Pub Date : 2024-08-31DOI: 10.1177/17504813241267092
Robert J. Moore
{"title":"Bridging the gap between conversation technology and conversation analysis","authors":"Robert J. Moore","doi":"10.1177/17504813241267092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241267092","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-29DOI: 10.1177/175048132411271494
Silke Reineke, Henrike Helmer
Moments of trouble and miscommunication occur regularly when users interact with virtual assistants like smart speakers. To add to the understanding of how users treat moments of trouble in everyday interactions with a virtual assistant (VA) in German, this paper reports on a conversation analytic study of practices that users deploy after a request to a VA has failed. The repair sequences that we analyse show users orienting to different trouble sources and employing a range of practices to resolve trouble, including repeating, altering their formulations and formulating related (new) requests. Most often, troubles are resolved after one instance of repair. Other repair sequences include several instances of repair and show more complex and diverse practices being employed. In some of these sequences, users ‘insist’ on their initial goal and/or strategy and do not always observably orient to the VA’s local reactions. In these cases, the interactional history with the VA and previously successful requests seem to play a role as well in the users’ local conduct.
{"title":"User practices in dealing with trouble in interactions with virtual assistants in German: Repeating, altering and insisting","authors":"Silke Reineke, Henrike Helmer","doi":"10.1177/175048132411271494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/175048132411271494","url":null,"abstract":"Moments of trouble and miscommunication occur regularly when users interact with virtual assistants like smart speakers. To add to the understanding of how users treat moments of trouble in everyday interactions with a virtual assistant (VA) in German, this paper reports on a conversation analytic study of practices that users deploy after a request to a VA has failed. The repair sequences that we analyse show users orienting to different trouble sources and employing a range of practices to resolve trouble, including repeating, altering their formulations and formulating related (new) requests. Most often, troubles are resolved after one instance of repair. Other repair sequences include several instances of repair and show more complex and diverse practices being employed. In some of these sequences, users ‘insist’ on their initial goal and/or strategy and do not always observably orient to the VA’s local reactions. In these cases, the interactional history with the VA and previously successful requests seem to play a role as well in the users’ local conduct.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-29DOI: 10.1177/175048132411271437
Marc Relieu
This research delves into the world of conversation analysis, focusing on the unique conversational agent, Lenny. In contrast to most modern AI-based chatbots, Lenny employs a minimalistic approach, utilizing pre-recorded turns to engage with unsolicited callers and extend interactions. The study aims to dissect how Lenny’s long turns contribute to displaying ‘his’ personhood. By analyzing Lenny’s long turn in interaction, we uncover how it consolidates Lenny’s relatable character. Through analysis of a corpus of recorded interactions, the paper highlights the role of turn design in simulating human-like interactions. Ultimately, this research offers insights into the interplay between scripted content and human understanding in live conversations.
{"title":"How Lenny the bot convinces you that he is a person: Storytelling, affiliations, and alignments in multi-unit turns","authors":"Marc Relieu","doi":"10.1177/175048132411271437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/175048132411271437","url":null,"abstract":"This research delves into the world of conversation analysis, focusing on the unique conversational agent, Lenny. In contrast to most modern AI-based chatbots, Lenny employs a minimalistic approach, utilizing pre-recorded turns to engage with unsolicited callers and extend interactions. The study aims to dissect how Lenny’s long turns contribute to displaying ‘his’ personhood. By analyzing Lenny’s long turn in interaction, we uncover how it consolidates Lenny’s relatable character. Through analysis of a corpus of recorded interactions, the paper highlights the role of turn design in simulating human-like interactions. Ultimately, this research offers insights into the interplay between scripted content and human understanding in live conversations.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"70 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-27DOI: 10.1177/17504813241266905
Rosina Márquez Reiter, Mandie Iveson
In this paper we explore human communicative behaviour in unsolicited commercial telephone calls between human telemarketers and ‘bots’ that exhibit human characteristics. Drawing on a corpus of recorded telephone conversations between telemarketers and a spam-interception service, we examine some of the communicative dimensions through which telemarketers make sense of their interactions with this technology as trust, or rather the illusion of it, is established, severed and restored. The analysis shows how trust is established early in the calls through an authentic human voice, the illusion of progressivity and purported intersubjectivity, including ‘doing-being-human’ excuses. In cases where telemarketers realise they had not been talking to a human, verbal abuse towards the bot, and expressions of surprise and embarrassment oriented to their professional face are articulated as the call is used as a training opportunity to identify bots. The article contributes to understanding some of the technology enabled contemporary communicative practices human beings engage in as part of their everyday lives. It raises questions about how humans negotiate trust and validate authenticity in an increasingly automated and technologically driven world.
