Grounding, priming or affording? A multimodal analysis of the underpinnings of interactive alignment.

Interactive alignment (i.e. copying behaviour during conversation) has been demonstrated to govern an important share of the interactional dynamics during conversation. From a theoretical point of view, we want to add to the discussion of the mechanisms underpinning interactive alignment. We want to achieve this theoretical goal by studying the phenomenon in hitherto underexplored conversational settings, viz. in conversations where interlocutors are typically disagreeing or not even benevolently pursuing a common conversational goal. From a methodological perspective, our approach towards studying alignment is multimodal. This means that we will not only study verbal but also non-verbal behaviour (including gesture, posture and eye-gaze).

Keywords:affording

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Linguistics, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Other languages and literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies