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.