[Dgkl] Tagungsankündigung

[Elisabeth Zima]

Liebe Liste,

ich würde mich sehr freuen, wenn untenstehender Call über die DGKL-Liste verbreitet werden könnte. Ich denke, das Thema ist auch für Kognitive Linguist:innen interessant.

Vielen Dank und freundliche Grüße
Elisabeth Zima




Conference Alert:

Social Encounters with Artificial Others: Linguistic, Emotional, and Cognitive Relationality in Contemporary Human–AI Interaction

Date: 16-Apr-2026 - 17-Apr-2026 Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Zima & Dr. Florina Zuelli (University of Zurich) elisabeth.zima at ds.uzh.ch; florina.zuelli at ds.uzh.ch

Abstract Submission Deadline: Please submit an abstract of 400–500 words (excluding references) to florina.zuelli at ds.uzh.ch by January 20, 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 30, 2026.

Topic:
Over the past years, interactions between humans and artificial interlocutors have increasingly become part of everyday life. AIs such as ChatGPT, Woebot, and Replika are perceived not merely as tools, but as helpers, confidants, or even romantic partners. These encounters compel us to rethink the linguistic, social, and epistemic foundations of concepts such as “(social) interaction,” and furthermore to reconsider the boundaries of subjectivity and identity. This interdisciplinary workshop explores how language functions as a medium through which humans and machines establish, negotiate, and sustain relationships. It seeks to address how identity, intimacy, and social and emotional connection are linguistically and discursively constructed in dialogues with artificial entities — and how such exchanges transform broader understandings of being human in the age of personable AI.

We invite contributions from psycholinguistics, discourse and conversation analysis, pragmatics, psychology, social studies, communication and media studies, and related fields.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
 - Linguistic and pragmatic practices in human–AI interaction
 - Conversational routines and ritualized interaction in everyday exchanges with AI partner
 - Discursive constructions of self and other in dialogues with AI
 - The notion of machine identity: do AIs display “person-like” characteristics in interaction?
 - Adaptation, alignment, and repair phenomena in speech-based human–AI interaction
 - Language as a resource for intimacy, trust, and affective alignment
 - Corpora and methodologies for analyzing human–machine communication - Relationality, anthropomorphism, and the ethics of address
 - Interpersonal and narrative positioning in chat- and voice-based interfaces - Psychological effects of AI interaction on mental health
 - Interactional norms (e.g. politeness, alignment) in conversations with voice assistants (e.g., Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant)
 - Metapragmatic awareness and users’ reflections on communicating with AIs - Shifting notions of agency and accountability in human–machine communication

 We particularly encourage contributions that combine empirical and theoretical perspectives, and that foster dialogue between linguistic, psychological, and social approaches to Human–AI Interaction.

Conference Website: https://www.ds.uzh.ch/de/tagungen/social_encounters_with_artificial_others/Home.html
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