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Project

From lexical entrainment to interpersonal coordination: A study on synchronization within educational settings

More than forty years ago, LaFrance and colleagues (LaFrance & Broadbent, 1976; LaFrance, 1979) noted a connection between posture-sharing and rapport between teacher and students in college seminar classrooms. Similarly, Bernieri (1988) described a strong relationship between rapport and the degree of movement synchrony in teacher-student interactions. Extensive research has shown that speakers are likely to follow a process of synchronization during dialogue at different semiotic levels (Oben & Brône, 2016): they may converge in pitch (Quezada, Robledo, Román & Cornejo, 2012), accent (Giles, 1973), syntactic structure (Branigan, Pickering & Cleland, 2000), and/or speech rate (Street, 1984). Participants may change their communicative behaviors, but these are not restricted to linguistic features: paralinguistic (e.g. pauses or utterance length) and nonverbal elements (e.g. smiling or gazing) are also susceptible of accommodation in interaction (Giles & Ogay, 2007). Disciplines like linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and human movement sciences have become interested in the phenomenon of synchronization because of its social consequences for interaction (Rennung & Göritz, 2016). Coordination has commonly been described as a manifestation of an intrapersonal state. While individual factors exert some kind of influence (Lumsden et al., 2012; Feyaerts et al., 2017), it seems as though synchrony may be a functional part of communication (Bavelas et al., 1987; Louwerse et al., 2012). Communicative contexts, then, can shape how synchronization is expressed spatially and temporally. Although there is enough evidence regarding the existence of coordination, current studies are trying to unravel the specificities of the phenomenon. One form of interaction that has received recent interest is asymmetric interaction, which is characterized by presenting differences between participants in the form of beliefs, goals, and/or power (Paxton & Dale, 2013). This type of asymmetry can be found in the social roles that speakers take, for example, during psychotherapy sessions (Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014). This project in particular seeks to gain understanding about how social roles, such as teacher and student, modulate coordination during tutoring sessions. Considering the complexity of synchronization, this research considers three areas of interest or semiotic levels: lexical entrainment, gestural alignment, and posture-sharing. The description of coordination patterns in teacher-student interaction could bring new insights about a) how contextual factors, such as differences in social roles, modulate interaction and b) how synchronization processes occur at different semiotic levels. In the past, Bernieri & Rosenthal (1991) pointed out that interpersonal coordination in school teachers could help in the identification of teaching styles or rhythms. At the same time, recent trends in education are highlighting the role of rapport in building an environment that promotes learning (Starcher, 2011). Teachers who have established a rapport in their classes are likely to have students who attend class, pay attention during class, and enjoy the subject matter (Benson et al., 2005). Considering the relationship between coordination and rapport, this project on teacher-student interaction could have important consequences for different fields.

Date:10 Dec 2020 →  Today
Keywords:interpersonal coordination, alignment, lexical entrainment, interaction, multimodality
Disciplines:Pragmatics
Project type:PhD project