{"title":"The establishment and breakdown of trust in human-bot marketing calls","authors":"Rosina Márquez Reiter, Mandie Iveson","doi":"10.1177/17504813241266905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241266905","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we explore human communicative behaviour in unsolicited commercial telephone calls between human telemarketers and ‘bots’ that exhibit human characteristics. Drawing on a corpus of recorded telephone conversations between telemarketers and a spam-interception service, we examine some of the communicative dimensions through which telemarketers make sense of their interactions with this technology as trust, or rather the illusion of it, is established, severed and restored. The analysis shows how trust is established early in the calls through an authentic human voice, the illusion of progressivity and purported intersubjectivity, including ‘doing-being-human’ excuses. In cases where telemarketers realise they had not been talking to a human, verbal abuse towards the bot, and expressions of surprise and embarrassment oriented to their professional face are articulated as the call is used as a training opportunity to identify bots. The article contributes to understanding some of the technology enabled contemporary communicative practices human beings engage in as part of their everyday lives. It raises questions about how humans negotiate trust and validate authenticity in an increasingly automated and technologically driven world.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-22DOI: 10.1177/17504813241271486
Lucien Tisserand, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre
Since the development of commercial robots dedicated to service or social encounters, there have been numerous appearances of such devices in public spaces or corporate buildings. However, their purpose might not be self-evident and the modalities for using it might not be self-explainable. Moreover, ‘talking’ to a robot that imitates a receptionist could raise practical problems, given the fact that ‘talk’ among humans is an interactional resource for performing actions that carry social dimensions. This paper focuses on the dimension of ‘preference organization’; specifically, offer rejections that are dispreferred among humans. Based on conversation analysis of human-robot interactions recorded in a university library, we examined 95 occurrences of how library users rejected offers of assistance initiated by a humanoid robot, Pepper. We identified three embodied rejection practices embedded in other courses of activity among groups of library users. Such practices show how users index their own orientation towards the transposition (or not) of human interactional norms that are borne with rejections as marked social moves.
{"title":"Rejecting a robot’s offer: An analysis of preference","authors":"Lucien Tisserand, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre","doi":"10.1177/17504813241271486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241271486","url":null,"abstract":"Since the development of commercial robots dedicated to service or social encounters, there have been numerous appearances of such devices in public spaces or corporate buildings. However, their purpose might not be self-evident and the modalities for using it might not be self-explainable. Moreover, ‘talking’ to a robot that imitates a receptionist could raise practical problems, given the fact that ‘talk’ among humans is an interactional resource for performing actions that carry social dimensions. This paper focuses on the dimension of ‘preference organization’; specifically, offer rejections that are dispreferred among humans. Based on conversation analysis of human-robot interactions recorded in a university library, we examined 95 occurrences of how library users rejected offers of assistance initiated by a humanoid robot, Pepper. We identified three embodied rejection practices embedded in other courses of activity among groups of library users. Such practices show how users index their own orientation towards the transposition (or not) of human interactional norms that are borne with rejections as marked social moves.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"2022 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-22DOI: 10.1177/17504813241267059
Saul Albert, Lauren Hall
The agent of action in Human-Computer Interaction is, as the hyphenated name of the field suggests, usually conceptualized as an contrastive binary of either human or computer. This study, informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, instead describes the interactional achievement of distributed agency in a ‘smart homecare’ setting where a homecare worker and a disabled person coordinate shared activities using a virtual assistant. We focus on the tacit criteria, attributions, and discourses of agency embedded in the interactional details of their everyday homecare routine. The analyses reveal how collaboration in everyday care tasks involves the distributed agency of all participants, irrespective of their ostensible ‘humanness’. Our findings (a) provide a critical perspective on the technological imaginary of expensive, high-tech robotic replacements for human care work; (b) advocate low-tech strategies for adapting consumer technology for smart homecare systems; and (c) suggest alternative approaches to agency in assistive technology design, grounded in detailed observation of the interactional infrastructure of real homecare settings.
