Perceived Authenticity of Politeness Strategies in Human-Computer Interactions
Authors
Laura Margarita Merino Hernández, Francisco Ariano CifuentesKey Information
Journal
Published in Vol. 4 No. 1 (2026) of AI-Linguistica. Linguistic Studies on AI-Generated Texts and Discourses.
AI-Linguistica. Linguistic Studies on AI-Generated Texts and Discourses is a new scholarly journal aiming at providing a publishing plateform for researchers from all areas of Linguistics (interfacing with neighboring fields: Communication Science, Media and Journalism Studies, Computational Linguistics) to reflect on generated texts from a variety of perspectives: theoretical, descriptive, and applied.
We understand ‘generated texts’ in a broad sense, including formats as diverse as texts generated by Large Language Models, AI-powered smart agents (i.e. chatbots, voice assistants, social bots etc.), writing assistance tools, template-based software, and neural machine translation services.
About the JournalAbstract
The present study analyzes the perceived authenticity of human-computer interactions in Spanish, as measured by computer agents’ use of positive politeness strategies. We explore how AI chatbots’ use of initial comments, emojis, and follow-up questions shapes participants’ perceptions of these interactions. An experimental study reveals that initial comments are the most influential factor in determining whether an interaction is considered authentic, followed by follow-up questions. At the same time, the use of emojis is detrimental to the overall acceptability of stimuli. An exploratory analysis of the variables frequency of AI use, gender, and age shows that regular AI users, males, and younger participants are less sensitive to politeness manipulations. These findings advance our understanding of how politeness strategies affect perceptions of authenticity in human-computer interactions.
References
Albelda Marco, Marta. 2025. Mitigation strategies in colloquial conversations: a contrastive approach in European, Cuban, Mexican, Argentinian and Chilean Spanish. Contrastive Pragmatics 6(1). 120–153. https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-bja10087 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-bja10087
Andersson, Marta & McIntyre, Dan. 2025. Can ChatGPT recognize impoliteness? An exploratory study of the pragmatic awareness of a large language model. Journal of Pragmatics 239. 16–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2025.02.001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2025.02.001
Ayers, John W. & Poliak, Adam & Dredze, Mark & Leas, Eric C. & Zhu, Zechariah & Kelley, Jessica B. & Faix, Dennis J. & Goodman, Aaron M. & Longhurst, Christopher A. & Hogarth, Michael & Smith, Davey M. 2023. Comparing physician and Artificial Intelligence chatbot responses to patient questions posted to a public social media forum. JAMA Internal Medicine 183(6). 589–596. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838
Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.167 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.167
Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen C. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085
Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen C. 2006. Politeness: some Universals in language usage. In Jaworski, Adam & Coupland, Nikolas (eds), The Discourse Reader (2nd edn.), 311–323. Abingdon: Routledge.
