Common ground as (inter)cultural in-betweenness in human-machine communication: A literary pragmatic perspective

Abstract Recent advancements in artificial intelligence technology have given impetus to extensive research across a number of disciplines, including semantics and pragmatics, which focus on human-machine linguistic interactions, dialogues in particular, that generate a feeling of almost natural conversation going on. The interest in such interactions has called to rethinking of pragmatic frameworks through which language use between human interlocutors is conceptualized. On the other hand, such research has affirmed that some pragmatic models, normally developed to pertain to human-human conversation, prove applicable and suitable to human-machine interaction, as is the sociocognitive approach (SCA). The concept that stands out in this respect is one of asymmetry in incrementing common ground between speakers that come from different languages. However, the subject of research presented in this paper are the fictional dialogues/conversations between characters in the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun , that was first published four years ago. Following the trail of the question of credibility of fictional characters’ voices that has been illuminated in works on literary pragmatics and drawing on the concept of ‘in-betweenness’ (taken to be crucial for constructing culture by sociologists of culture) I examine those dialogues that Klara, a humanoid artificial friend (AF) enters within at least three different types of communities (K) - the community of other AFs and the communities she forms with humans – children and adults. Taking into account factors such as conceptual and background knowledge, egocentrism and salience, I observe the emergence of common ground between the fictional conversationalists, whom I take to be ‘intercultural speakers.’ The emergent common ground, however, consistently proves, in the majority of such conversations, deficient, cropped and unattainable. I argue, finally, that this failure to increment common ground gives credibility to Klara’s voice, making her a permanent ‘inbetweener.’