{"title":"Distributed agency in smart homecare interactions: A conversation analytic case study","authors":"Saul Albert, Lauren Hall","doi":"10.1177/17504813241267059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241267059","url":null,"abstract":"The agent of action in Human-Computer Interaction is, as the hyphenated name of the field suggests, usually conceptualized as an contrastive binary of either human or computer. This study, informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, instead describes the interactional achievement of distributed agency in a ‘smart homecare’ setting where a homecare worker and a disabled person coordinate shared activities using a virtual assistant. We focus on the tacit criteria, attributions, and discourses of agency embedded in the interactional details of their everyday homecare routine. The analyses reveal how collaboration in everyday care tasks involves the distributed agency of all participants, irrespective of their ostensible ‘humanness’. Our findings (a) provide a critical perspective on the technological imaginary of expensive, high-tech robotic replacements for human care work; (b) advocate low-tech strategies for adapting consumer technology for smart homecare systems; and (c) suggest alternative approaches to agency in assistive technology design, grounded in detailed observation of the interactional infrastructure of real homecare settings.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-22DOI: 10.1177/17504813241271481
Damien Rudaz, Christian Licoppe
Relying on a large corpus of natural interactions between visitors and a robot in a museum setting, we study a recurrent practice through which humans ‘worked’ to maintain the robot as a competent participant: the description by bystanders, in a way that was made accessible to the main speaker, of the social action that the robot was taken to be accomplishing. Doing so, bystanders maintained the robot’s (sometimes incongruous) behaviour as relevant to the activity at hand and preserved the robot itself as a competent participant. Relying on these data, we argue that ex ante definitions of a robot as ‘social’ (i.e. before any interaction occurred) run the risk of naturalizing as self-evident the observable result from micro-sociological processes: namely, the interactional work of co-present humans through which the robot’s conduct is reconfigured as contextually relevant.
{"title":"‘Playing the robot’s advocate’: Bystanders’ descriptions of a robot’s conduct in public settings","authors":"Damien Rudaz, Christian Licoppe","doi":"10.1177/17504813241271481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241271481","url":null,"abstract":"Relying on a large corpus of natural interactions between visitors and a robot in a museum setting, we study a recurrent practice through which humans ‘worked’ to maintain the robot as a competent participant: the description by bystanders, in a way that was made accessible to the main speaker, of the social action that the robot was taken to be accomplishing. Doing so, bystanders maintained the robot’s (sometimes incongruous) behaviour as relevant to the activity at hand and preserved the robot itself as a competent participant. Relying on these data, we argue that ex ante definitions of a robot as ‘social’ (i.e. before any interaction occurred) run the risk of naturalizing as self-evident the observable result from micro-sociological processes: namely, the interactional work of co-present humans through which the robot’s conduct is reconfigured as contextually relevant.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-19DOI: 10.1177/17504813241271444
Sean Rintel
{"title":"Productivity implications for generative AI role-based prompts as a networked hermeneutic","authors":"Sean Rintel","doi":"10.1177/17504813241271444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241271444","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-19DOI: 10.1177/17504813241271485
Martin Porcheron
{"title":"Agency as an elixir for design","authors":"Martin Porcheron","doi":"10.1177/17504813241271485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241271485","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142186649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}