Cornell Wild Roses Sectionals (April 14, 2007)

After our Sectional coordinator cruelly lead us to believe that we would finally host a tournament in Ithaca, Sectionals were moved to Geneva in Seneca Lake State Park.

We were ranked first (of 9 teams) in the tournament, and our first game was versus fifth ranked Syracuse. Our day had a rocky start. Syracuse scored the first 2 points against us. We scored the next 2, bringing the game to a tie. Syracuse scored the following 2 making our coach very nervous. She called a time out and told us we were losing to the 5th ranked team, and we were going to face even tougher teams today and tomorrow. Her speech and suggestions for a change in defensive tactics worked. We went on a 4 point run, and took half 6-4. (Games were to 11 for our pool, so half is at 6.) In the second half we only let them score twice, finishing the game 11-6.

Our next game was against our B-team (ranked 9th), who we beat 11-2. We think they didn't play as hard, since they were saving their energy to try to beat 8th ranked Colgate.

We played third ranked Ithaca next, I'm not quite sure what happened in this game because I was watching the B-team vs. Colgate game the whole time (I sprained my ankle last weekend, so I wasn't playing). I know that we took half against Ithaca before the other game had completed 3 points. Needless to say, we spanked Ithaca.
The Colgate/B team game was really exciting. They started out trading points.. really long points. But our B-team slowly gained the lead, and were up 6-3 at half. Although the game was capped, B team had enough points that they had to play out the whole game anyway. Although our B-team and Colgate had different skills, they were pretty evenly matched making for a good game. Colgate had good throws, but had no hands (couldn't catch). While our B-team has some really good cutters, who can't catch; a few good throwers, while everyone has the guts to put it; and a strong set of defenders.

Our last game was against Colgate who had just lost to our B team. We took the game quickly and then watched our B team play Syracuse.

As Saturday play had ended, we were planning to come back on Sunday for one or two more games. We were guaranteed a spot at Regionals, but did we win our section, get 2nd, or 3rd? If we won our first game on Sunday, we won our Section, but otherwise we'd need to play for 2nd/3rd place.

Unfortunately, we woke on Sunday to two inches of snow on the ground, leaving us with our games to be played next weekend.

Pool A (4-0) A1: Cornell (1) (3-1) A2: Ithaca (4) (2-2) A3: Syracuse (5) (0-4) A4: Colgate (8) (1-3) A5: Cornell-B (9)
Sat	Game	F#	Score	Game	F#	Score
8:30 10:00	A2-A5	1	11-0	A4-A3	2	1-11
10:15 11:45	A1-A3	1	11-6	A2-A4	2	11-0
12:00 1:30	A1-A5	1	11-2	A3-A2	2	6-10
1:45 3:15	A1-A2	1	11-2	A4-A5	2	L-W
3:30 5:00	A1-A4	1	W-L	A3-A5	2	11-2

A4: Better Late Than Never!

The Bavelas et al article, instead of actually providing any suggestions for methods of language analysis, served as something of a how-to-guide for creating your own thesis, transcribing conversations, and analyzing it in some conventional manner. One issue it did present was the act of transcribing itself. There are several ways of recording any given conversation. FtF, for example, can be recorded with a video and audio recorder, with just an audio recorder, with someone copying down what is said shorthand, etc. In each subsequent example, of course, a great deal of information gets lost, so researchers must always be very careful to choose the tech that's right for their purposes. Some conversations (interviews, for example) usually don't need any more information than what's given verbally. Language analysis, however, usually requires more input.
To illustrate my point (or attempt to), I transcribed two conversations on the same subject, one via FtF (only recorded audio) and one via text. I won't go into a great deal of analysis, all I'm looking for is how many times the conversation seems to derail (some break in verbal meaning), when in fact both participants maintain an understanding of the meaning (no track 2 verification).

FtF:
A: Dude, goin to the concert on Wednes-
B: The VAST one?
A: Don't like 'em?.
B: I do, man, but I've got -
A: Ohhh, yeah, you've got that prelim, I forgot.
B: Yeah. Besides, ever since their first -
A: They've definitely gone downhill. I still wanna see 'em, though. Lemme know if you change your mind.
B: Sure.

IM:
A: So, heard about the concert on Wednesday?
B: Ohh yeah, the VAST one?
A: Yeah, man. I'm really excited.
B: Me, too. I love their old stuff.
B: Think they'll play any?
A: Hope so.
A: It'll be good though, regardless.
B: Definitely.

