Phase Transitions in Affective Meaning Divergence: The Hidden Drift Before the Break
One partner says "Fine" meaning "resolution"; the other hears "surrender." The word is shared; the affective uptake is not. We formalize this as affective meaning divergence (AMD), the total-variation distance between interlocutors' anchor-conditioned affect distributions. Building on speech-act theory, common-ground accumulation, and entropy-regularized game theory, we derive a logit best-response map whose dynamics undergo a saddle-node bifurcation: when $βα> 4$, a monotone increase in AMD-driven load produces an abrupt, hysteretic collapse of repair coordination. On Conversations Gone Awry (CGA-Wiki; $N = 652$), derailing conversations exhibit critical-slowing-down (CSD) signatures acr...
| Authors | Napassorn Litchiowong |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 9 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 12 May 2026 |
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