Communications of the ACM
Two decades of the language-action perspective
Introduction
In 1986, Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores published Understanding Computers and CognitionA New Foundation for Design [3]. They offered a sharp critique of the field of artificial intelligence, which was completing 30 years of pursuit of its Holy Grail of expert systems software and other intelligent systems without many demonstrable results. At the same time, they pointed out a new perspective on computing: the language-action perspective (LAP), as defined a few years earlier by Goran Goldkuhl and Kalle Lyytinen. At the core of this perspective is the question: How can IT play a role in improving human communication in organizations and in society as a whole?
The conclusion that software is unlikely to ever exhibit intelligent behavior was reached by a powerful new interpretation of skillful action based in the work of modern philosophers. The essence of their interpretation is that skillful action always occurs in a context set by conversations, and in the conversations people perform speech acts by which they commit to and generate the action.
Expert behavior requires an exquisite sensitivity to context and an ability to know what to commit to. Computing machines, which are purposely designed to process symbols independent of their context, have no hope of becoming experts. Winograd and Flores said that questions on the AI agenda at the time, such as "Can a machine think?", are meaningless. They proposed instead that we use our understanding of action-through-language to improve the way we design computers to effectively support human practice. This frontal assault on the AI project caused much controversy and considerable introspection. Federal funding agencies became reluctant to support AI projects formulated in the older AI tradition. The leaders of the AI community called the period from late 1980s into the early 1990s "AI winter." But they rose to the challenge and formulated a new AI program that focused on what actions AI systems could take and be more effective performing.
Winograd and Flores illustrated how a language-action perspective can guide design with a model they called the "Conversation for Action." This is a loop in which one person makes a request that is agreed to and fulfilled by another person. This universal pattern of human communication was a significant contribution to the developing field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and the basis of the Coordinator workflow tool. However, there was also criticism. For Lucy Suchman, the Coordinator was not an enabler of human responsibility but rather an instrument of management control based on a rationalistic perception of work [1]. In retrospect, it is fair to say the speech-act based approach of communication indeed had a slightly rationalistic bias. However, the bottom line remains relevant: not only that commitments are being made in conversations, but that this important aspect of communication should be recognized when we analyze or try to change organizational processes.
Communicative Action
Goldkuhl and Lyytinen had coined the term language-action perspective in the early 1980s to describe an approach to software design from the perspective of how humans perform actions using software. Whereas Winograd and Flores were primarily concerned by rationalistic thinking in AI, this European movement originated in a reflection on the rationalistic paradigm in the field of information systems. This paradigm emphasized storage and message structures, and analysis of content in the form of objectivistic conceptual modeling.
The fundamental assumption of LAP is that language is not only used for exchanging information about the world, as in reports and statements, but also for changing the (social) world, for example, by means of promises, orders, and declarations. LAP emphasizes the patterns of speech acts by which humans create a common understanding, and how they coordinate their activities on the basis of this common understanding.
In 1996, a group of mainly European IS researchers organized a first LAP workshop in Tilburg, The Netherlands. A small research community continued with yearly workshops with a particular emphasis on the role of LAP in information system and business process design. Over the years it became clear that communication is much more complex than a naïve speech-act theory would suggest. Communicative action draws heavily on the context. A certain message can bundle several speech acts, or maintain an intentional ambiguity. Whereas early LAP implementations have made a strong case for communicational transparency, it should be recognized that the inherent dynamics of communication make adaptability equally important (see the article by Te'eni in this section). Moreover, communication and organization are closely intertwined: communication is not something that just occurs within an organization, because organizations themselves emerge in communication [2].
The articles in this section present experiences from two decades of LAP that show some of its possible value for IT professionals. Peter Denning and Robert Dunham address the highly relevant topic of innovation and how LAP reveals the conversation patterns that play a crucial role in innovation practices. Goran Goldkuhl extends the asymmetric workflow loop of the Coordinator to symmetric B2B relationships. The resulting framework helps business process designers focus on a key function of business processes, that is, the coordination of action, and on the specific role of ITtwo issues that often remain implicit in popular process models. Jan Dietz argues that in communication modeling, a distinction must be made between surface structure and deep structure, and that unraveling the deep structure is key to understanding the essence of organizations and hence to successful business process redesign. Dov Te'eni identifies a list of design principles for communication support systems and makes clear that it is not easy to account for all of them; but he also shows how these principles are being addressed in some experimental systems. To conclude the section, Terry Winograd looks back and considers in which sense LAP offers a new foundation for design, whereas Mareike Schoop, Aldo de Moor, and Jan Dietz look forward and apply LAP to the future of the Semantic Web.
References
1. Suchman. L. Do categories have politics? The language/action perspective reconsidered. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2, 3 (1994), 177190.
2. Taylor, J. Rethinking the Theory of Organizational Communication: How to Read an Organization. Ablex, Norwood, 1993.
3. Winograd, T. and Flores, F. Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Ablex, Norwood, 1986.
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