In the FtF conversation, person B made a negative facial expression when asking for clarification that the concert was, in fact, with VAST. Though A never bothered to clarify, he took that expression as another bit of communication, stating "I'm not a big fan." This was not B's intended meaning, however, and B had to clarify that verbally. Although an extra bit of communication took place here, the meaning wasn't lost in the transcription process and no meaning was gained non-verbally. There were also three points at which one speaker interrupted the other. The first two were to interject track 2 clarification or information and didn't seem to involve any missed non-verbal cues. On the third to last line, B finished his sentence with a little wave of his hand, as though searching for the word 'album' and never finding it. Although this could be construed as non-verbal communication, no actual information is given. In both non-verbal cases, no new information is really presented outside of what an audio recorder can pick up, and thus the conversation seems to flow from an audio standpoint. The IM serves as the control in this point, since the conversation log covers every bit of information (except for pauses, of course...there were no notable ones). In many cases, a FtF transcription of simple verbal imput would seem to be far more confusing than its IM counterpart - this is why Bavelas et al warns researchers to use video when video is needed - but this simply isn't the case here. Which means I didn't reinforce my hypothesis...oh well.

A4

In Measures of Process Monketal claims that first and second-person pronouns are often meta conversational; Meaning that they are used in indirect queries which are usually more polite than direct queries. However I believe that this claim does not correlate well with the theory that one aims to save face when communicating. For example when a person desires to purchase a muffin he may ask “do you have any muffins,” or “are any muffins available”. Both ways mentioned above are indirect queries, and one can easily see how one can be polite without the use of a first or second-person pronoun. It can also be seen that first and second-person pronouns can easily be used to make queries impolite. In the example from above one could easily say “you, are there any muffins available.” I think most people we agree that the addition of the word “you” into the inquiry made the request impolite. Therefore my hypothesis would be that there is no correlation between politeness and the use of first and second-person pronouns. To test my hypothesis I will use two conversations from a class I participated in. In this class, meetings were conducted via a video and chat based system. In the first conversation several other group members and I (all college kids) are discussing how to accomplish a given task. In the second conversation the group is presenting the finding to the professor.


We supposed to get ball outta pipe w/ out break anything. Any Ideas.
We could cut cereal box, roll it up and suck ball out
May work, any other ideas.
3. Urinate in pipe
1. Yeah about that…
3. It’s a legit idea
2. Don’t think the professor would like that
3. What ev I think it wil work\
1. It will work, but we are graded on safety, efficiency… and I don know…
3. Think of something better.
4. Could use cereal box, roll it up, push around ball and pick it up
3. Ain’t that what James said.
1. No, james wanted to suck it out.


Professor: So methods were discussed
1. We discussed methods that used the air pressure, buoyancy force as well as several methods that used the cereal box to create direct contact with the ball.
Professor: How and what method did you decide on
1. There was some disagreement, so we came up with system where each group member ranked all the different methods by the different criteria mentioned in the assignment. They scores were then added, and the one with the lowest score was chosen. In the end using the cereal box and pushing it around the ball was the chosen method.


It can be seen that that first and second-person pronouns comprise 5 words out of a total of 110 words in the first conversation, while they comprise 3 words out 101 in the second conversation. Another important factor is that the students were trying to be more polite with the teacher. Thus my hypothesis is proven right. In addition, by looking at the conversations it seems that 1st and 2nd person pronouns are used a lot more when discussing opinions rather than facts. Thus it can be seen that they are many variables that control the use of first and second person pronouns and making the simple assumption that the presence of first and second person pronouns is a sign of politeness is ridiculous.

Text Vs. Telephone Topic Changes

The Monk et al. piece discusses the apparent disorder in conversational structure when comparing text versus non text communication. In the instance of text based communication, the piece argues that it will be less organized and contain more topic changes due to texts inherent ability to keep a formal record of past utterances. In non text based communication such as face to face or telephone, the piece explains that this form of communication will be more organized because voice is ephemeral and no record is kept to refer back to if confusion occurs. Due to my past experience and from the small experiment listed below, I agree with the Monk et al. piece. Below is the experience I had when comparing voice to text based communication.

Voice (using telephone)

Brendan: Hello?

Rachel: Hi whats up?

Brendan: Not much you?

Rachel: Nothing really, what are you doing today?

Brendan: Oh not much probably just doing some work and then I will go for a run.

Rachel: Sounds like fun.

Brendan: Not really.

Rachel: (laughs) What did you think of that movie we saw last night?

Brendan: I thought it was OK but a bit too girly.

Rachel: You would think that.

Brendan: Yes I would.

Rachel: Where are you going to go for a run?

Brendan: Probably just around campus.

Rachel: Cool, I think I will go for a run later too.

In the conversation above, the only line that detracts from the linear nature of the conversation is line 12. This line refers back to line 5 about going for a run. This supports the Monk et al. argument that voice is more organized and contains less topic changes.

Text (using AIM)

Bg00765: Hey

Rseegs28: whats up

Bg00765: nm u?

Rseegs28: nm just doing some work

Bg00765: feeling any better today?

Rseegs28: not really my stomach still hurts

Bg00765: what kind of work r u doing

Rseegs28: just some stuff for marketing

Bg00765: sucks. I have pretty much no work to do

Rseegs28: Thanks

Bg00765: haha, I thought u don’t even like marketing

Rseegs28: I don’t but I still have to do the work

Bg00765: Hmm perhaps

Rseegs28: uh huh

Bg00765: you want to hang out later?

