In the everyday exists water. It is rarely the focus of the architect nor a guiding principle in a building's planning, design and construction. Too many times it is an afterthought or seen as something that will eternally undermine the physical principles that keep a building standing. This thesis is an attempt to raise water to a position of importance from design to construction, and to establish dialogue between materials and materiality through the design of a brewery. A place to drink beer and watch the processes of water within the envelope of a brewery where water initiates a conversation between stone, wood, concrete and stainless steel. A place to experience the process of brewing beer from the viewpoint of that very process. / Master of Architecture

Cette thèse porte essentiellement sur la modélisation de dialogues multisessions, et sur la négociation, sous l'angle de la résolution d'un conflit entre plusieurs utilisateurs. Un dialogue multisession est un dialogue qui engage plusieurs utilisateurs et le système de dialogue. Il est défini comme un ensemble successif de sous-dialogues, chacun d'entre eux représentant une session spécifique entre un seul utilisateur et le système. L'enchaînement d'un dialogue multisession est divisé en trois phases : émergence, processus de négociation et notification. En se fondant sur le modèle stratégique de dialogue et sur la théorie des jeux, une gestion générique de dialogue, qui offre plusieurs avantages par une réduction maximale de la dépendance entre le modèle du dialogue et le modèle de la tâche, a été proposée. Cette gestion n'utilise que trois éléments principaux : acte de dialogue, but de dialogue et stratégie de dialogue, afin de diviser un dialogue en des thèmes différents, déterminés dans un agenda de dialogue. L'incompréhension est également traitée dans cette gestion en utilisant des marqueurs dialogiques d'incompréhension. La modélisation, ainsi que la gestion de dialogue multisession, sont développées en se fondant sur cette gestion. L'expérimentation, effectuée avec le système de dialogue Mélina, dédié au service d'organisation d'une réunion, a permis de valider et de prouver notre approche.

Cette thèse a pour objectif l’amélioration des capacités communicatives des agents logiciels en interaction avec des humains. Dans ce but, nous proposons une méthodologie basée sur l’étude d’un corpus d’interactions Homme-Homme orientées vers la réalisation d’une tâche. Nous proposons un cadre qui s’appuie sur les jeux de dialogue afin de modéliser des motifs dialogiques observés. Nous illustrons la spécification de tels jeux depuis des motifs extraits en appliquant l'ensemble des étapes de noter méthodologie à un corpus. Les jeux spécifiés sont validés en montrant qu’ils décrivent de façon appropriée les motifs apparaissant dans le corpus de référence. Enfin, nous montrons l’intérêt interprétatif et génératif de notre modèle pour le fondement du comportement communicatif conventionnel d’un agent interagissant avec un humain. Nous implémentons ce modèle dans le module Dogma, exploitable par un agent dans un dialogue impliquant deux interlocuteurs. / This research work aims at improving the communicative behaviour of software agents interacting with humans. To this purpose, we present a data-driven methodology based on the study of a task oriented corpus consisting of Human-Human interactions. We present a framework to specify dialogue games from observed interaction patterns based on the notion of social commitments and conversational gameboard. We exemplify the specification of dialogue games by implementing all the steps of our methodology ona task-oriented corpus. The produced games are validated by showing that they appropriately describe the patterns appearing in a reference corpus. Eventually, we show that an agent can take advantage of our model to regulate its conventional communicative behaviour on both interpretative and generative levels. We implement this model into Dogma, a module that can be used by an agent to manage its communicative behaviour in a two-interlocutor dialogue.

Cette thèse étudie l’Art poétique de Paul Claudel et son influence dans sa création avec un regard critique chinois. Pour éviter des interprétations excessives, nous élaborons une approche interculturelle. Dans le processus concret de la lecture, nous employons d’abord l’art de la critique des anciens esthètes chinois, résumons de manière synthétique notre ressenti intuitif inspiré par l’ensemble de l’œuvre de Claudel en deux sentiments : la marche et la fuite. Puis, nous faisons appel à la méthode traditionnelle occidentale de l’analyse textuelle et à la méthode de la recherche documentaire, afin de relier les effets aux textes. L’observation du développement et de la transformation de ces deux forces permet de traverser la complexité apparente de l’œuvre du poète, et de révéler l’influence directe et des convergences possibles entre sa pensée et la pensée orientale. / This thesis studies Art poétique of Paul Claudel and his influence in his creation with a Chinese critical perspective. To avoid excessive interpretation, I develop an intercultural approach. In the actual process of reading, I use the classical Chinese aesthetic and literary theories to summarize synthetically the aesthetic effect of the works as a whole, and proposes the two kinds of effects as “walk” and “escape”. Then I use the traditional western method of textual analysis and the method of documentary research, to link effects to text. The observation of the development and transformation of these two forces can cross the apparent complexity of the poet’s work, and reveal the direct influence and possible convergences between his thought and Eastern thought.

