Kobin Kendrick

What we’re not drowning in is money. It’d be great to hire students and post-docs for projects, but in the absence of that, I’ll gladly use tools that allow me to do more with less. I don’t see this as unethical.

There are interactional phenomena that are relatively rare or elusive yet analytically significant. Gene Lerner’s approach is to build collections of these over years or decades as one comes across specimens. An AI that can watch and listen might find hundreds of these in days or weeks.

I’d say we’re well on our way to artificial general intelligence (AGI), systems that are as intelligent as humans across all domains, including CA. The real breakthrough will be when AIs can analyze video data directly and help us build and analyze collections.

Post-decline requesting and the reversal of refusals A research proposal Post-decline requesting and the reversal of refusals: A research proposal Claude Sonnet 4.5 with Kobin H. Kendrick Introduction This report presents a research proposal grounded in an empirical observ...

I gave Claude Sonnet 4.5 a transcript I use for teaching CA and asked it to develop a research proposal based on an observation about the data. Its observation was original, insightful, and analytically significant. This is wild.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

AI models are good at literature reviews. What I like about this test is that coming up with a good idea for a project, or even a good place to start, is a harder task.

Projecting the Next Move: Embodied Action Projection in Collaborative Physical Tasks (Sonnet 4.5).md Projecting the Next Move: Embodied Action Projection in Collaborative Physical Tasks Claude Sonnet 4.5 Core Research Question How do participants use embodied conduct (gaze, gesture, body orientation,...

Whenever a new AI model is released, I ask it to propose a PhD project in CA. Today Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5, and its proposal is my favourite so far. If anyone, human or machine, would like to do this project, I'd gladly supervise it.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The YorCCA 2025 Report is out in the latest ISCA newsletter!

www.conversationanalysis.org/yorcca-2025-...

A huge thank you to all presenters & participants. We look forward to seeing you at YorCCA 2026!

Very excited to announce this faculty search at Rutgers! Looking for a wonderful new colleague to join us in Communication #EMCA #LSI @ica-lsi.bsky.social @lansi2024.bsky.social
jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258...

I asked ChatGPT o3 to replicate the findings of Pomerantz (1984). I gave it a summary and a set of 10 transcripts (NB).

Results were mixed: the evidence it presented was clear in some cases, but less so in others, and some observations were superficial.

drive.google.com/file/d/1l4rM...

As a lecturer, I tend to size up AIs by academic level, from undergrad to PhD candidate. Where would you place these AIs on that scale?

These observations are not entirely dissimilar from some early-stage CA projects: spotting a "media disclaimer" in the data could very well serve as a point of departure for further analysis. It's not an uninteresting observation.

The phenomena the models found (e.g. “weather talk”) lack the fine-grained specificity CA generally demands, but they did identify multiple instances of "a something". Questions about and assessments of the weather are indeed recurrent in the NB calls, for example.

Projected co-presence (Opus) Projected co-presence work Claude Opus Introduction This report identifies a previously undocumented interactional phenomenon in telephone conversation: projected co-presence work. This refers to the...

Projected co-presence work by Claude Opus 4

Opus identified “projected co-presence work” as a phenomenon in which callers negotiate future face-to-face meetings and manage relational and practical dimensions of reunion.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Media distancing disclaimers (o3) Media distancing disclaimers ChatGPT o3 Introduction Recent re‑examination of the NB telephone corpus reveals a recurrent practice in which speakers profess a categorical refusal to watch television...

Media distancing disclaimers by ChatGPT o3

o3 identified “media-distancing disclaimers” as a recurrent move: speakers emphatically refuse to watch distressing TV coverage to project moral self-care, recruit affiliation, and pivot out of sequences of shared lament.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Weather talk (o3) Weather talk ChatGPT o3 The nine telephone calls from the NB collection display a striking regularity: the first fully‑fledged topic after the canonical opening sequence is almost always an assessm...

