Summary of the paper
| Title | Types of Nods. The Polysemy of a Social Signal |
|---|---|
| Authors | Isabella Poggi, Francesca D'Errico and Laura Vincze |
| Abstract | The work analyses the head nod, a down-up movement of the head, as a polysemicsocial signal, that is, a signal with a number of different meanings which allshare some common semantic element. Based on the analysis of 100 nods drawnfrom the SSPNet corpus of TV political debates, a typology of nods is presentedthat distinguishes Speaker’s, Interlocutor’s and Third Listener’s nods,with their subtypes (confirmation, agreement, approval, submission andpermission, greeting and thanks, backchannel giving and backchannel request,emphasis, ironic agreement, literal and rhetoric question, and others). Foreach nod the analysis specifies: 1. characteristic features of how it isproduced, among which main direction, amplitude, velocity and number ofrepetitions; 2. cues in other modalities, like direction and duration of gaze;3. conversational context in which the nod typically occurs. For theInterlocutor’s or Third Listener’s nod, the preceding speech act isrelevant: yes/no answer or information for a nod of confirmation, expression ofopinion for one of agreement, prosocial action for greetings and thanks; forthe Speaker’s nods, instead, their meanings are mainly distinguished byaccompanying signals. |
| Language | |
| Topics | Cognitive methods |
Full paper  |
Types of Nods. The Polysemy of a Social Signal |
| Bibtex | @InProceedings{POGGI10.596, author = {Isabella Poggi, Francesca D'Errico and Laura Vincze}, title = {Types of Nods. The Polysemy of a Social Signal}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Seventh conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10)}, year = {2010}, month = {may}, date = {19-21}, address = {Valletta, Malta}, editor = {Nicoletta Calzolari (Conference Chair), Khalid Choukri, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Jan Odjik, Stelios Piperidis, Mike Rosner, Daniel Tapias}, publisher = {European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}, isbn = {2-9517408-6-7}, language = {english} } |