Chaves, Ana Paula & Egbert, Jesse & Hocking, Toby & Doerry, Eck & Gerosa, Marco Aurelio. 2021. Chatbots language design: the influence of language variation on user experience. arXiv. 1–34. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2101.11089 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3487193
Chaves, Ana Paula & van Hooijdonk, Charlotte & Liebrecht, Christine & Guerino, Guilherme Corredato & Candello, Heloisa & Lee, Minha & Kraus, Matthias & Gerosa, Marco Aurelio. 2024. Conversational agents. In Stephanidis, Constantine & Salvendy, Gavriel (eds), Human-Computer Interaction in Intelligent Environments, 201–240. Boca Raton: CRC Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003490685-7
Christensen, Rune Haubo Bojesen. 2019. ordinal: Regression Models for Ordinal Data (R package version 2019.12-10) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ordinal
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001a. Stylization, authenticity and TV news review. Discourse Studies 3(4). 413–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445601003004006 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445601003004006
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001b. Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30(3). 345–375. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404501003013
Coupland, Nikolas. 2003. Sociolinguistic authenticities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3). 417–431. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00233 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00233
Coupland, Nikolas. 2014. Language, society and authenticity: themes and perspectives. In Lacoste, Véronique & Leimgruber, Jakob & Breyer, Thiemo (eds), Indexing Authenticity: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, 14–39. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110347012.14 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110347012.14
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2016. Impoliteness strategies. In Capone, Alessandro & Mey, Jacob L. (eds), Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society (Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology 4), 421–445. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_16 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_16
Culpeper, Jonathan & Haugh, Michael & Kádár, Dániel Z. (eds). 2017. The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7
Curcó, Carmen. 2007. Positive Face, group face, and affiliation: an overview of politeness studies in Mexican Spanish. In Placencia, María Elena & García, Carmen (eds), Research on politeness in the Spanish-Speaking World, 105–120. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315088822-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315088822-7
Esmark Jones, Carol L. & Hancock, Tyler & Kazandjian, Brett & Voorhees, Clay M. 2022. Engaging the avatar: the effects of authenticity signals during chatbased service recoveries. Journal of Business Research 144(5). 703–716. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.01.012 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.01.012
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1960. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen: Mohr.
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Anchor Books.
Grice, H. Paul. 1991. Logic and conversation. In Davis, Steven (ed.), Pragmatics: A Reader, 305–315. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grindrod, Jumbly. 2024. Transformers, contextualism, and polysemy. arXiv 1– 25. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.09577 .
Hu, Yaxin & Qu, Yuxiao & Maus, Adam & Mutlu, Bilge. 2022. Polite or direct? Conversation design of a smart display for older adults based on politeness theory. In Barbosa, Simone & Lampe, Cliff & Appert, Caroline & Shamma, David A. & Drucker, Steven & Williamson, Julie & Yatani, Koji (eds), Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 22 (New Orleans, April 29-May 5, 2022), 1–15. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2203.15767 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517525
Kirakowski, Jurek & O’Donnell, Patrick & Yiu, Anthony. 2007. The perception of Artificial Intelligence as “human” by computer users. In Jacko, Julie A. (ed.), Human-Computer Interaction. HCI Intelligent Multimodal Interaction Environments HCI 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (vol 4552), 376–384. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73110-8_40 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73110-8_40
Koufaris, Marios. 2002. Applying the Technology Acceptance Model and Flow Theory to online consumer behavior. Information Systems Research 13(2). 205–223. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.13.2.205.83 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.13.2.205.83
Kull, Alexander J. & Romero, Marisabel & Monahan, Lisa. 2021. How may I help you? Driving brand engagement through the warmth of an initial chatbot message. Journal of Business Research 135(10). 840–850. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.03.005 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.03.005
Lacoste, Véronique & Leimgruber, Jakob & Breyer, Thiemo (eds). 2014. Indexing Authenticity: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110347012
Lee, Namyeon & Kim, Jeonghun & Kim, Eunji & Kwon, Ohbyung. 2017. The influence of politeness behavior on user compliance with social robots in a healthcare service setting. International Journal of Social Robotics 9(5). 727–743. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0420-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0420-0
Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341386.001.0001
López-Vázquez, Monica & López-Ruiz, Samuel. 2024. A comprehensive examination of emoji usage in Mexican Spanish WhatsApp corpus: a mixed-methods Linguistic approach. Quality & Quantity 58(6). 5921–5946. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-024-01898-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-024-01898-7
McTear, Michael. 2021. Introducing dialogue systems. In McTear, Michael (ed.), Conversational AI. Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies, 11–42. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02176-3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02176-3_1
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen. 2015. Typographic alteration in formal computer-mediated communication. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences 212. 140–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.311 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.311
Maughan, Rick. 2024. “48% of Americans think you should speak politely to AI.” Talker Research. (https://talkerresearch.com/48-of-americans-think-you-should-speak-politely-to-ai/) (last accessed on 01/09/2025).
