How Conversational are “Conversational Agents”?
Evidence from the Study of Users’ Interaction with a Service Telephone Chatbot
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v6i1.137249Keywords:
conversational agents, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, chatbot, call centerAbstract
The paper considers whether is it possible to view interactions with so-called conversational agents (chatbots, voice assistants, etc.) as a form of conversation. It is argued here that such conversational agents are conversational in a proper sense. To justify this conclusion, the analysis of the beginnings of 100 calls to a Russian municipal call center, processed by a chatbot, is conducted. The revealed features of the inquiry formulations, silences, and overlaps at the beginning of the calls show that users deal with the chatbot as a conversational partner and not as a voice user interface. It is proposed that to call an interaction a “conversation,” it is enough that at least one co-participant (the weak participation requirement) is able to understand all the turns in the interaction (the strong analyzability requirement) as part of the ongoing conversation.
References
Adiwardana, D., & Luong, Th. (2020, January 28). Towards a conversational agent that can chat about . . . anything. https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/01/towards-conversational-agent-that-can.html
Arend, B., Sunnen, P., & Caire, P. (2017). Investigating breakdowns in human chatbot interaction: A conversation analysis guided single case study of a human-chatbot communication in a museum environment. International Journal of Mechanical, Aerospace, Industrial, Mechatronic and Manufacturing Engineering, 11(5), 839–845. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1130169
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
Bolden, G. B., & Guimaraes, E. (2012). Grammatical flexibility as a resource in explicating referents. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(2), 156–174. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2012.673861
Button, G., & Sharrock, W. W. (1995). On simulacrums of conversation: Toward a clarification of the relevance of conversation analysis for human-computer interaction. In P. J. Thomas (Ed.), The social and interactional dimensions of human-computer interfaces (pp. 107–125). Cambridge University Press.
Clift, R. (2016). Conversation analysis. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139022767
Cromdal, J., Persson-Thunqvist, D., & Osvaldsson, K. (2012). “SOS 112 what has occurred?”: Managing openings in children’s emergency calls. Discourse, Context & Media, 1(4), 183–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2012.10.002
Danby, S., Baker, C. D., & Emmison, M. (2005). Four observations on openings in calls to kids help line. In C. D. Baker, M. Emmison, & A. Firth (Eds.), Calling for help: Language and social interaction in telephone helplines (pp. 133–151). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.143.10dan
Etehadieh, E., & Rendle-Short, J. (2016). Intersubjectivity or preference: Interpreting student pauses in supervisory meetings. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 36(2), 172–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2015.1121529
Francis, D., & Hester, S. (2004). An invitation to ethnomethodology: Language, society, and social interaction. SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781849208567
Garcia, A. C. (2013). An introduction to interaction: Understanding talk in formal and informal settings. Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350284821
Gardner, R. (2004). On delaying the answer: Question sequences extended after the question. In R. Gardner & J. Wagner (Eds.), Second language conversations (pp. 246–266). Continuum. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474212335.0016
Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology’s program: Working out Durkheim’s aphorism. Rowman & Littlefield.
Gehle, R., Pitsch, K., Dankert, T., & Wrede, S. (2017). How to open an interaction between chatbot and museum visitor? Strategies to establish a focused encounter in HRI. In HRI’17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Chatbot Interaction (Vienna, Austria, March 6–9, 2017) (pp. 187–195). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2909824.3020219
Gibbs, J. L., Kirkwood, G. L., Fang, C., & Wilkenfeld, J. N. (2021). Negotiating agency and control: Theorizing human-machine communication from a structurational perspective. Human-Machine Communication, 2, 153–171. https://doi.org/10.30658/hmc.2.8
Goodwin, Ch., & Heritage J. (1990). Conversation analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 283–307. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.001435
Harbers, H. (Ed.). (2005). Inside the politics of technology: Agency and normativity in the co-production of technology and society. Amsterdam University Press. http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/35139
Hoey, E. M. (2020). When conversation lapses: The public accountability of silent copresence. Oxford University Press.
Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Indiana University Press.
Hopper, R., & Chen, Ch.-H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29(4), 291–313. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi2904_1
Houtkoop-Steenstra, H. (1991). Opening sequences in Dutch telephone conversations. In D. Boden, & D. H. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and social structure (pp. 232–250). University of California Press.
Hutchby, I., & Wooffitt, R. (2002). Conversation analysis: Principles, practices and applications. Polity Press.
Koshik, I. (2005). Beyond rhetorical questions: Assertive questions in everyday interaction. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.16
Krummheuer, A. L. (2015). Technical agency in practice: The enactment of artefacts as conversation partners. PsychNology Journal, 13(2–3), 179–202. http://www.psychnology.org/File/PNJ13%282-3%29/PSYCHNOLOGY_JOURNAL_13_2_KRUMMHEUER.pdf
Krummheuer, A.L. (2016). Who am I? What are you? Identity construction in encounters between a teleoperated robot and people with acquired brain injury. In A. Agah, J.-J. Cabibihan, A. M. Howard, M. A. Salichs, & H. He (Eds.), Social chatbotics: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference ICSR 2016 (Kansas City, MO, USA, November 1–3, 2016) (pp. 880–889). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_86
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.
Leydon, G. M., Ekberg, K., & Drew, P. (2013). “How can I help?”: Nurse call openings on a cancer helpline and implications for call progressivity. Patient Education and Counseling, 92(1), 23–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.02.007
Lindström, A. (1996). Identification and recognition in Swedish telephone conversation openings. Language in Society, 23(2), 231–252. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740450001784X
Liberman, K. (2013). More studies in ethnomethodology. State University of New York Press.
Livingston, E. (1987). Making sense of ethnomethodology. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Luff, P. K., Gilbert, N., & Frohlich, D. (Eds.). (1990). Computers and conversation. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-21641-2
Moore, R. J. (2018). A Natural Conversation Framework for conversational UX design. In R. J. Moore, M. H. Szymanski, R. Arar, & G.-J. Ren (Eds.), Studies in conversational UX design (pp. 181–204). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95579-7_9
Moore, R. J., & Arar, R. (2019). Conversational UX design: A practitioner’s guide to the Natural Conversation Framework. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3304087
Pallotti, G., & Varcasia, C. (2008). Service telephone call openings: A comparative study on five European languages. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 17. http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr17/pallotti.htm
Park, Y.-Y. (2002). Recognition and identification in Japanese and Korean telephone conversation openings. In: K. K. Luke & T.-S. Pavlidou (Eds.), Telephone calls: Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures (pp. 25–47). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.101.06par
Pelikan, M. H. R., & Broth, M. (2016). Why that Nao? How humans adapt to a conventional humanoid robot in taking turns-at-talk. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 4921–4932). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858478
Pitsch, K. (2015). Ko-Konstruktion in der Mensch-Roboter-Interaktion: Kontingenz, Erwartungen und Routinen in der Eröffnung. In E. Gülich, U., Krafft, & U. Dausendschön-Gay (Eds.), Ko-Konstruktion in der Interaktion: Die gemeinsame Arbeit an Äußerungen und anderen sozialen Ereignissen (pp. 229–258). Transcript. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839432952-013
Pitsch, K. (2016). Limits and opportunities for mathematizing communicational conduct for social robotics in the real world? Toward enabling a robot to make use of the human’s competences. AI & Society, 31(4), 587–593. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0629-0
Pitsch, K., Kuzuoka, H., Suzuki, Y., Süssenbach, L., Luff, P., & Heath, Ch. (2009). “The first five seconds”: Contingent stepwise entry into an interaction as a means to secure sustained engagement in HRI. In The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Chatbot and Human Interactive Communication (Toyama, Japan, Septemper 27-October 2, 2009) (pp. 985–991). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROMAN.2009.5326167
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Pursuing a response. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 152–163). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511665868.011
Porcheron, M., Fischer, J. E., Reeves, S., & Sharples, S. (2018). Voice interfaces in everyday life. In CHI’18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada, April 21–26, 2018) (pp. 640:1–640:12). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174214
Porcheron, M., Fischer, J. E., & Sharples, S. (2017). “Do animals have accents?”: Talking with agents in multi-party conversation. In CSCW’17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (Portland, Oregon, USA, February 25-March 1, 2017) (pp. 207–219). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998298
Reeves, S. (2017). Some conversational challenges of talking with machines. In Talking with Conversational Agents in Collaborative Action: Workshop at the 20th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’17) (Portland, Oregon, USA, February 25–March 1, 2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3022198.3022666
Roberts, F., Francis, A., & Morgan, M. (2006). The interaction of inter-turn silence with prosodic cues in listener perceptions of “trouble” in conversation. Speech Communication, 48(9), 1079–1093. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2006.02.001
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444328301
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010
Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70(6), 1075–1095. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1968.70.6.02a00030
Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. Irvington, pp. 23–78.
