Reviving Language/Action Perspective in the Era of Social Software: Research in Progress

Language/Action perspective (LAP) was introduced by Flores and Winograd and their associates in the 1980. This perspective, which is based on the speech act theory, has been originally suggested as guidelines for designing information systems. Though LAP had some success in designing commercial systems, it had never become widespread as a basis for systems design. This paper suggests reviving LAP, however, not as a tool for system design, but as a tool for analysis of communication models of systems designed on some other principles than LAP. The paper is focused on modern systems of social software type in which communication is based on the usage of shared spaces. The paper is a research in progress report that presents the main ideas, a research plan, and preliminary results achieved in its first two steps: (1) testing LAP for analysis of one system with shared spaces architecture, and (2) classification of atomic communication acts typical for business processes. The long term goal of the research is to create practical recommendations for choosing an appropriate communication model for particular business needs.