ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a range of examples, from food delivery apps to healthcare and religious communication, to make the point that any attempt to seriously account for the role of automation has to acknowledge that there are gradations of anthropomorphism involved. In religious communication, for example, if worshippers are to feel that their spiritual needs have been met, the automated entity must not only be seen as a mere conveyor of information; it needs to be construed as providing legitimate guidance that takes into consideration the concerns of an individual worshipper. The key point being emphasized is this: anthropomorphism is an interpretive move on the part of the hearer, that is, it is the hearer that decides whether or not to attribute humanlike qualities to the interlocutor, and from there, decide what kinds of speech acts are being performed so as to generate the relevant implicatures. This chapter, then, explains the implications of such gradations of anthropomorphism for our understanding of language and communication. It shows that Cooperation and speech acts need to be viewed from an assemblage-theoretic perspective. It is how the assemblage has been put together that encourages the hearer to anthropomorphize (or not) an automated entity.
