The (In)Authenticity of Simulated Talk: Comparing Role-Played and Actual Interaction and the Implications for Communication Training

By Elizabeth Stokoe. 2013

220 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How authentic is simulated, or role-played, interaction, of the kind produced in communication training contexts? The article addresses this question by comparing actual and role-played police investigative interviews. Both types of interviews were recorded by the police: real ones to fulfill British legal requirements and training ones to maximize the authenticity of the training experience. Interview openings were examined using conversation analysis. Officers must adhere to Police and Criminal Evidence Act (2008) guidelines, turning them into spoken actions. The analyses revealed that while, in gross terms, officers in real and simulated interviews opened interviews by formulating the same actions (e.g., identifying copresent parties), differences were observable in their design and organization. In simulations, actions were more elaborate or exaggerated; that is, they were made interactionally visible and “assessable.” Furthermore, some actions were only present in simulations. Implications for the efficacy of role-play methods for training and assessing communication are discussed.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4efc87054e2919634c7f0f41d9c88d08ff21cc0d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Christina L. Isabelli-García
2. J. Plews
3. Dan Dewey
4. Jennifer Bown
5. Elizabeth Stokoe
6. Arnulf Deppermann

In Language and Linguistics

1. Jennifer Bown
2. Christina L. Isabelli-García
3. J. Plews
4. Dan Dewey
5. Elizabeth Stokoe
6. Ángels Llanes
7. Arnulf Deppermann
8. M. Sasaki

Citations in the corpus

• The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM): A Method for Training Communication Skills as an Alternative to Simulated Role-play (2014, background): “As I have shown elsewhere (Stokoe, 2013a), callers to mediation services typically do not know anything about mediation and have often been given the number by another organization.”
• Language learning and study abroad (2018, background): “As pointed out by Stokoe (2013), because the use of language in social situations and in role plays may differ, comparing experimental data at various points in time abroad with natural data is encouraged.”