Title
System-initiated digressive proposals in automated human-computer telephone dialogues: the use of contrasting politeness strategies
Abstract
System-initiated digressive proposals may be used to introduce new and unexpected information into automated telephone services. These digressions may be viewed as particularly pronounced forms of unsolicited interruptions as they contain information not directly related to the caller's intended activity. In human–human conversation, interruptions are considered to be speech acts which intrinsically threaten both the positive and negative face wants of the addressee and conversants adopt specific verbal strategies to mitigate the negative impact of their interruptions. A question therefore arises whether the introduction of face-redressive expressions, based on human–human conversational strategies, into the design of system-initiated proposals in automated services can mitigate the negative impact of the interruptions. A usability experiment was conducted to examine the effectiveness of three contrasting politeness strategies for system-initiated digressions in a mass-market telephone banking dialogue using speech recognition technology. Participants ( N =111) experienced these proposals while using the automated service to perform banking tasks. Results indicated that all these system-initiated digressions—irrespective of politeness strategy employed—had a negative impact on the user attitudes towards the service. This paper reports these results and explores participants’ perceptions of the politeness styles and registers employed in the system-initiated proposals.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1016/j.ijhcs.2004.08.001
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Keywords
Field
DocType
system-initiated digressive proposal,politeness style,automated telephone service,system-initiated proposal,negative impact,politeness strategy,banking task,automated service,automated human-computer telephone dialogue,negative face,human-human conversation,system-initiated digression,politeness theory,natural language interface,usability
Conversation,Politeness theory,Expression (mathematics),Computer science,Usability,Politeness,Telephone banking,Natural language user interface,Human–computer interaction,Perception
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
62
1
1071-5819
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
8
1.71
10
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
J. Wilkie181.71
Mervyn A. Jack219143.58
P. J. Littlewood3122.09