FORMS OF INTRODUCTION IN DIALOGS - THEIR DISCOURSE CONTEXTS AND COMMUNICATIVE CONSEQUENCES

For effective communication to occur, speakers must share enough knowl edge to understand one another's contributions-they must achieve ''mut ual knowledge''. A critical point in a dialogue is therefore when one speaker wishes to introduce a new item. Previous research has shown ho w speakers collaborate to achieve mutual knowledge at such points in a dialogue. In this paper, we show that speakers vary in how effectivel y they collaborate with their partners on a communicative task. We dem onstrate that there are a number of different ways in which new inform ation can be introduced and that the choices speakers make influence h ow successful such collaborations are likely to be. Speakers who use q uestion form introductions are more likely to elicit informative feedb ack from their partners and to communicate successfully.