Moll, Andrea. 2014. Authenticity in dialect performance? A case study of ‘Cyber-Jamaican’. In Lacoste, Véronique & Leimgruber, Jakob & Breyer, Thiemo (eds), Indexing Authenticity: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, 209–243. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110347012.209
Mugford, Gerrard. 2020. Mexican politeness: an empirical study on the reasons underlying/motivating practices to construct local interpersonal relationships. Russian Journal of Linguistics 24(1). 31–55. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-2020-24-1-31-55 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-2020-24-1-31-55
Nair, Sathvik & Srinivasan, Mahesh & Meylan, Stephan. 2020. Contextualized word embeddings encode aspects of human-like word sense knowledge. In Zock, Michael & Chersoni, Emmanuele & Lenci, Alessandro & Santus, Enrico (eds), Proceedings of the Workshop on the Cognitive Aspects of the Lexicon, 129–141. Barcelona: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Nguyen, Mai & Casper Ferm, Lars‐Erik & Quach, Sara & Pontes, Nicolas & Thaichon, Park. 2023. Chatbots in frontline services and customer experience: an anthropomorphism perspective. Psychology & Marketing 40(11). 2201–2225. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21882 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21882
Peter, Sandra & Riemer, Kai & West, Jevin D. 2025. The benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(22). 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2415898122 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2415898122
Peirce, Jonathan & Gray, Jeremy R. & Simpson, Sol & MacAskill, Michael & Höchenberger, Richard & Sogo, Hiroyuki & Kastman, Erik & Lindeløv, Jonas Kristoffer. 2019. PsychoPy2: experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods 51(1). 195–203. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y
Quan, Zhi & Chen, Zhiwei. 2024. Human–computer pragmatics trialled: some (im)polite interactions with ChatGPT 4.0 and the ensuing implications. Interactive Learning Environments 33(2). 1020–1039.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2024.2362829 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2024.2362829
R Core Team. 2019. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Rana, Kanishk & Madaan, Rahul & Shukla, Jainendra. 2021. Effect of polite triggers in chatbot conversations on user experience across gender, age, and personality. In 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication RO-MAN (Vancouver, August 8-12, 2021). 813–819. Vancouver: IEEE Press. https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515528 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN50785.2021.9515528
Reeves, Byron & Nass, Clifford. 1996. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rese, Alexandra & Ganster, Lena & Baier, Daniel. 2020. Chatbots in retailers’ customer communication: how to measure their acceptance? Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 56. 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102176 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102176
Ribino, Patrizia. 2023. The role of politeness in human–machine interactions: a systematic literature review and future perspectives. Artificial Intelligence Review 56(1). 445–482. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-023-10540-1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-023-10540-1
Schuetzler, Ryan M. & Grimes, G. Mark & Giboney, Justin Scott. 2018. An investigation of conversational agent relevance, presence, and engagement. In Americas Conference on Information Systems 2018 Proceedings 12 (New Orleans, August 16-18, 2018). 1–10. New Orleans: Association for Information Systems.
Silva, Geovana Ramos Sousa & Canedo, Edna Dias. 2024. Human factors in the design of chatbot Interactions: conversational design practices. In Proceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Brasilia, October 07-11, 2024). New York: Association for Computing Machinery. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3702038.3702083 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3702038.3702083
Terkourafi, Marina. 2015. Conventionalization: a new agenda for im/politeness research. Journal of Pragmatics 86. 11–18.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.06.004 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.06.004
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yang, Kun. 2024. Your smile works: understanding smiling face emojis in social media interactions. Visual Communication. Online First.
https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241268382 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241268382
Yu, Danni & Bondi, Marina & Hyland, Ken. 2024. Can GPT-4 learn to analyse moves in research article abstracts? Applied Linguistics. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.15612 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amae071
Details
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Laura Margarita Merino Hernández, Francisco Ariano Cifuentes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.