Volume 45, Issue 3

Situated at the intersection of language, discourse, and communication studies, the present study delves into the dynamics of human-artificial intelligence (AI) interactions. Our study centers on AI-based voice assistants which employ natural language processing to communicate with human users. With a dataset derived from 200 recorded interactions between human users and AI-based voice assistants of a leading Korean telecommunications provider, we investigate the intricate dialogue patterns that emerge within these exchanges. Employing the lens of conversation analysis, especially focusing on adjacency pairs, first pair-part (FPP) and second pair-part (SPP), our analysis elucidates how AI agents and human users negotiate meaning and interactional roles. We identify four distinct response types from the users’ SPP, revealing a variety of interactional patterns. The findings reveal that the users frequently respond to AI-initiated prompts with keywords, reflecting a strategy to efficiently retrieve information, and highlight instances of no verbal response. Additionally, the use of honorifics in Korean AI voice assistants underlines the influence of linguistic and cultural norms on the dynamics of human-AI interaction, emphasizing the need for AI systems to navigate social hierarchies effectively. Our study underscores the importance of enhancing human-AI dialogue and provides valuable implications for interdisciplinary research and practice in the rapidly evolving field of AI-based communication.

This article examines the literary representation of contemporary urban vernaculars (CUV) in fiction. It focuses specifically on four Swedish novels published in the last ten years, whose narratives are set in the urban and increasingly multilingual, migrant-rich and class-stratified peripheral areas of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The analysis centers on how they are situated in these urban peripheries, using written representations of spoken, non-standard Swedish CUV as symbolic resources to give authenticity to the narratives. We examine the distinctive linguistic features that are employed to evoke the imagination of CUV, and how these are used to build the fictional characters and to create certain recognizable social personas and practices. We also discuss the linguistic features that are available but are not exploited to represent the fictional characters’ ways of speaking, and possible reasons why this is so. Finally, we examine how the novels exploit contrasts between registers, particularly between CUV and adult second-language speaker styles and between CUV and standard Swedish, and with what effects. The findings are discussed in the context of the broader social discourses about language, migration, CUV and adult second-language speakers in present-day Sweden.

This paper illustrates a practice that children aged 6–10 years old deploy in response to adults’ directives both in the classroom and during homework completion at home: invoking school rules that contradict the directive. Based on 70 h of video-recorded interactions between adults and children and adopting a conversation analytic approach, the article illustrates that children invoke school rules (i.e., obligations, habits, and expectations regarding appropriate ways of conduct at school) in two ways: by reporting teachers’ claims and conduct, and/or by making relevant a school textual artefact in the environment. This practice has relevant consequences on the unfolding of the directive sequence: vis-à-vis the child’s invoking of school rules, adults variously modify their directive trajectory by changing the addressee or content of the directive, by mitigating its directiveness, and/or by finally abandoning the directive sequence. It is argued that, by countering the directive with school rules, children present themselves as more knowledgeable on the specific rule than their adult interlocutor, framing themselves as the ones having the right to decide on the issue. In so doing, children locally challenge the asymmetrical authority relationship projected by the adult’s directive.

The ability to achieve social interaction is both a key feature of research writing and an important aspect of advanced academic literacy. It can be seen in how doctoral students employ rhetorical resources to acknowledge limitations in thesis writing while securing a positive view of the research. Negation is one of the crucial interactional options, but less explored in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) literature. In this study, we drew on the appraisal theory to see negation as a disclaim marker that engaged with alternative positions and employed corpus analysis to examine the forms and functions of negation in the ‘limitations’ section of doctoral theses. To better understand how student writers exploit negation to achieve the rhetorical end, we further explored co-articulations of negation with other appraisal resources. A corpus-based analysis of 100 doctoral theses by Chinese and American doctoral students in applied linguistics showed that American students made significantly more use of negation , especially pairing negation with engagement and graduation resources. We attribute the difference to genre and culture norms and also raise pedagogical implications on the cultivation of students’ rhetorical awareness and the classroom teaching of research writing.

This study investigates how practicum EFL teachers build trust through appraisals in classroom interactions at a local senior high school in Mainland China. Building upon prior research on trust discourse and appraisals, we present a model of teachers’ trust discourse, which we apply to analyze six English reading lessons conducted by three young EFL practicum teachers. The findings reveal that the practicum EFL teachers construct two distinct types of trust: cognition-based trust (CBT) and affect-based trust (ABT). CBT is formed through the communication of the teachers’ epistemic and deontic authority, while ABT is fostered by emphasizing values congruence and guanxi (interpersonal connections) between the teachers and the students. Appraisals play a crucial role in the trust-building efforts of the practicum teachers. Our analysis further indicates a preference among the practicum teachers for prioritizing CBT, as evidenced by their strategic use of appreciation and judgment resources in the attitude system, as well as the application of force resources in the graduation system. This study provides valuable insights into the pivotal role of appraisals in cultivating trust between EFL teachers and students in classroom settings.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government used TV press briefings, involving government ministers as well as scientific and medical experts to update the public on the spread of the virus, advances in understanding the disease, and preventive measures. These briefings provide a valuable linguistic resource to study how science is disseminated and used by scientists and politicians in emergency risk communication. To this end, a corpus has been compiled, consisting of transcripts of 150 briefings of approximately 100 h, with a total of 996,040 words. This study uses text dispersion keyness to derive keywords that characterize the discourse of scientists and politicians, respectively. Focusing on stance markers, the study reveals different rhetorical strategies for persuasion used by the two parties in public health emergency communication. Specifically, the scientists employ cautious reasoning and restrained confidence, while the ministers use a war-on-coronavirus narrative with unrestrained confidence, in the framing of the disease and scientific development.