Lammin, Hannah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9752-9335 (2022) What Are Bob and Alice saying? [Mis]communication and intermediation between language and code. Language Games, 23 (1):7. ISSN 1071-4391

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Abstract

Natural language interfaces enable intuitive conversational interactions with computational devices, whilst rendering the inner workings of these technologies opaque. However, such interfaces can also produce events of miscommunication between computers and their human users, which draw attention to the nonhuman logic operating inside the black box. This essay examines one such instance of miscommunication: the case of ‘Bob’ and ‘Alice,’ a pair of chatbots developed by Facebook that were shut down in 2017 because they started conversing in a language of their own. It takes this story as an occasion to examine the constitution of linguistic sense—and what happens to language when it is translated into code and back again. An excavation of the historical development of code demonstrates that it is fundamentally imbricated with language, thereby complicating any distinction between human and machinic ways of encoding the world. Nevertheless, speech, writing and code can each be seen to operate according to different discursive regimes that constitute what N. Katherine Hayles characterizes as distinct ‘worldviews.’ The essay will consider Bob and Alice’s idiosyncratic linguistic behavior from the perspectives of these worldviews, to show how sense is separated from non-sense in each discursive context. It will then compare the bots’ use of language to the practices of noise music, Dada poetry and high-frequency trading. Placing Bob and Alice’s output in this broader context allows us to conceive the subject of language in non-humanistic terms, and to conceive their ‘miscommunication’ not as an error, but as a creative act.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Special issue edited by Lanfranco Aceti, Sheena Calvert, and Hannah Lammin.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	natural language interface, linguistics, code, machine learning, media archaeology, noise, computational creativity
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BC Logic N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Design (DES) Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Design and Creative Industries
Related URLs:	Publisher
Last Modified:	14 May 2026 15:04
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/35472

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