Thesis advisor: James T. Bretzke / Starting from the reality that we all live in multicultural pluralistic societies, and as such we cannot ignore each other but all must share our respective religious-cultural heritages and learn from one and another, this dissertation argues that although the theological dialogue among religions is to be promoted and developed constantly, we also have to give major space to other forms of dialogue, namely a dialogue based on bioethical issues and/or daily life-related problems that is part of our everyday religious experience. Therefore, in order to show this is possible, although with many difficulties to be faced along the way, the dissertation proposes disability as a common ground for Muslim-Christian dialogue and collaboration in the context of Turkey. The dissertation is structured into four chapters. Chapter I is focused on some characteristics of interreligious dialogue and, more particularly, on Muslim-Christian dialogue and disability. This chapter provides a broad descriptive introduction and establishes the framework within which these are considered: i.e., The Republic of Turkey, Islam and the presence of the Latin Catholic Church in Turkey. The chapter begins with a review of the foundations and history of the development of interreligious dialogue in the Catholic Church. Next, it proceeds with a presentation of Turkey and the major actors of Muslim-Christian dialogue in the country. Then, it concludes with a global focus on the situation of disability in Turkey. Chapters II and III are dedicated, respectively, to the Muslim and Catholic Church’s perspectives on disability, and so, share the same structure: Following general introductions to Islam and the Catholic Church, they analyze the Scriptures of their respective traditions, the Quran and the Bible, and their other major sources such as the Hadith and Islamic law in the former, and the Code of Canon Law, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the latter. By focusing on various topics such as marriage of persons with disabilities, abortion of disabled fetus, Christian initiation and access to the sacraments, degrees of disabilities as impediment for priestly ordination, these two chapters aim to find the reverberations of the scriptural narratives in the teachings of these two traditions. After examining the historical development of some theodicy approaches to the dilemma of human suffering, the problem of evil, the existence of disabilities and God’s love, and wisdom and justice, this chapter ends by highlighting some applications in their contemporary contexts. In this regard, Chapter II presents two examples from Turkey: the controversial Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen’s approach to people with disabilities as “garip” (piteous, pitiful) and Muslim-Turkish scholar Mustafa Naci Kula’s research on the relationship between attitudes toward persons with disabilities and religious attitudes, which has provided considerable insight on the perception of disability in Turkish society. Parallel to this, Chapter III presents a Catholic figure, Nancy Mairs, who, in her writings, by dealing with personal disabilities, offers a contemporary version of classical theodicy approaches found in Catholic teaching in thinkers such as Augustine, Aquinas, and Irenaeus. The final chapter, Chapter IV, by the method of comparison, highlights relevant commonalities and differences and proceeds by discussing some relevant issues related to Muslim-Christian dialogue. Then, by reflecting on how disability can be a common ground on which to build fertile dialogue and collaboration, it concludes with a proposal which privileges five among many other possible topics: (1) Sin and disability seen as punishment; (2) Consanguineous marriages (3rd and 4th degree); (3) Abortion as a method to prevent birth of potentially disabled child; (4) Abuse of disabled women and children; and, (5) Charity and praying together. The first topic is based on the conviction that disability is given by God as a punishment for sin; it is one of the major beliefs that is shared among Muslims and Christians. The second, third and fourth topics are related to some social problems in Turkish society, namely, consanguineous marriages, abortion as a prevention of potentially disabled children, and the abuse of women and children with disabilities. Finally, the fifth topic aims at constructing dialogue and collaboration between Muslims and Christians through charitable works in Turkey. These topics are points related to the four main forms of dialogue proposed by Dialogue and Proclamation (1991) of Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which are considered in this dissertation in a three-fold version: (1) Theological dialogue; (2) Dialogue of life experience and action; and, (3) Dialogue based on religious life experience. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Depuis deux décennies, le monde musulman, dans ses deux volets arabe et asiatique, regorge d’exemples sur la violence organisée, de la prise du pouvoir des talibans en Afghanistan, en passant par la guerre en Irak, et en atterrissant dans le berceau du Printemps arabe. Ce dernier ayant touché de nombreuses dictatures arabes dans lesquelles le dialogue s’est vu écarté de l’espace politique arabe, de par la violence et la répression sanglante des mouvements de contestation populaires contre les régimes autoritaires en place depuis des décennies. Cette vague révolutionnaire fait appel à l'urgence du "dialogue" qui s'avère une obligation générale dans le système musulman en cas de rébellion, une telle expression peut paraître inappropriée à l'Islam souvent perçu comme étant une religion de violence et de contrainte. Or, dans l’ordre international comme interne prévu par le droit musulman, il y a une concomitance de la violence et du dialogue, une coexistence de la norme et de son exception interprétée selon la nécessité, la question centrale qui se pose est celle de savoir si le dialogue, comme un instrument de règlement pacifique des différends reste alors d'actualité dans le cas de rébellion dans les sociétés arabo-musulmane. Cette thèse essaie de répondre, en premier lieu, à la question suivante pourquoi et comment le système musulman maintient-il l'obligation générale du dialogue, en tant que régime de la paix, même en cas de rébellion ou conflits armés internes dans l’Islam ? Ensuite, elle examine la résistance du régime de la paix à l'éventuel recours à la force. / Over the last two decades, the Muslim world, in his Arabic and Asian components has been witnessing organized violence, ever since the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, followed by the Iraq War, until the Arab Spring arrived in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where dialogue has been practically non-existent with the authoritarian regime who could only respond to the protests with bloody repression.This revolutionary wave of demonstrations calls for an urgent need for "dialogue", which will result in a general obligation in the Muslim system in cases of rebellion, such an expression may seem inappropriate to Islam which is often perceived as a religion of violence and coercion.However, there is a concomitance between the violence and the dialogue, and a coexistence of the rule with its exception, under the plea of necessity as per the existing norms in domestic and international Islamic law.The central question that arises is whether the dialogue, as an instrument of peaceful settlement of disputes, remains relevant in cases of rebellion and domestic armed conflicts in the Arab-Muslim societies.This thesis attempts to answer, first, to the following question: why and how does the Muslim system maintain the general obligation of dialogue, as a regime of peace, even in cases of rebellion or domestic armed conflicts in Islam. Then, it examines the resistance of the regime of peace to the eventual use-of-force.

