<p>When we converse we constantly fail to observe the rules of conversation in order to simplify and make dialogues more effective. The scriptwriters who work with TV shows use non-observances of maxims in order to evoke different feelings from their viewers. The aim of this paper was to investigate how frequently non-observances of maxims occurred in the TV shows Desperate Housewives and That 70’s Show. I examined where and why they were used as well as how often flouting was used compared to violations. The base of the study was a drama and a comedy show.</p><p>Research has shown that the maxim of relevance is most frequently used to create different comical or dramatic situations. The scriptwriters have their characters ignore what is relevant to the situations in order to make them come off as flustered, odd and stupid in humorous situations and as mysterious, cowardly, respectful or bold in dramatic situations. Also research shows that flouting occurs more frequently than violations when it comes to breaking maxims. Violations occur most often with the maxim of quality when the characters lie to mislead in order to direct blame away from him/herself. In Conclusion, this investigation has shown that non-observances of maxims are important for scriptwriters in order to create humorous and dramatic situations in verbal interaction.</p>

The aim of this study was to increase our knowledge about how the “Conversational-contact with the social services” is experienced by the parents who attend it. The research was based on a qualitative method consisting of four individual interviews. Main issues of the study: • The parents experience of the content of the meetings with the social workers • Do the parents experience that the conversational-contact has contributed to some changes in their lives? Results indicated that all parents were positiv to the conversational-contact. Afterwards they felt more secure and stable both as persons and in their role as parents. The parents experienced a change in both thoughts and how to handle troublesome situations in life. The social workers knowledge about family relations and their promotive professional approach towards the parents, was recognized as contributing to these changes. In general results agree with earlier research, except from one distinction which indicates that the social workers knowledge about the family dynamics is just as important as their approach. The interviews and the interpretation of the interviews were framed by a cognitive- and conversational perspective.

This thesis presents work in the area of computer-animatedtalking heads. A system for multimodal speech synthesis hasbeen developed, capable of generating audiovisual speechanimations from arbitrary text, using parametrically controlled3D models of the face and head. A speech-specific directparameterisation of the movement of the visible articulators(lips, tongue and jaw) is suggested, along with a flexiblescheme for parameterising facial surface deformations based onwell-defined articulatory targets. To improve the realism and validity of facial and intra-oralspeech movements, measurements from real speakers have beenincorporated from several types of static and dynamic datasources. These include ultrasound measurements of tonguesurface shape, dynamic optical motion tracking of face pointsin 3D, as well as electromagnetic articulography (EMA)providing dynamic tongue movement data in 2D. Ultrasound dataare used to estimate target configurations for a complex tonguemodel for a number of sustained articulations. Simultaneousoptical and electromagnetic measurements are performed and thedata are used to resynthesise facial and intra-oralarticulation in the model. A robust resynthesis procedure,capable of animating facial geometries that differ in shapefrom the measured subject, is described. To drive articulation from symbolic (phonetic) input, forexample in the context of a text-to-speech system, bothrule-based and data-driven articulatory control models havebeen developed. The rule-based model effectively handlesforward and backward coarticulation by targetunder-specification, while the data-driven model uses ANNs toestimate articulatory parameter trajectories, trained ontrajectories resynthesised from optical measurements. Thearticulatory control models are evaluated and compared againstother data-driven models trained on the same data. Experimentswith ANNs for driving the articulation of a talking headdirectly from acoustic speech input are also reported. A flexible strategy for generation of non-verbal facialgestures is presented. It is based on a gesture libraryorganised by communicative function, where each function hasmultiple alternative realisations. The gestures can be used tosignal e.g. turn-taking, back-channelling and prominence whenthe talking head is employed as output channel in a spokendialogue system. A device independent XML-based formalism fornon-verbal and verbal output in multimodal dialogue systems isproposed, and it is described how the output specification isinterpreted in the context of a talking head and converted intofacial animation using the gesture library. Through a series of audiovisual perceptual experiments withnoise-degraded audio, it is demonstrated that the animatedtalking head provides significantly increased intelligibilityover the audio-only case, in some cases not significantly belowthat provided by a natural face. Finally, several projects and applications are presented,where the described talking head technology has beensuccessfully employed. Four different multimodal spokendialogue systems are outlined, and the role of the talkingheads in each of the systems is discussed. A telecommunicationapplication where the talking head functions as an aid forhearing-impaired users is also described, as well as a speechtraining application where talking heads and languagetechnology are used with the purpose of improving speechproduction in profoundly deaf children. / QC 20100506

A great deal of effort has been put into developing Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) systems that provide a human-like assistant in the user interface. However, little is known whether improvements to ECA interfaces made by such efforts can ever be significant from the users point of view. I studied user experiences with ECA interfaces and evaluated the ECA style of interaction with respect to user expectation, perception, behavior and performance. I introduce a conceptual framework that offers a holistic view of the design space of ECA systems. I also have created a middleware toolkit that facilitates rapid development of application content across different speech and animation platforms. A series of user studies has been carried out to investigate the similarities and differences between human-computer interaction and human-ECA interaction and between human-ECA interaction and human-human interaction. Results from these studies provide strong evidence that people are consciously aware of the capabilities and limitations of ECAs. Traditional GUI design heuristics should be carefully followed when designing ECA interfaces. Furthermore, the results soundly suggest that designers of ECA interfaces take extra care to accommodate individual differences and preferences. Social norms that guide human-human interaction greatly affect individuals expectation and perception of ECA characteristics. The findings support the argument that drawing from both human-computer interaction and human-human interaction can be significantly advantageous to the design of both effective and affective human-ECA interaction.

