Interactive Phrasebook

Effective cultural training teaches an understanding of appropriate social interactions in context—to take offense when reasonable, to give deference where appropriate, etc. Systems that provide realistic rehearsals have a fundamental need for believability beyond accuracy in appearance, and have the cus-tomizability to alter scenarios so they reflect the needs of the student. We propose using a rich, univer-sal theory of human-human “politeness” behaviors and the culture-specific interpretive frameworks for them (labeled “etiquette”) from sociology, linguistics and anthropology to create an interactive and practical training tool. Our model will link observable and inferred aspects of power and familiarity relationships, the degree of imposition of an act (all of which have implications for roles and intents) and the actor’s character to produce politeness behavior expectations. By using observations of polite-ness behaviors (or its lack), the same model permits inferences and updates about those attributes, while taking into account potential cultural biases. In Phase I, we will design the architecture of such a sys-tem, provide a Middle-Eastern culture based scenario derived from SSTR operation tasks, and create concrete plans to test the designed system. In Phase II, we will implement the system, conduct a pilot study, and expand cross-cultural content libraries.