Towards a Virtual Facework Trainer:Use of Insultable BotsFor Learning Cross-Cultural (Im)Politeness

This project focuses on artificial social interactions where things get nasty and mean. The purpose is training in social 'facework' - - managing the situation so that participants maintain their social dignity or 'face.' This can be especially delicate in cross-cultural contexts, where assumptions about social protocols and the emotional associations of utterances and gestures may differ. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, it is intended as a training system, so that users might learn the do's and don'ts of social interactions in different cultures and different situations. The knowledge base draws from existing theories of diplomacy, facework, and (im)politeness theory. The other goal is to provide a platform for observation and experimentation of social interaction in an artificial, virtual setting in order to improve these theories.