This dissertation explores the impact of technology on social life. Focusing on webcam-mediated audio-visual conversations between Japanese families in the United States and their extended family members in Japan, I examine how technology participates in creating an interactional space for the families to manage intra- and intergenerational relationships. Combining ethnography with turn-by-turn analyses of naturally occurring webcam interactions, I specifically investigate how cultural, discursive, and family practices are transformed in innovative ways and how families adapt to the emerging mediated space. Looking at how interactional activities are coordinated across spaces, I show that webcam interactions constitute a new type of shared living space in which multigenerational family relationships are created and managed. I call this emerging space the virtual ie (‘house’ and ‘stem-family system’). In this virtually conjoined space, children, parents, and grandparents are visually familiarized with each other’s households and socialized to each other’s virtual presence. Even though the ie is no longer a juridical unit of co-residence, my goal is to discuss the significance of the ie in understanding how transnational Japanese families can dwell in a shared living space created by webcam interactions. My analyses demonstrate how webcam encounters create a stage for participants to perform various identities in interactions. Learning to talk and participate in such webcam interactions, children are socialized to their ie belongings and identities. Additionally, even though far-flung children do not provide physical and daily care for their parents in Japan, they actively take care of elder parents’ media environments. I demonstrate that what I call media care practices add another context for adult children living abroad to carry out their filial responsibilities. I also show that the management of webcam visual fields creates a type of social field that reflects local understandings of social positioning in ie structures. How participants decide to display themselves to others by manipulating the webcam’s visual fields provides a new way to demonstrate various social relationships and responsibilities over long distances. From this perspective, a virtual ie is not merely a reflection of an ideological understanding of Japanese families, but an interactional achievement facilitated by webcams. / text

Virtual humans and other virtual agents are becoming more common in our everyday lives. Whether in the form of phone-based personal assistants or automated customer service systems, these technologies have begun to touch more of our activities. This research aims to understand how this technology affects the way we interact with our computer systems. Using a chat bot, I studied the way a conversational computer system affects the way people interact with and perceive automated interviewing systems in two different contexts. Study 1 examines the impact of a conversational agent on behavior during deception. It found that a conversational agent can have a powerful impact on people's perception of the system, resulting in individuals viewing the system as much more engaging and human. The conversational agent further results in a suppression of deception-related cues consistent with a more human-like interaction. Study 2 focuses on the effect of a conversational agent on socially desirable responding. Results of this study indicate that a conversational agent increases social desirability when the topic of the interview is sensitive, but has no effect when the questions are non-sensitive. The results of these two studies indicate that a conversational agent can change the way people interact with a computer system in substantial and meaningful ways. These studies represent a step toward understanding how conversational agents can shape the way we view and interact with computers.

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Virtual environments allow human beings to be represented by virtual humans or avatars. Users can share a sense of virtual presence is the avatar looks like the real human it represents. This classically involves turning the avatar into a clone with the real human's appearance and voice. However, the possibility of cloning the gesture expressivity of a real person has received little attention so far. Gesture expressivity combines the style and mood of a person. Expressivity parameters have been defined in earlier works for animating embodied conversational agents.In this work, we focus on expressivity in wrist motion. First, we propose algorithms to estimate three expressivity parameters from captured wrist 3D trajectories: repetition, spatial extent and temporal extent. Then, we conducted perceptual study through a user survey the relevance of expressivity for recognizing individual human. We have animated a virtual agent using the expressivity estimated from individual humans, and users have been asked whether they can recognize the individual human behind each animation. We found that, in case gestures are repeated in the animation, this is perceived by users as a discriminative feature to recognize humans, while the absence of repetition would be matched with any human, regardless whether they repeat gesture or not. More importantly, we found that 75 % or more of users could recognize the real human (out of two proposed) from an animated virtual avatar based only on the spatial and temporal extents. Consequently, gesture expressivity is a relevant clue for cloning. It can be used as another element in the development of a virtual clone that represents a person

The process of communication involves two types of meaning: explicit and implicit. An attempt is made to draw a distinction between two carriers of implicit meaning- presupposition and implicature. It is argued that presupposition is what the speaker assumes before making an utterance, and implicature is what the addressee infers from a linguistic structure used in an appropriate linguistic context. Implicature is of two types: non-contextual (or non-situational) and contextual (or situational). Although both types of implicature are determined by the context, they are generated using different types of context. Non-contextual implicature arises in contexts which are familiar to the addressee, while contextual implicature arises in contexts (situations) which are new to the addressee. Pragmatic competence is the ability to discover implicit meaning. Thus, of great importance is the description of the mechanism that carries implicit meaning. There are two such mechanisms: 1) linguistic structures used in appropriate linguistic contexts and 2) linguistic structures used in appropriate situations. The first mechanism is responsible for the generation of non-contextual implicature while the second mechanism is responsible for the generation of contextual implicature. Both types of implicature contribute to the economy of language. However, of the two types of implicature, the more important in the respect is contextual implicature- it makes possible to use one and the same... [to full text]

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