A Spoken Dialogue System's (SDS's) dialogue strategy specifies which action it will take depending on its representation of the current dialogue context. Designing it by hand involves anticipating how users will interact with the system, and/or repeated testing and refining, and so can be a difficult, time-consuming task. Since SDSs inevitably make understanding errors, a particularly important issue is how to design ``repair strategies'', the parts of the dialogue strategy which attempt to get the dialogue ``back-on-track'' following these errors. To try to produce better dialogue strategies with less time and effort, previous researchers have modelled a dialogue strategy as a sequential decision problem called a Markov Decision Process (MDP), and then applied Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms to example training dialogues to generate dialogue strategies automatically. More recent research has used training dialogues conducted with simulated rather than real users and learned which action to take in all dialogue contexts, (a ``full'' as opposed to a ``partial'' dialogue strategy) - simulated users allow more training dialogues to be generated, and the exploration of new dialogue contexts not present in an original dataset. As yet however, limited insight has been provided as to which dialogue contextual features are important to include in the MDP and why. Indeed, a full dialogue strategy has not been learned from training dialogues with a realistic probabilistic user simulation derived from real user data, and then shown to work well with real users. This thesis investigates the value of adding new linguistically-motivated contextual features to the MDP when using RL to learn full dialogue strategies for SDSs. These new features are recent Dialogue Acts (DAs). DAs indicate the role or intention of an utterance in a dialogue e.g. ``provide-information'', an utterance being a complete unit of a speaker's speech, often bounded by silence. An accurate probabilistic user simulation learned from real user data is used for generating training dialogues, and the recent DAs are shown to improve performance in testing in simulation and with real users. With real users, performance is also better than other competing learned and hand-crafted strategies. Analysis of the strategies, and further simulation experiments show how the DAs improve performance through better repair strategies. The main findings are expected to apply to SDSs in general - indeed our strategies are learned and tested on real users in different domains, (flight-booking versus tourist information). Comparisons are also made to recent research which focuses on handling understanding errors in SDSs, but which does not use RL or user simulations.