Rseegs28: yea prob as long as my stomach is feeling better

Bg00765: im sorry, ill give u a call later, feel better

Rseegs28: Thanks

In the text conversation, more disorganization is apparent than in voice communication. Line 7 refers back to line 4, line 11 refers back to line 8, line 16 refers back to line 6. These are very large gaps between lines that show many changes in topics. This is consistent with the notion that text based communication is less organized than voice communication due to the record that is kept of past utterances.

My results agree with the Monk et al. piece. The telephone speech proved much more organized while the text conversation was much less organized with more topic changes.

A4: Communication breakdown... It's always the same.

Monk defines breakdown (9.3.3) as "those instances where the tools or medium of communication interfere with the task being carried out or even the communication process itself." When we were discussing Monk's piece last Tuesday, I was repeatedly reminded of all the "breakdowns" that happen in podcasts I listen to. A podcast is an internet audio broadcast that can be subscribed to--or downloaded on demand. Their topics range from technology and gadgets to kitting and parenting--they are really all over the board. In the podcasts I listen to, there is usually a panel of guests that discuss technology-related news via Skype--a piece of voice-over-IP (VoIP) audio-chat software. Time and time again there are software glitches where people drop in and out of the connection and the presenters stop the topic at hand and fall down a track 2 rat-hole and start discussing the current glitch or software problem.

Conveniently, this happened during the latest episode of "MacBreak Weekly" (a podcast about Apple and Macintosh news, rumors, and information). In this episode five people are on the panel of guests and they get to discussing ways to use the Finder (an application/environment in the MacOS operating system). When one of the panelists (represented below by "MM") mentions a meticulous/nit-picky way of using the Finder, the host/moderator (represented below by "LL") starts to mock and make light-hearted fun of MM. Coincidentally, MM's connection had just dropped and the rest of the guests come to the (brief) conclusion that he actually left the show--in anger. When he finally reconnects, he explains what happened and jokes around. It was interesting witnessing the stop in normal flow of the show and the resulting discussion of the breakdown discussed afterward.

Here is a link to the podcast, it happens around 1:05:02
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/MBW-033.mp3



LL: Oh wait a minute, now he hung up...

SB: (laughs) I think--

GR: Wow he is so angry right now
LL: I think this is a technical issue--because I don't think we were THAT hard on him--I was that hard on him, was I?

RL: You're gonna have to send him a box of fruit or somethin'

LL: I've done that before... that wouldn't be the first person I've sent a box of fruit to... he's not answering.

LL: ...Oh my god, he's pissed off. That can't be--

MM: no--hello. no Skype. no here--you're going to edit this out right?

LL: Yeah.

MM: Uhh... that's like the fifth time that this happened during this call where suddenly everything goes into this sorta crazy tunnel-vision mode.
LL: --right.

MM: and everything gets really, really slow and robot-voiced--and then drops... That's why I keep disappearing--just so you know.
LL: So you're not mad at us?

MM: (jokingly) OH, I'm mad.

(everyone laughs)

MM: when I come back on...
(more laughter)

MM: when I get back on buddy... oh--you're gonna feel...

LL: (laughingly) "Let me press the 'record button'" --chunk-- "go ahead"

(and the joking continues)

Conferring Expressions in an Interview

In the Monk piece, we are told that conferring expressions (pronouns such as it, that, and they) are often a good indicator of common ground development. When avoiding an explicit topic opening the speaker is making the assumption that given the conversation topics and trends, the listener will be able to interpret what these pronouns refer to. The piece I examined is an excerpt of an interview with Blake Ross, the founder of Firefox. The topic of the interview is the interplay between Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Interviews such as this one have two very unique elements. The first is that the person being interviewed generally has a very long response. The goal of the interviewer is to essentially elicit as much information as possible from the interviewee, while keeping his end of the conversation relatively short. The second unique element is that the subject of the conversation is very explicitly stated and therefore very much a part of the common ground. My assumption was that because Ross would be speaking for a long period of time about an “understood” topic that his usage of conferring expressions would be substantial.

Q: I know you're asked frequently about Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's next browser. How much have you used the test version, and what do you think of it?

Ross: I've used it a little bit. The truth is that it actually looks pretty good. People don't expect me to say that, they expect me to say that it's terrible. They did exactly what we were expecting them to do, which was take a bunch of time and get IE7 up to feature parity with Firefox. I haven't seen any real innovation above and beyond what we delivered in Firefox. I think that it's a solid product, but I think that by the time it comes out, we're going to be another world ahead of them again, so I think it's kind of a step or two behind us.

We really are trying to make it less of a religious thing. The whole browser space in general has traditionally been very religious.

Q: Kind of like operating systems.

Ross: Kind of like operating systems, exactly. We're trying to just say, we've all got good ideas in this space. Everyone's talking, for example, about how IE7 is ripping off Firefox. I'm very careful to say that they're matching feature parity. They are ripping off Firefox in a sense, but the truth is that when we started Firefox, we ripped off Internet Explorer because we wanted to make sure that people who migrated from IE felt comfortable in the Firefox world.

