Watch out for laughs: Gaze and laughter coordination in dialogue

Abstract:

In the current paper we present ongoing work investigating the interaction and coordination of laughter and gaze (both from the laugher and the partner) in relation to the pragmatic function performed by the laughter, aiming to contribute to the integration of gaze (Rossano, 2013), speech-acts (Sandgren et al., 2012) and non-verbal vocalization (Romaniuk, 2009) studies in conversation. Our work is crucially grounded on the assumption that para- and non-verbal behaviour are not simply redundant to the linguistic content conveyed, but themselves contribute meaning and affect the unfolding dialogue. We address the following questions: (1) Do laughs with different pragmatic functions relate to different patterns of gaze? (2) Does gaze towards a partner play a significant role in laughter coordination and alignment?

Research areas:

• Dialogue
• Gesture
• Laughter

Year:

2021

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Book title:

Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing