Social activities are an important part of the context of language use and provide many keys to understanding linguistic and communicative features. Such features can be well understood only if they are observed in their natural setting which to some extent is possible using a multimodal corpus as linguistic communication itself is multimodal. In order to study naturalistic multimodal communication using a corpus, the corpus should contain a combination of recordings, documentation, and transcription of multimodal communication from different social activities in naturalistic settings, preserving unedited conversation. This paper presents a brief account of the principles, methodology, current status, and further issues, based on an incrementally growing and multimodal activity based spoken language corpus of Lohorung.

An increasing number of companies are introducing artificial agents as self-service tools on their websites, often motivated by the need to provide cost-efficient interaction solutions. These agents are designed to help customers and clients to conduct their business on the website. Their role on commercial websites is often to act as online sales/shopping assistants with the hope of replacing some of the interactions between customers and sales staff, thus supplementing or replacing human-to-human communication. However, research on artificial agents and comparisons with human-to-human communication, in particular, is still scarce. The purpose of this article is to explore the similarities and differences in communication between an artificial agent and customers compared with face-to-face communication between human service providers and customers. The method employed is a qualitative comparison of face-to-face human service provision in a travel agency setting and logs of interactions between customers and an artificial agent on an airline company website. The analysis is based on the theory of "activity-based communication analysis" and makes use of a framework of specific communication features provided by this theory. The article demonstrates a number of deficiencies in communication between artificial embodied agents and humans, suggesting that artificial embodied agents still lack many of the desirable communicative aspects of human-to-human service encounters. ©2013 by the Association for Business Communication.

This paper studies multimodality in Own Communication Management (OCM) focusing on how linguistic communication involves gestures in order to manage communication. OCM is a basic function in face-to-face communication and concerns how a speaker, on the basis of feedback needs to be able to plan his or her contributions and to modify earlier content or expressions. Thus OCM has two major functions namely ’choice’ and ’change’ both of which are realized with OCM related expressions and operations. This paper reports on studies of the expressions, and operations in both of the OCM functions and their distribution patterns. It also reports on interaction between OCM expressions, and between OCM operation and other communicative functions (Interactive Communication Management (ICM) and main message (MM)). Some of the main findings from the study are that about 66% of all OCM expressions involve gestures, and that the distribution of choice and change function of OCM is about 90% to 10%. The OCM expressions have multiple functions and interact with other communicative functions including ICM and the main message resulting in a complex system. ©2013 IEEE.

Language is used for communication and communication facilitates social activities. If we want to capture this, linguistic investigation has to be carried out within a wider context. Examination of linguistic communication in a wider context shows that it is multimodal. In order to study naturalistic multimodal communication using a corpus, the corpus should contain a combination of recordings, documentation, and transcription of multimodal communication from different social activities in naturalistic settings, preserving unedited conversation. This paper presents a brief account of the principles, methodology, current status, and preliminary findings, based on an incrementally growing and multimodal activity based spoken language corpus of Nepali. ©2012 IEEE.

This review article discusses some problems and needs for clarification that are connected with the use of the concepts culture, language, tool, and communication in Daniel Everett’s recently published book, Language: The Cultural Tool. It also discusses whether the idea of biological readiness and preparedness for language (rather than grammar) can really be disposed of as a result of Everett’s very convincing arguments against a specific genetic predisposition for the syntactic component of a grammar. Finally, it calls into question whether Everett really is true to his professed ideology of scientific ideographical pragmatism. ©2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Although interaction has been acknowledged as central in value creation there is still a lack of empirical studies on how value creation is accomplished in practice, and in particular how communicative skills support customers’ value creation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives’ communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers’ value creation. We argue that value creating processes correspond to customers’ roles as "feelers", "thinkers" and "doers". Accordingly, value creation involves three interdependent elements, an emotional, a cognitive and a behavioral. Based on a qualitative research design, drawing on an empirical study of 80 telephone conversations between customers and customer service representatives in a business-to-business context, the paper demonstrates three communicative skills that are essential in supporting customers’ value creation: attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. The findings show how employees, by means of these communicative skills support customers’ value creation. Attentiveness supports cognitive elements of the customers’ value creating processes, whereas perceptiveness supports value creation in terms of cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects. Finally, responsiveness supports the customer’s cognitive as well as behavioral value creation. ©2011 Elsevier Inc.

The paper compares how feedback is expressed via speech and head movements in comparable corpora of first encounters in three Nordic languages: Danish, Finnish and Swedish. The three corpora have been collected following common guidelines, and they have been annotated according to the same scheme in the NOMCO project. The results of the comparison show that in this data the most frequent feedback-related head movement is Nod in all three languages. Two types of Nods were distinguished in all corpora: Down-nods and Up-nods; the participants from the three countries use Down- and Up-nods with different frequency. In particular, Danes use Down-nods more frequently than Finns and Swedes, while Swedes use Up-nods more frequently than Finns and Danes. Finally, Finns use more often single Nods than repeated Nods, differing from the Swedish and Danish participants. The differences in the frequency of both Down-nods and Up-nods in the Danish, Finnish and Swedish interactions are interesting given that Nordic countries are not only geographically near, but are also considered to be very similar culturally. Finally, a comparison of feedback related words in the Danish and Swedish corpora shows that Swedes and Danes use common feedback words corresponding to yes and no with similar frequency.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some problems in identifying stances and the features that express these stances in televised political debates where there is conflict escalation. The study is based on an analysis of video-recorded political debates in different European languages (Italian (1), German (2) and US-American English (1)) and consists of a qualitative analysis of the videos in order to understand the similarities and differences in the use of social signals for stances in conflict situations in a similar setting (televised political debate) in three western cultures. ©2012 IEEE.

Several minority languages are on the verge of extinction in Nepal, especially when they don’t have a generally accepted writing system and occur in an area where Nepali (the official language) is predominantly used. Lohorung is an example, which is spoken among the Lohroung Rai communities of Sankhuwasabha, a hilly district of eastern Nepal. Older generations of Lohorung are experts in Lohorung but they have limitations in reading and writing English or Nepali. The documentation of Lohorung and other similar endangered languages is important. If the right tools and techniques are used, we believe that self documentation is one of the best ways, to document a language. We have developed an online platform which community members can use to collaboratively self document their language. The platform is a multimodal dictionary authoring and browsing tool and it has been developed with a focus on usability, ease of use and productivity. ©2012 IEEE.

Interlocutors, express not only information in the form of spoken words but also their feelings and commitments with regard to what is being said. In face-to-face communication participants interact in such a way that they react to one another’s multimodal positioning in the conversation. Often this means that they take a ’stance’. The goal of this paper is to explore the notion of stance through a review and discussion of some of the relevant literature and then relate this to research on social signal processing (SSP). The main focus of the review is on the notion of stance in linguistics, as the point of departure for exploring other fields. Consideration of the relation between gestural communication and expression of emotions will give a more complete view of how a stance is taken and upheld. ©2012 IEEE.