Stokoe2026b
| Stokoe2026b | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Stokoe2026b |
| Author(s) | Elizabeth Stokoe, Saul Albert, Cathy Pearl |
| Title | What is “conversational” about conversational technologies, products, and services? Insights from conversation analysis |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Conversation analysis, Technology, AI, LLMs, Language, Social interaction, AI Reference List, In press |
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| Year | 2026 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Annual Review of Applied Linguistics |
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| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1017/S0267190526100233 |
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Abstract
“Conversational” technologies, products, and services are in the headlines more than ever. But what does it mean to be “conversational?” We address this question through the lens of six decades of empirical research in conversation analysis, which has identified and described the foundational structure and interactional machinery of human sociality. We consider not only how tacit notions of “conversationality” manifest in technologies, products, and services, such as role-play, communication training, and chatbots, but also in research methodologies such as focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and laboratory studies – all of which rarely acknowledge how researcher–participant interaction shapes the data collected. Drawing on a range of examples from different institutional settings, we consider how and whether such technologies can or should leverage “conversation” in ways that reproduce “naturalistic” interactions – and ask what might count as “naturalistic” in this context anyway? We argue that if human conversationality becomes a benchmark, then humans themselves will fail tests derived from normative, not empirical, understandings of how social interaction works.
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