Understanding Phatic Aspects of Narrative when Designing Assistive and Augmentative Communication Interfaces

Users of Assistive and Augmentative Communications (AAC) systems sometimes have difficulty engaging in the quick and varied banter demanded of many social situations, or contributing to social conversations with their own previously developed narratives, opinions, experiences, or jokes. This chapter presents tools and approaches that have been developed to remedy these challenges. These include special interfaces that rely on “phatic” vocabularies or retrieve previously saved narratives that are used phatically. A phatic approach uses language to convey social participation through gesture, affirmation, or emotive support as much as or more than to convey wants, needs, or spontaneous and novel narrative. This chapter does not propose replacing standard AAC vocabularies, but instead suggests how a supplementary phatic approach can significantly enhance a user's participation in social interactions.