If that means copying the interface to some degree, if that means copying some keyboard shortcuts to make sure that people can migrate and feel comfortable, that's what we'll do, and then we can innovate on top of that. I think in general, the community understands that this is kind of a collaborative process. There are always going to be people on the fringes who are just kind of zealots in either direction.

4 uses of “it”
11 uses of “that”
4 uses of “they”

Based off of the counts, I would say that the assumption is pretty accurate. Ross uses the identifiers in reference to Microsoft, Mozilla, Firefox, and Internet Explorer far more than he uses the titles themselves. I would be interested to compare these conference counts to a conference count of a standard conversation as a control in to the assumption.

A4: Task Focus in IM and Phone

Monk, et al. (1996) discusses the task focus of discussion between different communication media. For example, it is mentioned that writing or typing resulted in much higher proportions of task-focused communication than spoken language. My experience has reflected this to some extent; I've generally found online communication veers from the topic of discussion less often than phone conversations do, for instance. I feel this is also aided in the case of live CMC (as in Instant Messaging) because both sides often have immediate access to topic-related research through the world wide web. In the case of phone and FtF communication, the source of information for the conversation generally has to come entirely from the memory of the two conversation partners.

I wanted to examine the task focus of IM and phone conversations. My task was to get shopping advice regarding the purchase of a piece of electronics (specifically a hard drive). I contacted two friends with a similar amount of knowledge on the subject. I decided to call one and IM another, log the conversations and then examine how many lines of the discussion by the other party were related to the task at hand (getting advice on buying hard drives) and how many were really task-irrelevant.

IM Conversation
Me: so, it's going to be hard drive purchasing time shortly. any recommendations? I'm thinking 500s...
Friend: i've seen external 500GB as low as $155
Friend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144069&CMP=AFC-Dealnews&ATT=22-144-069
Me: I'm MUCH more comfortable buying from a brick and mortar store, mostly because it's easier to hide that purchase
Friend: well best you're going to get there is like $170 for a 500gb, plus sales tax
Friend: http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=953454&Ntt=500gb&uniqueSearchFlag=true&An=text
Me: that's fine, sales tax isn't so bad near me anyway
Me: well...i don't have money yet, so I hope they keep that price
Friend: ah
Me: well i really need about another TB of space
Me: and by need i mean can use
Friend: well it never really pays to buy space that you can't use right away
Friend: it will be cheaper to buy it later

Phone Conversation:
Me: So I'm thinking about spending some money on new hard drives soon.
Friend: Oh yeah? Running out of space already?
Me: Yeah you know me, I can never have enough storage. Any suggestions?
Friend: Check the ads in the newspapers. Don't buy anything from CompUSA, they totally ripped me off.
Me: What happened?
Friend: They gave me an expired mail-in rebate then refused to let me return the item.
Me: Any other hard drive-related advice?
Friend: Stop downloading so much stuff so you don't need to keep buying them?
Me: Fair enough...

For clarity, I made the focused lines green and the irrelevant lines purple. As a final tally, the IM conversation had 3 lines of useful purchasing advice and 1 line irrelevant to the task, while the phone conversation was precisely the opposite with 1 line of useful purchasing advice and 3 lines of humor and unrelated stories. To some extent, the first conversation was aided by the fact that the friend was able to get task-related information directly from the internet as he was talking to me. Still, the conclusion here is that the IM discussion had vastly more task focus than the phone conversation.

A4: I, We, You

From reading the Monk et al piece and our discussion in class I found myself very weary of some of the claims that were made. In particular, the claim that the use of first and second person pronouns renders queries from direct to indirect. Further, the claim that their use makes a statement more polite. I decided to take a look at a number of email conversations I've had with different people: my mom, my boss, and a potential landlord. The email conversations with my mom contained very few first person pronouns but a decent amount of second person pronouns. This makes sense because my mother and I are quite straightforward with one another and politeness is not necessary. The email conversation with my boss was quite different. I found that I used a lot of first and second person pronouns but he barely used first person and a few second person pronouns. The relationship between a boss and employee also supports Monk et al in this case. Finally, an email conversation with a potential landlord as I have been trying to find a summer sublet in New York City was examined. In this, I found a great amount of both first and second person pronouns. I, as a potential tenant was trying to manage my impression in order to have a good chance at landing the apartment. He, on the other hand, wanted to make sure to attract as many people to his listing to be able to be more choosey. My findings actually ended up supporting Monk et al's claims but I do not believe there is a strict causality here. There is great possibility for context to completely undermine this claim, as well as tone. To conclude, I found that this exercise helped me think a bit more about correlation and research claims that may or may not be hiding behind a lurking variable.

Conversation Structure: Why its important....

