Lenny the bot as a resource for sequential analysis: exploring the treatment of Next Turn Repair Initiation in the beginnings of unsolicited calls

Abstract

Based on conversation analysis, this study examines a corpus of naturally produced telemarketing phone calls with a chatbot called Lenny. Initially designed to trick the authors of unsolicited calls, Lenny has a methodological interest for Conversation Analysis and permits a fine understanding of bot/human professional calls. Because the design of its “turns” never changes, Lenny facilitates the comparisons between sequential phenomena. In this paper, we focus on repair sequences initiated with a specific “trouble with hearing” Next Turn Repair Initiator during beginnings and pre- beginnings. We show how the caller preserves the progressivity of the call while trying to solve the repair issue.