386 JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY
In certain contexts of urgency, grounding mechanisms are
part of the ritual of communication designed to avoid
miscommunication.^22 The rituals of air traffic communication
emphasize repetition in order to reduce potential
misunderstanding arising from conversation.^23 Repetition of
words and phrases has been analyzed as providing a means for
interlocutors to increase their involvement in dialogues.^24
Accordingly, it follows that enhancing the involvement of
aircraft cockpit personnel via repetition increases the chances of
a shared understanding of the matter being spoken of by
increasing joint immersion in the context at hand. Conscious
repetition incrementally eliminates chances that the interlocutors
are focused on distinct perspectives on the immediate context.
This article describes and evaluates a method of analysis that
can be used to measure engagement in interaction. Where
interactions are assessed with respect to these measures, it is
possible to quantify certainty that interlocutors have successfully
communicated. A growing body of research develops automated
and semiautomated methods of measuring synchronization
among dialogue participants in terms of such analysis.^25 This
measure is argued here to correlate with mutual understanding.
Some scholars have examined laboratory constructed task-based
dialogues in order to correlate effects associated with repetition
(^22) CUSHING, supra note 1, at 40.
(^23) Id.
(^24) See TANNEN, supra note 14, at 84.
(^25) See, e.g., Junko Itou & Jun Munemori, Repetition of Dialogue
Atmosphere Using Characters Based on Face-to-Face Dialogue, 6278
KNOWLEDGE-BASED & INTELLIGENT INFORMATION & ENGINEERING SYS. 527
(2010); Fabian Ramseyer & Wolfgang Tschacher, Nonverbal Synchrony or
Random Coincidence? How to Tell the Difference, 5967 DEVEL.
MULTIMODAL INTERFACES: ACTIVE LISTENING & SYNC. 182 (2010); David
Reitter et al., Computational Modelling of Structural Priming in Dialogue,
PROC. HUM. LANGUAGE TECH. CONF., N. AM. CHAPTER ASS’N FOR
COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS ANN. MEETING, 2006, at 121; David Reitter &
Johanna D. Moore, Predicting Success in Dialogue, PROC. 45 TH ANN.
MEETING ASS’N FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS, 2007, at 808; Carl Vogel
& Lydia Behan, Measuring Synchony in Dialog Transcripts, 7403 COGNITIVE
BEHAV. SYS. 73 (2012).