Monk et al. “Measure of Processes” provides one with an outlay of ideas pertinent to understanding conversation amongst partners. The paper provides insight into how dialogue may be hindered or facilitated by perceived common ground or any system that structures conversation. CMC doesn’t provide a bevy of communication cues for individuals to rely on, so at times it may be difficult for individuals to relay everything they have to say to their partners. We’ve all experienced times when we’ve been cut off by friends while on AOL instant messenger. You may be typing a phrase that is part of a string of sentences, only to be interrupted by your partner who wants to chime in about whatever is going on inside his mind. Measure of Processes proclaimed that the conversation structure of an online dialogue is much less structured than that of a face to face conversation. Its not unusual to have multiple online conversations, a rarity in face to face interactions. Face to face interaction usually involve a sequence of topics, one after another. This leads to Monk’s hypothesis of “Topic Mention”; its difficult to recall information about the previous topic one was talking about in face to face situations compared to the ease of remembering a topic via online conversation. Monk believed that this would hold true if one observed the idea of distance between topic mentioning in CMC vs FTF. I decided to test this theory using an aim conversation and a FTF conversation.

Hypothesis: More topics covered in two minutes of online conversation than in FTF conversation ( I will use an old aim conversation and FTF conversation from a past assignment)

IM Conversation with a Friend

stillBETTAthanYa: sup
Prophecy620: wut up man
stillBETTAthanYa: ur icon is stupid
stillBETTAthanYa: lol
Prophecy620: w.e man
Prophecy620: whats godo wit u
Prophecy620: do u know if yo parents got the card i sent a while back)
stillBETTAthanYa: o yea they got it
stillBETTAthanYa: they said thanks but u didnt need to send a gift
stillBETTAthanYa: all good
Prophecy620: ight
stillBETTAthanYa: how is school
Prophecy620: crazyy
Prophecy620: dis semester is hard
Prophecy620: wit 5 calsses n a discussion
stillBETTAthanYa: discussion?
Prophecy620: its paort o a history class
Prophecy620: the calsses r hard though
Prophecy620: my 4000 class is probably the easist rite now
Prophecy620: how many classes u taking this semester
stillBETTAthanYa: I have eight
Prophecy620: got damn
stillBETTAthanYa: craziness
Prophecy620: hell yea
stillBETTAthanYa: three evening classes
Prophecy620: least u aint workin 32 hours a week
stillBETTAthanYa: your working 32 hours for radioshack?
stillBETTAthanYa: or for class?
Prophecy620: radioshack
Prophecy620: i was during skool
Prophecy620: now its 26 i cut it down
Prophecy620: i was full time
stillBETTAthanYa: tough stuff
stillBETTAthanYa: I work but only for about five hours a week
stillBETTAthanYa: do homework mostly
Prophecy620: dats it
Prophecy620: oo ight
Prophecy620: so its not dat bad then
stillBETTAthanYa: yea
Prophecy620: but still 8 classes
stillBETTAthanYa: i usually do homework for 4 and a half of those hours
stillBETTAthanYa: not all are hard work
Prophecy620: i think u nee to have that cleared by the dean dont you
stillBETTAthanYa: yup
stillBETTAthanYa: had to have its signed
Prophecy620: wow
Prophecy620: u killin yo self kene
Prophecy620: how u do good in all the classes
stillBETTAthanYa: i'll handle it
Prophecy620: ight bet
Prophecy620: im waitin for jay 2 give me a date on the wedding
Prophecy620: so i can get the tickets to fly back
stillBETTAthanYa: cool
stillBETTAthanYa: should be nice
stillBETTAthanYa: u hear the chargers fired schottenheimer?
Prophecy 620: Yup

Topics covered: four

FTF Conversation

Kene: What’s Up Matt?
Matt: I’m doing fine
Kene: How is Priscilla?
Matt: Priscilla the dog or Priscilla my cousin?
Kene: Your dog, you know I don’t like your cousin.
Matt: She’s doing fine, finally house trained
Kene: Ok that’s cool. How many classes do you have this semester?
Matt: I got 6, 18 credits. Trying to get up to speed for Bio
Kene: Ok. Well I’ve gotta go. Get at me later.
Matt: Yea, I will. Saturday 10pm still on?
Kene: Yea, I’ll be ready for the madden tournament. Say hi to the dog for me.
Matt: Will do. Later.

Topics covered: Two

It makes sense that more topics would be covered in an online conversation than in a FTF conversation. CMC is often recorded and its easy to keep track of information this is being exchanged between partners. FTF conversations consists of less topics because its hard to keep track of all the information that has been exchanged. Understanding this notion can allow one to determine what type of messages are best exchanged over which mediums.

Conversation Structure: Topic Mention Distances

In Monk’s article, there is a discussion about Conversation Structure, and more specifically, Topic Mention. According to the article, McCarthy (1993) noted that text-based communication had much less order than face-to-face spoken conversation. Specifically, new topics would begin before the last topic was resolved, causing disorder to text-based communication. McCarthy and Monk suggest that text-based conversation can sustain multiple topics at a time because there is a written account to review past conversation, whereas in face-to-face, there is no record. Once spoken, a face-to-face comment is rarely saved. Thus, recalling one topic’s comments while engaging in another topic simultaneously can be confusing in a face-to-face context. To measure orderliness, McCarthy and Monk measured the distances between references to the same topic. For my assignment, I decided to analyze two brief conversations - text-based communication and face-to-face conversations – and compare for topic distance differences. I hypothesized that, if McCarthy and Monk’s measure is correct, I should see greater differences between topic references in text-based communication compared to face-to-face communication. It was difficult finding technology-media examples, so I chose to examine AIM and face-to face conversations discussing technology.

