Prosody in Human AI Interaction

Dear Colleagues,

The linguistics of prosody has been part of phonological studies since the 20th century (Ladd, 2008). Since its inception in the 1960s, conversation analysis (CA) has also shown how prosody (intonation contour, pitch height, and rhythm) plays a crucial role in structuring language use in social interactions. More systematic investigations since the 1990s have made it possible to use CA to show how participants in interaction orient to the prosodic production of turns as well as provide an emic perspective on the functional and interactional import of prosody, including its role in action formation, turn-taking, repair, and topic change (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996; Auer et al., 1999; Couper-Kuhlen & Ford, 2004; Barth-Weingarten, Reber, & Selting, 2010; Szczepek-Reed, 2010). With the burgeoning development of language production and perception by computers, along with society’s leap into the use of large language models, it is even more urgent now, in the mid-2020s, to examine the sequential structure of human–AI interactions (Brandt et al., 2023; Due & Lüchow, forthcoming) and how prosodic cues play a role in organizing turns and sequences in such interactions. The studies that have focused on prosody and AI have, so far, been experimental in nature and have not focused on the basic conversation analytic principles of sequential organization and participant orientation.

This Special Issue will include reports on the investigations of prosody in the interactions between humans and various forms of artificial intelligence, including voice user interfaces (Siri, Alexa, etc.) and other generative pre-trained transformer technologies such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. The studies will use methods from CA and build on previous prosodic analyses to describe what may be an emerging new type of language culture (Jones, 2024).

Although studies of the pragmatics of human AI interaction are beginning (Dombi, et al., 2022, 2024; Tuncer, et al., 2023; Brandt & Hazel, 2024), we know of no other full-length Special Issues or books that have been completed on prosody since 2010 and no publications focusing on the prosody of human–AI interaction using CA. Our aim is to include works from a variety of languages in the Special Issue. Research in this area would investigate the following topics and others: 

• how are particular actions formulated prosodically by humans for AI interlocutors,  
• does the prosodic formulation differ from the research on human-human interaction
• does the prosodic formulation of turns by an AI lead to unexpected orientations by the human interlocutor,
• is there an English language bias in the prosody of the AI in other languages

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor ([email protected]) or to the Languages Editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purpose of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer-review.

Tentative Completion Schedule
Abstract Submission Deadline: 28 February 2025
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 1 April 2025
Full Manuscript Deadline: 1 September 2025

References

Auer, P., Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Müller, F. (1999). Language in time: The rhythm and tempo of spoken interaction. Oxford University Press.

Barth-Weingarten, D., Reber, E., & Selting, M. (Eds.). (2010). Prosody in interaction. John Benjamins.

Brandt, A., & Hazel, S. (2024). Towards interculturally adaptive conversational AI. Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2024-0187

Brandt, A., Hazel, S., McKinnon, R., Sideridou, K., Tindale, J., & Ventoura, N. (2023). From writing dialogue to designing conversation: Considering the potential of conversation analysis for voice user interfaces. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3571884.3603758

Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Selthing, M. (Eds.) (1996). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge University Press.

Couper-Kuhlen, E. & Ford, C. E. (Eds.) (2004). Sound production in interaction. John Benjamins

Dombi, J., Sydorenko, T., & Timpe-Laughlin, V. (2022). Common ground, cooperation, and recipient design in human-computer interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 193, 4–20.

Dombi, J., Sydorenko, T., & Timpe-Laughlin, V. (2024). Openings and closings in human-human versus human-spoken dialogue system conversations. Language Learning & Technology, 28(2), 32–61. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/73571

Due, B. L., & Lüchow, L. (forthcoming). VUI-speak: There is nothing conversational about “conversational user interfaces.” In F. Muhle & I. Bock (Eds.), Social robots in institutional interaction. Bielefeld University Press.

Jones, R. H. (2024). Culture machines. Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2024-0188

Ladd, D. R. (2008). Intonational phonology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Tuncer, S., Licoppe, C., Luff, P., & Heath, C. (2023). Recipient design in human–robot interaction: The emergent assessment of a robot’s competence. AI & Society, 39(4), 1795–1810.

Szczepek Reed, B. (2010). Analysing conversation: An introduction to prosody. Palgrave Macmillan.

Prof. Dr. John Hellermann
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• prosody
• AI
• human AI interaction