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The speech disorganizers: Uncooperative addressees and their impact on speakers

  • Anna Pollard

    Anna Pollard is an honorary research associate in the Division of Psychology & Language Sciences-Linguistics, UCL, where she is developing her work on low-level influences on speaker performance.

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Published/Copyright: May 22, 2015
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Abstract

The study of dialogue does not belong to one discipline alone. This paper brings together a range of cross-disciplinary data – from sociolinguistics, child development, social neuroscience and virtual reality engineering – to investigate an aspect of dialogue that is somewhat under-researched: the disruptive power of an addressee who does not respond as expected. Much evidence exists to show that addressees who demonstrate rapport with speakers play an active role in encouraging speakers to perform effectively. But less work has been done on the impact made on speaker competence by addressees who respond uncooperatively, and there has been no attempt to approach it from a cross-disciplinary perspective. In this paper, I suggest that verbal or non-verbal addressee responses that do not meet the expectations projected by a speaker can have a systematic and damaging effect on speaker performance at the conceptualization (or message) level, and that this disorganization takes place automatically and below the level of consciousness.

About the author

Anna Pollard

Anna Pollard is an honorary research associate in the Division of Psychology & Language Sciences-Linguistics, UCL, where she is developing her work on low-level influences on speaker performance.

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research carried out for the author’s PhD at University College London. I am most grateful to Deirdre Wilson for her very helpful suggestions during the paper’s preparation, and to my reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Published Online: 2015-5-22
Published in Print: 2015-6-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

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