Text-Based Conversation

1. Person A: He hasn’t been on ICQ this week, do you know why?
2. Person B: I wouldn’t know, I only use AIM
3. A: I think he’s avoiding me
4. B: Why would he do that?
5. A: Well, he hasn’t answered my text either
6. B: People still use ICQ?
7. A: Yeah, some people still use ICQ…out of the US
8. B: Why would he be avoiding you?

Lines 1,3,4,5, and 8 deal with one topic, while a second topic, using AIM vs ICQ is seem in 2, 6,and 7. This is a large distance from 2 to 6 – large than in the face-to-face conversation. This supports McCarthy and Monk’s idea that distances will be greater in text-based conversation

Face-to-Face Conversation

1. Person A: Have you ever heard of Second Life?
2. Person B: No, what’s that?
3. A: It’s a virtual community with avatars…similar to a game except you can’t win

(laughter)

4. B: How’d you get into that?
5. A: I didn’t really…I heard about it though a class and I ended up doing a project on it
6. B: I have so many projects this semester
7. A: how many?
8. B: more than you can imagine

Lines 1,2,3,4, and 5 deal with one topic, and then the conversation shifts in 7 and 8 to a new topic and continue from there. This supports McCarthy and Monk for two reasons. First, it confirms my hypothesis that distance between topics is greater in text-based compared to face-to-face communication. Additionally, this conversation exemplifies McCarthy and Monk’s idea that face-to-face conversations have my topic organization, meaning one topic is discussed, and when it is resolved, a new topic begins

Assignment #4: Fun with Chatterbots

For my assignment, I decided to do analyze transcripts from the Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence’s homepage. The Loebner Prize is a competition held each year where computer programs aiming to impersonate a human in chat are pit against humans whose job it is to judge whether or not the entity they are conversing with in an instant messenger interface is a human confederate a computer contestant. A quick perusal of the transcripts at http://loebner.net/Prizef/2005_Contest/Transcripts.html from the 2005 contest reveals that most of them, well, suck. However, I wanted to find out whether or not we could quantify the results; looking at the Monk piece, it is suggested that co-referring expressions such as “it,” “that,” “they,” “he,” and “she” are evidence that the two speakers believe they have achieved common ground. Although the paper described them as being generally infrequent in text-based communication, I wanted to see whether or not they would appear more often in dialogue with a human confederate or with Jabberwacky, the 2005 contest winner (its transcripts are at the bottom of the page linked to above). My hypothesis was that because the computers would be unable to achieve common ground with the human judges and are not smart enough to stay on-topic across a chain of messages, there would be fewer co-referring expressions in the transcripts of the judge-computer conversations than in the judge-confederate conversations.

My hypothesis was actually wrong:

	Confederate		Jabberwacky
it	2		7
that	3		6
they	0		4
he	0		1
she	2		0
total	7		18
	Confederate		Jabberwacky
it	16		3
that	6		6
they	1		0
he	0		2
she	0		0
total	23		11
	Confederate		Jabberwacky
it	5		4
that	1		8
they	0		0
he	0		0
she	0		0
total	6		12
	Confederate		Jabberwacky
it	3		9
that	5		8
they	1		0
he	0		0
she	0		0
total	9		17
	Confederate		Jabberwacky
Average total	11.25		14.5

There are a few explanations for this result; for one, I suspect that the creator of Jabberwacky programmed it to use co-referring expressions precisely for the reason I formed my hypothesis. In order for the computer to stand a chance of seeming like a human, it had to be able to refer to previously discussed topics in a natural way, so it’s possible that Jabberwacky is programmed to use them in an almost exaggerated way. Also, the human judges seemed to become confused by Jabberwacky because of its bizarre sentences and would ask things about what it had just said. Finally, most of the conversations with the confederates are shorter; the judges realized they were speaking to a human and decided to converse more with the other entity to study it.

However, I found it interesting that there was a huge spike in the use of “it” in the second conversation between a judge and a confederate; looking at the transcript, they became interested in talking about the copyright policies of the RIAA and that fueled the rest of the discussion. This is something that could not possibly have happened with Jabberwacky; never does the frequency count of any single word in the Jabberwacky transcript rise above 9. Again, I suspect this is because Jabberwacky cannot stay on-topic.

Assignment #4

The readings for this week focus on the methods of looking at language in conversation. Everyone should read the Monk et al. (1996) piece on process and outcome variables. If you will be transcribing language at all (transcribing audio or video) then you should read Bavelas et al. piece (it is really a lovely summary on how to approach language). Finally, if you are interested in how track 2 type analyses work, read the Hancock and Dunham piece.

