Context and Dialogue Control

Dialogues are usually motivated by some underlying, noncommunicative goal. Participants in a dialogue therefore perform two tasks at once: that of trying to achieve the underlying noncommunicative goal, and that of communicating in order to achieve the associated communicative goal. This is reeected in the fact that dialogues consist not only of elements motivated by the underlying task, but also of elements motivated by the communicative task and dealing with aspects that require constant attention in communication, such as ensuring contact, providing feedback, monitoring the attention, taking turns, repairing communicative failures, etc. We use the term dialogue control to refer to these aspects of dialogue. In this paper we present an analysis of the various aspects of dialogue control, focusing on the identiication and deenition of the communicative functions of dialogue control acts in information-seeking dialogues.