Conversation Analysis of Coalition Communication in Network Centric Operations
Ping Xue, Stephen R. Poteet, Anne Kao · IGI Global eBooks · 2010
Team verbal communication is a central component of coalition operations. Investigating the nature of (mis)communication in coalition operations, we conducted analyses based on both natural discourse data recorded during mission execution exercises, and the data collected through interviews of experienced coalition personnel. The authors’ analyses shows that pragmatic aspects of language use are essential parameters to successful understanding of communication threads, which demonstrate the ineffectiveness of purely semantic-similarity-based approaches to conversational data. This analysis provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of current computational approaches such as Latent Semantic Analysis as a methodology for analyzing conversational discourse. As a result, the authors propose a computational framework that incorporates both LSA and computational pragmatics for automating the analysis of coalition communication to support the concept of network-centric operations.