A Polyphonic Model and System for Inter-animation Analysis in Chat Conversations with Multiple Participants

Discourse in instant messenger conversations (chats) with multiple participants is often composed of several intertwining threads. Some chat environments for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) support and encourage the existence of parallel threads by providing explicit referencing facilities. The paper proposes a discourse model for such chats, based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theory. It considers that multiple voices (which do not limit to the participants) inter-animate, sometimes in a polyphonic, counterpointal way. An implemented system is also presented, which analyzes such chat logs for detecting additional, implicit links among utterances and threads and, more important for CSCL, for detecting the involvement (inter-animation) of the participants in problem solving. The system begins with a NLP pipe and concludes with inter-animation identification in order to generate feedback and to propose grades for the learners.