10.1 Conversation as Discourse


To apply elements of naturally occurring language to VUI prompting, you need to understand conversation as a type of discourse: naturally occurring, human-to-human language. Discourse is language above and beyond the use of individual words and sentences studied in isolation. Discourse analysts make important assumptions about the nature of human language:

  • Language always occurs in a context, and its structure is systematically context-sensitive.

  • Language is essentially a communicative phenomenon, and its structure incorporates certain design features specially adapted to this end.

In spoken language, there are discourse types other than everyday conversation, each having its own set of requirements concerning form and content. There are, for example, fairy tales, sermons, news reports, radio advertisements, courtroom trials, lectures, eulogies, airplane safety demonstrations, and auctions.[1]

[1] Some examples of discourse genres particular to writing are short stories, love letters, warning labels, road signs, e-mail messages, advice columns, recipes, cover letters, offer letters, appliance warranties, horoscopes, gossip columns, shopping lists, obituaries, and anything from the Internal Revenue Service.

There are a few basic characteristics of naturally occurring discourse, including everyday conversation, that dialog designers should consider. These are important considerations even if the VUI you are designing is not an English language application. Discourse has the following characteristics:

  • Discourse is principled. Language is systematic on many levels. Every spoken language has its own rules for putting sounds together to make words and for putting words together to make sentences. For example, "blick," "ving," and "brizzle" are not words in English, but they could be. "Try new-and-improved lemon-fresh Brizzle … with grease-busting enzymes!" In contrast, "sbab," "vlum," or "knerpf" must all be rejected as possible words because these forms violate the rules of sound sequencing that are particular to English. Similarly, "That dog seems to be dreaming" is a perfectly fine sentence, but "That dog seems dreaming" is not. Conversations are like words and sentences in that they, too, conform to a highly structured system in which some creations are not allowed. In the world of VUIs, engineered conversations are at times as ungrammatical, in the sense of nonoccurring or unacceptable, as are forms such as "Sbab" and "That dog seems dreaming." In this chapter, you will see many examples of nonconversational prompts, along with examples of how they can be improved.

  • Discourse is universal. Just as all languages have complex syntactic and phonological systems, so do all languages have sophisticated discourse patterns in their spoken form. Even if the VUI you are designing is not an English language application, the basic concerns of this chapter are applicable to all human languages, even though the details may vary from language to language.

  • Discourse is conventionalized. Another reason for taking care with the wording of prompts is that discourse is conventionalized, or shared throughout a linguistic community. Regardless of educational background or socioeconomic standing, all native speakers of English agree, for example, on the use of the discourse marker "by the way" to mark a conversational contribution as tangential or unrelated but worthy of mention. Similarly, native speakers of English generally place elements of focus at or near the end of a sentence, which is where they expect to retrieve them, as well. It is not possible for VUI designers to invent a new feature of discourse, but they can capitalize on those conventions that already exist.

  • Discourse is unconscious. The mechanics of discourse generally escape our awareness. Consider, for example, the use of "this" and "that" as discourse pointer words. As described later in this chapter, native speakers of English use these words differently in speaking than they do in writing, although very few are aware that a difference exists. We might notice that something doesn't sound right when a nonnative speaker uses "this" instead of "that," but most people are unable to articulate exactly why. As it happens, the way that pointer words are used in many VUIs corresponds to the written rather than the spoken mode. Because VUI prompts are spoken, however, pointer words in prompts should reflect the conventions of speaking rather than writing. Writing spoken dialog is different from writing language that is to be read.

The following sections center on specific features of spoken language and explain how you can leverage them to optimize comprehension, comfort, and familiarity in your VUI.



Voice User Interface Design 2004
Voice User Interface Design 2004
ISBN: 321185765
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 117

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