Weather talk by ChatGPT o3

o3 identified “weather talk” as a systematic practice: immediately after greetings, callers offer stance-laden weather assessments (e.g. “beautiful,” “lousy”) to secure affiliation and signal the shift into substantive conversation.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I gave ChatGPT o3 and Claude Opus transcripts from the NB corpus (publicly available on TalkBank) and asked them to "find a something", i.e., to identify a phenomenon in the data to study.

The results are less impressive than the conceptual acrobatics in their PhD proposals.

🧵👇

#YorCCA's off to a great start! Check out the programme here: sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/y...

Yes, I'd steer my AI students away from those terms as well, but I can see where they've picked them up (e.g., onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10...., www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...). Collecting data will be tricky, but once they can use computers, they'll be able to access online corpora.

The Claude Bliss Attractor ...

This reminds me of what happens when two Claudes talk to each other for an extended period of time.

www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-claude...

What do you think of these AI-generated PhD proposals? Would you supervise an AI if it wanted to do one of these projects? What about a human guided by an AI?

The quality of the proposals varies by AI: some show signs of insight and creativity, while others miss the mark. Keep in mind that this is as bad as AI will ever be. Future models will only become smarter and more capable.

Several proposals assume unbounded data collection—overlooking ethical approvals, access limits, and resource constraints of a three-year PhD. AI still underestimates real-world research logistics.

These AI-generated proposals are stronger than many unsolicited PhD proposals I get by email. Each would still need supervision and direction, but they show good engagement with current CA research interests.

The interactional architecture of silence (ChatGPT 4o) The interactional architecture of silence: A conversation analytic study of voluntary quietude in high-stakes institutional settings ChatGPT 4o (March 2025) This project investigates the role of vol...

The interactional architecture of silence by ChatGPT 4o

Explores how strategic silences—framed by gaze and posture—shape accountability and power in courts, clinics, and disciplinary panels.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Orchestrating incongruence (DeepSeek R1) Orchestrating incongruence: A multimodal conversation analysis of deliberate channel misalignment in face-to-face interaction DeepSeek R1-0528 This research proposes a novel investigation into deliber...

Orchestrating incongruence by DeepSeek R1-0528

Investigates how speakers use mismatches between speech and gesture/prosody (e.g. deadpan sarcasm) to achieve humour, critique, or affiliation.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Micro-moments of mutual orientation (Kimi K2) Micro-moments of mutual orientation: How the body ‘searches’ for the next speaker before anyone speaks Kimi K2 Conversation analysis has shown how turn-transition is finely co-ordinated in talk, but...

Micro-moments of mutual orientation by Kimi K2

Examines how bodies scan for the next speaker in the 200–800 ms window at turn end.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Negotiating micro‑consent (o3) Negotiating micro‑consent: A conversation‑analytic study of pre‑touch sequences in everyday service encounters ChatGPT o3 1 Introduction and Rationale Conversation analysis (CA) has illuminated t...

Negotiating micro-consent by ChatGPT o3

Details how service encounters combine verbal tags, particles, and body moves to negotiate moment-by-moment permission for touch.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The choreography of misunderstanding (Opus 4) The choreography of misunderstanding: A multimodal analysis of repair sequences in intercultural first encounters Claude Opus 4 Core Research Question: How do strangers from different cultural backgr...

The choreography of misunderstanding by Claude Opus 4

Analyzes how intercultural strangers use gesture, gaze, and spatial moves to detect and resolve communicative trouble in first encounters.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I asked five AIs to draft PhD proposals in conversation analysis.

On one level, this is a simple thought experiment: what might an AI do if it went to grad school?

On another, it gives us a glimpse of a near-future in which AI guides human inquiry.

🧵👇

#YorCCA Registration is now open!

🚀 The programme for the York Conference on Conversation Analysis is now live!
📅 Join us in York on 18-19 July for two days of insightful sessions.
Check out the full programme and register now 👉 sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/y...