Communicative Action in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Theorizing LLMs as Communicative and Strategic Agents

Abstract The emergence of LLMs necessitates a re-evaluation of communicative agency in social systems. Integrating Habermas’s theory of communicative action with speech act theory, this paper investigates whether LLMs can engage in communicative action, produce speech acts, and function as social agents. We advance the novel claim that LLMs are “asymmetrical communicative agents” that satisfy behavioral but not intentional conditions for communicative action. While LLMs cannot yet generate genuine illocutionary acts, they produce significant perlocutionary effects. We adopt a gradualist position, arguing that LLMs lack a full-fledged “cognitive-volitional” complex, making them susceptible to co-option for strategic action even as they intervene in canonical communicative scenarios. This dual-status ontology suggests LLMs are quasi-social agents capable of advancing validity claims and influencing social norms. After anchoring LLMs within a “digital lifeworld,” we analyze their evolving roles across the strategic-communicative spectrum and their implications for the construction of social reality.