Schegloff, E. A. (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies, 9(2–3), 111–151. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00148124
Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97(5), 1295–1345. https://doi.org/10.1086/229903
Schegloff, E. A. (2002a). Opening sequencing. In J. E. Katz & M. Aakhus (Eds.), Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 326–385). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489471.026
Schegloff, E. A. (2002b). Reflections on research on telephone conversation: Issues of cross-cultural scope and scholarly exchange, interactional import and consequences. In K. K. Luke & T.-S. Pavlidou (Eds.), Telephone calls: Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures (pp. 249–281). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.101.16sch
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791208
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8(4), 289–327. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1973.8.4.289
Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation analysis: An introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.
Sidnell, J., & Stivers, T. (Eds.). (2012). The handbook of conversation analysis. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001
Sifianou, M. (1989). On the telephone again! Differences in telephone behaviour: England versus Greece. Language in Society, 18(4), 527–544. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500013890
Slack, J. D., & Wise, J. M. (2005). Culture and technology: A primer. Peter Lang.
Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge University Press.
Suchman, L. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808418
Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2002). Telephone conversation openings in Persian. In K. K. Luke & T.-S. Pavlidou (Eds.), Telephone calls: Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures (pp. 87–109). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.101.08tal
ten Have, P. (2002). Comparing telephone call openings: Theoretical and methodological reflections. In K. K. Luke & T.-S. Pavlidou (Eds.), Telephone calls: Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures (pp. 234–248). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.101.15ten
ten Have, P. (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. SAGE.
Thomas, P. J. (Ed.). (1995). The social and interactional dimensions of human-computer interfaces. Cambridge University Press.
Verbeek P.-P. (2005) What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. Pennsylvania State University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271033228
Vinkhuyzen, E., Whalen, M., & Szymanski, M. (2006). Security, efficiency, and customer service in calls to a financial services organization. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 11(2), 53–68. https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-linguistique-appliquee-2006-2-page-53.htm
Wakin, M. A., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1999). Reduction and specialization in emergency and directory assistance calls. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(4), 409–437. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327973rls3204_4
Whalen, M., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Sequential and institutional contexts in calls for help. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(2), 172–185. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786750
Wooffitt, R., Fraser, N. M., Gilbert, N., & McGlashan, S. (1997). Humans, computers and wizards: Human (simulated) computer interaction. Routledge.
Zimmerman, D. H. (1992). Achieving context: Openings in emergency calls. In G. Watson, & R. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in context: Contributions to ethnomethodology (pp. 35–51). SAGE.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Author and Journal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
We follow the Budapest Open Access Initiative's definition of Open Access.
The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions.
The journal allows software/spiders to automatically crawl the journal content (also known as text mining)
The journal provides article level metadata to DOAJ
The journal allows readers to read, download, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and allow readers to use them for any other lawful purpose.
