Forms of introduction in dialogues: Their discourse contexts and communicative consequences

Abstract

For effective communication to occur, speakers must share enough knowledge to understand one another's contributions-they must achieve “mutual knowledge”. A critical point in a dialogue is therefore when one speaker wishes to introduce a new item. Previous research has shown how speakers collaborate to achieve mutual knowledge at points in a diaglogue. In this paper, we show that speakers vary in how effectively they collaborate with their partners on a communicative task. We demonstrate that there are a number of different ways in which new information can be introduced and that the choices speakers make influence how successful such collaborations are likely to be. Speakers who use question form introductions are more likely to elicit informative feedback from their partners and to communicate successfully.