{"id":450840,"date":"2018-01-02T13:43:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T21:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&p=450840"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:08:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:08:49","slug":"style-and-alignment-in-information-seeking-conversation","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/style-and-alignment-in-information-seeking-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Style and alignment in information-seeking conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Analysis of casual chit-chat indicates that differences in conversational style<\/em>—the way things are said—can significantly impact a participants’ impressions of the conversation and of each other. However, prior work has not systematically analyzed how important style is in task-oriented, information-seeking exchanges of the sort we might have with a conversational search agent. We examine recordings from the MISC data set, where pairs of “users” and “intermediaries” collaborate on information-seeking tasks, and look for indications of style which can be computed at scale.<\/p>\n

We find that stylistic markers identified by Tannen in casual chat do exist in information-seeking dialogue, and that participants can be arranged along a single stylistic dimension: “considerate” to “involved”. This labelling for style needs no manual intervention. Furthermore, we find that there is no clear best style; but that differences in style, previously thought to impede communication, are only a problem for shorter tasks. This result is likely due to alignment of conversational style over the course of an interaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Analysis of casual chit-chat indicates that differences in conversational style—the way things are said—can significantly impact a participants’ impressions of the conversation and of each other. However, prior work has not systematically analyzed how important style is in task-oriented, information-seeking exchanges of the sort we might have with a conversational search agent. We examine recordings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13554,13555],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-450840","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-research-area-search-information-retrieval","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Human Information Interaction and 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