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Kobin Kendrick

@kobinkendrick.bsky.social

210 followers 34 following 51 posts

Conversation analyst at the University of York. Interests include CA methods, turn-taking, multimodality, and the recruitment of assistance—e/acc

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Mar 27

The new ChatGPT 4o image generation is transformative for multimodal conversation analysis. It creates anonymized illustrations in any style while preserving relevant details of embodied conduct—useful when you lack ethical approval to include frame grabs in publications.

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · 7d

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.

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · 7d

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.

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · 8d

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.

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · 8d

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...

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...

docs.google.com

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · 8d

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.

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · 9d

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...

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,...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Kobin Kendrick

YorCCA @yorcca.bsky.social · 9d

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!

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Reposted by Kobin Kendrick

Galina Bolden @galinabolden.bsky.social · Aug 19

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...

Tenure-Track/Tenured Faculty Position in Language, Interaction, and Interpersonal Communication (Open Rank)

The Department of Communication at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information seeks a full-time faculty member in language, interaction, and interpersonal communication. The search i...

jobs.rutgers.edu

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 25

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...

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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?

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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.

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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.

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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...

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...

docs.google.com

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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...

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...

docs.google.com

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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...

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...

docs.google.com

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 19

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.

🧵👇

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jul 19

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

I wonder what would happen if you directed them to (as Sacks did to Pomerantz) “Find a something,” instead of starting by requiring a proposal.”

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 18

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

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 17

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.

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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...

The Claude Bliss Attractor

...

www.astralcodexten.com

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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?

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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.

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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.

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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.

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Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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...

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...

docs.google.com

Kobin Kendrick @kobinkendrick.bsky.social · Jul 16

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...

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...

docs.google.com