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This workshop focuses on language resources, analysis, and applications in real-life conversational interactions. Collecting and researching conversational corpora have mainly targeted conversations in experimental settings, such as map task dialogs, and artificial situations, such as chats among university students recruited for recording. Conversations in our daily life, however, differ from those conversations in the following aspects.

  • Socially-motivated activity: Everyday conversations are conducted as part of socially-motivated activities, such as having dinner with family or negotiating with a client. These activities are organized by participants themselves, as opposed to experimenters, in locally situated ways.
  • Multi activity: In daily life, people often engage in conversations while conducting some non-conversational activities, such as eating, cooking, and driving. In these situations, they simultaneously organize multi-activities in tactical ways: they are not just talking.
  • Situated use of language and body: In face-to-face everyday interaction, not only verbal but also non-verbal behaviors, such as eye-gazes and gestures, play a significant role. People coordinate these verbal and non-verbal resources to fit the context of situation.
  • Fluid participation framework: While the number of participants and participation roles in experimental/artificial settings are usually fixed, participants in everyday conversations sometimes get in and out of a conversation, and may split into two or more sub groups. Thus, participation frameworks are often dynamically reconfigured.
  • Temporal and spatial unboundedness: In daily situations, there may not be a strict boundary of a conversation; the opening and closing of a conversation can be continuous with preceding and succeeding activities. Similarly, in the spatial dimension, a conversation in a public space may involve people in the surrounding area as the conversation unfolds.

This workshop will provide a focal point for the growing research community on real-life conversational interaction. We invite submissions on all aspects of scientific and technological research on this theme.

Topics include but are not limited to:

  • State-of-the-art corpora of conversation in daily life
  • Situated use of language and body in real-life interaction
  • Management of multiple actions through multi-modality
  • Reorganization of participants and participation frameworks
  • Methodologies for recording and analyzing temporally/spatially unbounded conversations

Paper Format and Submission

We will accept research papers (maximum 4 pages) for oral or poster presentation. Paper submissions must follow the LREC 2018 paper submission guidelines. LREC’s author toolkit is available on the LREC website.

Important Dates

  • January 15, 2018: Submission of proposals for oral and poster papers
  • February 10, 2018: Notification of acceptance
  • February 25, 2018: Final Submission of accepted papers
  • May 7, 2018: Workshop date