Alignment in Communication

“ Alignment in Communication brings together a wide array of cognitive scientists, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers to lay out a framework for a new theory of how two or more interlocutors (human or machine) become coordinated via the exchange of information in multi-modal communication channels. Far from limiting itself to language use, per se, the purview of this grand vision touches on speech, gesture, emotion, language learning and language change, and other aspects of how speakers become aligned with one another over time when communicating with each other. Although each chapter can function as a rich microcosm of its own, the mosaic of them all together makes a compelling case for treating these many different aspects of the communication process not as individuated components to be extracted and studied in isolation, but as interactive and coextensive with one another, both causes and resultants of one another. Alignment in Communication will serve a whole new generation of researchers studying how natural realistic communication works among people and how it can be made to work in human-machine interaction.”

“This book paints a fascinating picture of alignment: how communicators become more similar to each other, in many cases, seemingly without explicit negotiation. There are articles addressing different aspects of communication in depth: phonology, syntax, gesture, emotions and cognitive representations, and even an article about teaching language to robots! Alignment is also examined from various perspectives, including empirical, theoretical, and computational models. This book is ideal as the source material for an interdisciplinary seminar in cognitive science and communication, and will be interesting and informative both for people new to the field as well as for researchers who are already engaged and working in this area.”

“This book provides an excellent overview of recent work on alignment in human interaction from the principal researchers in the field. It surveys the evidence that has brought this idea to prominence in studies of human interaction. Perhaps even more importantly it also sets out the critical conceptual and methodological challenges that will define the future development of this work.”

“Fluent communication is key to turning autonomous robots into empathic agents who can live hand in hand with humans. This book collects jewels of brilliant discussion focused on alignment in communication from multiple angles. It reports key questions and insights obtained from intensive interdisciplinary research among leaders in cognitive interaction technologies towards better human-agent communications in the network age.”