Conversation

A conversation is a structured exchange between two or more parties where each contribution responds to what came before. What distinguishes conversation from mere sequence is that each turn is shaped by prior turns — a reply presupposes a prompt, a counter presupposes a claim.

Conversations require a shared medium (spoken language, written text, gesture, signal) and a minimal agreement about turn-taking: that parties alternate, that contributions are relevant to what preceded them, and that the exchange can be opened and closed. Grice’s cooperative principle formalized this — participants are expected to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear, and violations of these expectations carry meaning (irony, implicature, evasion).

A conversation is not necessarily verbal or between persons. A diagnostic exchange between a technician and a system log is a conversation. A series of moves in a game where each player responds to the other’s position is a conversation. The structure is the thing: call and response, conditioned on shared context.

Conversations produce knowledge that neither party held alone. The exchange itself generates something — a clarification, a decision, a shared understanding — that did not exist before the first turn.