This week's assignment is about practicing some analysis and measurement techniques. You should draw on a measurement issue from one of the 3 readings, and then do some kind of language analysis on technology-related media. It will be fun to look at how technology affects language used in media coverage of tech topics. The options are wide-open. For example, you could analyze how often “technology” or the actual technology (video games, TV, movie, etc.) is mentioned in the piece you are analyzing. You could analyze 1 minute of an interview for positive or negative face-related language. You could do an analysis of how media use some language processes in reports on technology-related subjects. You could analyze interviews for track 2 devices (e.g., does the collocation of the interviewer and interviewee matter? would the background noise (studio interviews vs. field interviews) lead to increased track 2 signals at level 1?). The main point is to take some small idea or question, and then measure it in the context of the media coverage of technology.

Your post, therefore, should have a brief summary of the question, a brief description of the method of measurement you used (drawing on one of the readings), and a brief report of your findings. Have fun with it; the point is to get you to practice analyzing real language.

Common Ground and Trust in CMC

Much analysis has already taken place in the low-cues CMC environment, particularly about how any sort of relationship can form in such a medium, but more study needs yet to be done on how language itself plays a role in establishing those relationships. As a small amount of trust and familiarity is gained in any medium, language changes drastically and in a variety of ways, and that very language change may prompt more trust to be extended. Barrett and I are researching common ground and trust in a CMC environment, preferably IM. We aim to see if a difference exists in language use when a subject has a minimal level of trust for another and when they don’t, and we predict that the difference between the two conditions is simply common ground.We have two potential ideas for the experiment. First, we could hint or overtly state to a subject that the other either should or should not be trusted, giving them a legitimate reason why. If both parties are working to get to know each other, for example, each will extend a certain amount of trust. If a seed of doubt has been planted that the other’s objective may be different or even contrary to the subject’s, they may act differently – more guarded? – toward the other. Alternately, we could set up two conditions. In one condition, two students meet briefly in person before being escorted to separate CMC rooms to talk online. The common ground: they’re both students, they’re both participants, and they both are probably doing the experiment for the same reason…credit. This is immediately established and a small amount of trust is extended. The other condition is where one person is led alone into a CMC conversation with someone they haven’t met, either a confederate or another subject. At the outset, they’re unsure if the other is a fellow student subject, a confederate experimenter, or even some unknown third party. Without the original condition’s common ground, no trust is initially extended. Language used between the two conditions may change drastically. One possible change in language (though this is far from a working hypothesis) is that explicit signaling may become implicit as trust is gained. For example, in a non-trust condition, a subject may say “Shall we begin?” or “So we’re supposed to get to know each other,” both signals for the conversation to proceed that trusting individuals probably aren’t as likely to use. This is only one example of how language may vary between the two conditions, and many more will be considered before a hypothesis is decided upon and an experiment designed.

Barrett Amos
Sam Warren

Influence of Gender and Topic on Language

Our group is interested in examining gender roles in online communication.
We will study the differences between communication between same-sex
pairs and opposite-sex pairs, and between male and female language use.

Hypothesis: The occurrence of idioms specific to computer mediated
communication in CMC settings is correlated with the gender of the
communication participants and the 'seriousness' of the topic of
conversation.

We are researching the different use of Language between men and women
when using the computer as the communication medium. We feel that people
tend to deviate in their language use when interacting with others via the
internet. For example, when people speak with friends and peers over the
internet, there tends to be more grammatical errors and increased use of
"Internet-isms", such as emoticons and abbreviations, in the message.
Through getting a group of people to interact via a chat room or through
AIM, we will try to understand if our hypothesis holds and what factors
will affect it. Similarly, we will be analyzing how gender affects the
type of language use over the internet. In order to get unbiased results,
we will pick a specific topic and have our participants engage in online
discourse. This will help us understand if gender is analogous to specific
types of language use. Also, to reaffirm our hypothesis, we will use two
discussion topics to see if the seriousness of a discussion alters the
amount of internet-isms used and if it deviates between genders.

Danny Duran
Henry Mason
Sarah Perkins
Greg Vixama

Topic

Our group is interested in examining the way that online communication
affects the way that people can misrepresent themselves with meeting and
getting to know/trying to date people online.  Dating websites or simply
online forums or social networks such as MYSPACE, where you don't see the
person or even initially hear their voice can give people a chance to be
deceiving.  They can give descriptions of themselves that they think
people want to hear, not truly accurate descriptions.  We want to find
ways to investigate the accuracy of people's descriptions of themselves
and the type of people they are looking for.
  Furthermore, we want to evaluate the success rate of being matched up
with someone of those people who represent themselves accurately as
opposed to those who do not.  We plan to talk with people who have done
this process both sucessfully and non-sucessfully.
 We plan to do this not only by evaluating people who have used this form
of communication to actually meet someone, but also by individually
using such a means of technology and seeing if we personally have a
desire or an urge to misrepresent ourselves and in what way.  Depending
on the exact form of internet communication we are using, we will see
how often opportunities to deceive will come up.

