Does structural priming occur in ordinary conversation?

Abstract:

A substantial body of empirical work suggests people have a reliable tendency to match, amongst other things, their conversational partner’s body movements, speech style, and patterns of language use. Recently, a more specific ‘structural priming’ version of this claim has gained prominence. Structural priming occurs when people’s processing of a particular linguistic structure is facilitated by prior exposure to the same structure. Much of the psycholinguistic evidence for these effects comes from experimental studies of single individuals processing a sequence of sentences and it is claimed that it is part of an automatic, resource-free priming mechanism that helps to underpin all successful human interaction. We present evidence from a corpus analysis of ordinary conversation which suggests that this claim is incorrect.

Research areas:

• Dialogue
• Alignment

Year:

2010

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Book title:

Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence 2010

Address:

Tübingen, Germany