Durant toute sa carrière, Guillaume Apollinaire n’a cessé de jeter des ponts entre la poésie et les arts. Nés de cette volonté de rapprochement, les livres de dialogue - L’Enchanteur pourrissant, Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée et Vitam impendere amori, réalisés avec André Derain, Raoul Dufy et André Rouveyre - en constituent le résultat le plus abouti. De L’Enchanteur à Vitam, cette recherche d’échange apparaît permanente et croissante ; pourtant, il semble que la critique se soit concentrée soit sur l’aspect littéraire, soit sur l’aspect artistique de ces oeuvres. C’est pourquoi, grâce à l’éclairage apporté par la littérature, l’art, l’histoire et l’histoire du livre, nous tenterons de montrer le rôle central du livre de dialogue dans le processus de création chez Apollinaire. La première partie a pour but d’expliciter les valeurs attachées au livre illustré à la fin du XIX° siècle et de présenter le contexte dans lequel est né le livre de dialogue. La seconde partie démontre que la triple collaboration Apollinaire-Derain-Kahnweiler est au coeur du dialogue qui s’engage entre les gravures et le texte de L’Enchanteur, et que ce premier ouvrage constitue le prototype de l’oeuvre illustrée à venir du poète. La troisième partie, qui étudie Le Bestiaire, montre de quelle façon il constitue une étape dans l’évolution d’Apollinaire et dans sa conception du dialogue entre les arts. La dernière partie est centrée autour du recueil méconnu Vitam Impendere amori qui constitue l’apogée de la collaboration entre le poète et l’artiste puisqu’il témoigne, après la grande rupture que constitue la Première Guerre mondiale, de la primauté de l’oeuvre sur les vicissitudes humaines. / During his entire career, Guillaume Apollinaire did not stop establishing relations between poetry and the other arts. Born of this will of linking, the “livres de dialogue” - L’Enchanteur pourrissant, Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée and Vitam impendere amori, made with André Derain, Raoul Dufy and André Rouveyre - are the most accomplished results. From L’Enchanteur to Vitam, this will for exchange is permanent and increasing; nevertheless, it seems that the critic concentrates either on the literary aspect, or on the artistic aspect of these works. That is why, thanks to the light brought by literature, art, history and book history, we shall try to show the central role of the “livre de dialogue” in Apollinaire’s process of creation. The first part aims at clarifying the values attached to the illustrated book in the end of nineteenth century and at presenting the context in which was born the “livre de dialogue”. The second part demonstrates that the triple collaboration between Apollinaire, Derain and Kahnweiler is the core of the dialogue which develops between wood engravings and text of L’Enchanteur, and that this first work constitutes the prototype of the future illustrated works of the poet. The third part, which studies Le Bestiaire, shows how it represents a milestone in Apollinaire’s evolution and in his conception of the dialogue between the arts. The last part is focused on the underestimated work Vitam impendere amori which represents the top of the collaboration between the poet and the artist: after the First World War big break, it gives evidence of the superiority of the work on trials and tribulations of human life.

L’Augustin de François de Sales est un Augustin « digéré ». A la suite de Montaigne, l’évêque de Genève s’approprie, en effet, l’oeuvre du docteur de la grâce en toute liberté. Il l’intègre, plus précisément, au sein du triple dialogue qu’il entretient avec les protestants, les humanistes et les mystiques, au soir de la Renaissance, en opérant non seulement des rapprochements particulièrement attendus, après un siècle de querelles théologiques, mais aussi des ruptures franches et de multiples dépassements. Pour parvenir à une telle assimilation, l'auteur de l'Introduction à la vie dévote puise abondamment dans la tradition théologique et mystique, qui accorde une place centrale à l’évêque d’Hippone. Il prépare aussi les décennies à venir qui seront marquées par l’augustinisme littéraire des moralistes et la fameuse querelle du pur amour. Il va sans dire que cette proximité de François de Sales avec le pessimiste auteur de La Cité de Dieu renvoie de lui une image qui tranche avec l’optimisme auquel il est généralement associé. / Francis of Sales’ Augustine is a “digested” one. Following Montaigne, the bishop of Geneva freely adopts the Doctor of Grace’s works. More precisely, he integrates it in the threefold dialogue he maintains with Protestants, humanists and mystics at the twilight of the Renaissance, making not only rapprochements, particulary expected after a century of theological quarrels, but also clear-cut breaks and several overruns. To achieve such assimilation, the author of the Introduction to the Devout Life draws on theological and mystical tradition that gives a central place to the bishop of Hippo. He prepares too the coming decades that will be marked by the literary Augustinism of moralists and the famous quarrel of pure love. It goes without saying that this proximity of Francis of Sales with the pessimistic author of The City of God conveys an image that severs with the optimism he is usually associated with.

Yes / In this paper, I would like to share some thoughts provoked by the idea of establishing ‘dialogue studies’ as a distinct academic field, as suggested in the inaugural call for contributions to the new journal. These are not meant to be exhaustive of all the relevant questions that could be considered under this heading. I do not, for example, consider the question of disciplinary contributions or boundaries. My emphasis, rather, is on questions to do with ethos and coherence. In particular, I am interested in exploring the possibility, and the challenges, of cultivating a dialogic approach to the study of dialogue itself. My reflections begin with a look at the tendency, within academia, to privilege debate as a form of communication and the question of whether we might conceive a Journal of Dialogue Studies as a forum for a different kind of exchange. I then reflect on some of the difficulties of studying dialogue itself, particularly where this involves outside observers. The final section raises some issues around ‘studying dialogue’ in relation to teaching, learning and assessment. My overall intention here is to share some current, tentative thoughts in the hope that this contributes to a dialogue on the idea, and perhaps the practice, of ‘dialogue studies’.