a table which shows the data collected from the interviews:

	Question 1	Question 2	Question 3	Question 4	Question 5	Question 6	Question 7
# of coreferring expressions by Reese	0	1	0	1 / 2 (first / second question)	0	0	1 / 1 (first / second question)
# of coreferring expressions by interviewer	0	4	0	6 / 3 (first / second answer)	2	1	0 / 3 (first / second answer)

I found that Reese definitely used more coreferring expressions than the people interviewing her. Most of the time the people asking question didn’t use coreferring expressions; instead, they made sure to use specific phrases so Reese would understand the question. The interviewers were more likely to use coreferring expressions when asking a longer question. Also, they always used them (in my few examples) when they asked a follow up question, to refer to information in her first answer. Reese, however, almost always used coreferring expressions. This was partly because she would reply with long answers, and would use them to refer to things she said earlier in her answer. She also used them to respond to the main subject of the question asked by the interviewers. Although I didn't study many examples, I feel like this trend would continue, and would be supported by more data.