Influence of Signals in CMC

Our group will be examining the impact of language in regards to artificial intelligence. More specifically, we aim to discover which aspects of language in CMC have the effect of creating a conversation that most closely resembles human interaction. A number of sources of artificial intelligence, ranging from Turing test software to AOL instant messaging bots will be researched in order to determine which method of communication will be most feasible for our project requirements. Additionally, our group is interested in creating a unique AI program, which will have limited conversation abilities. We can use this program to customize responses in order to better manipulate which linguistic cues we use for lab testing.

Our research hopes to measure the affect of CMC-conceived signals in portraying believable computer mediated human interaction. We believe that partakers of computer mediated communication have grown accustom to distinct medium-based signals which they expect to receive when interacting online. Using rudimentary artificial intelligence—as described above—our subjects would interact with a computer “bot” via synchronous chat. By controlling the presence of these signals, we are attempting to better replicate a human interaction. Variables available to manipulate include CMC-conceived acronyms, emoticons, or linguistic characteristics—such as Clark’s track 2 signals and adjacency pairs.

We hope to recruit subjects into a laboratory setting and have them interact with a pre-programmed computer bot and discuss a specific subject (to be determined). We will adjust the presence and/or frequency of CMC-conceived signals displayed between sessions. In some interactions, all conventional CMC signals will be absent. After the session, the subject will fill out a questionnaire that will rate his experience. Details still need to be finalized, such as technical limitations, control variables, and number of variables to test.

Erik Skantze
Leo Baghdassarian
Brendan Gilbert
Natalia Sturtz-Verastegui

I'm with Dupe and Mark......

Objectives

Our group is interested in examining the way that online communication
affects the way that people can misrepresent themselves with meeting and
getting to know/trying to date people online. Dating websites or simply
online forums or social networks such as MYSPACE, where you don't see the
person or even initially hear their voice can give people a chance to be
deceiving. They can give descriptions of themselves that they think
people want to hear, not truly accurate descriptions. We want to find
ways to investigate the accuracy of people's descriptions of themselves
and the type of people they are looking for.
Furthermore, we want to evaluate the success rate of being matched up
with someone of those people who represent themselves accurately as
opposed to those who do not. We plan to talk with people who have done
this process both sucessfully and non-sucessfully.
We plan to do this not only by evaluating people who have used this form
of communication to actually meet someone, but also by individually
using such a means of technology and seeing if we personally have a
desire or an urge to misrepresent ourselves and in what way. Depending
on the exact form of internet communication we are using, we will see
how often opportunities to deceive will come up.

Research in Second Life

Research in Second Life

Our group is interested in doing research in Second Life, with a focus on

how gender issues affect communication.  Second Life is most definitely a

form of CMC, but unlike AIM or e-mail, there is a visual element

integrated right into the medium.  One of the things we would like to find

out is whether the appearance of another party’s “avatar,” or virtual

representation, affects how we communicate with them.  Alternatively, how

does the appearance of our own avatar affect how we communicate with

others?

To collect data, we intend to pre-construct Second Life avatars for use by

experimental subjects.  These subjects will use these avatars (either by

choosing them or being assigned them) and sign onto Second Life, where

they will be asked to hold a conversation with another experimental

subject who has also either been assigned or allowed to choose one of our

pre-built avatars.  In order to quantify our research, we will first

record and store chat transcripts from the Second Life conversations of

all of our research participants.  In addition to this, we will have

participants complete a post-experiment survey asking them to give their

impressions of various aspects of the experiment.

For the details of the experiment design, we see two options:

Intersubject comparison: We would randomly assign participants to either

control or experimental group. The control group would have an avatar of

their gender, the experimental group would be the opposite gender. We

could see if people interact different if they are taking on the identity

of the opposite gender by comparing the results of the two groups.

Intrasubject comparison: Each subject would briefly interact being one

gender, then stop, be assigned an avatar of the other gender and interact

as that gender. Thus, we would have data for both same as self and

opposite to self for each subject. This would test within each subject if

each person acts differently (language wise), as compared to the

Intersubject design where we are looking for differences between subjects.

Both designs are valid and depending on the statistician you talk to one's

better than the other.  We are still deciding which to choose.

We have already taken a look at some of the relevant aspects of Second

Life, including options for customizing avatars and what gestures

(nodding, shaking one’s head, etc.) are available to be used within the

world.

Anshu Agarwal

Grace Pusavat

Nicholas Fajt

Rodney Eng

Due Date Correction

The due date for this week's group postings is Wednesday night. Thank you, Rodney, for pointing this out.

This week's assignment is a group post (one post per group). Work with your group to post a summary description of your group’s project. You should describe what your group is interested in, and how you plan on examining it. Same approximate length as usual. You should post this week's assignment on the blog. The postings are due Tuesday by midnight, and you'll also need to post 2 comments by Thursday, as usual. You should submit your comments individually, not as a group. Good luck.
P.S. Some examples are posted on Blackboard, towards the end of the topic list in Course Documents.