Abstract
Dialogue devices between humans and machines known as "natural" are undergoing increasing development, in ever more sophisticated forms. Beyond the computer prowess that enables such interaction and the escorting discourses that encourage humans to engage in such relationships, we need to question what constitutes a major anthropological break. For the first time in the history of mankind, human is talking to something other than a human, and expecting this other thing to respond as a human would. This is no easy matter, and language itself cannot find the resources to integrate the change, since we cannot say “what's talking”. The present work questions this change, which affects one of the characteristics of our species: language as it appears first and foremost in the form of dialogue in ontogenesis and phylogenesis. The first part (1. From original dialogue to language techniques) explores the hypotheses that explain why, from the very beginning, humans have spoken to each other, and the place of technology in the history of language practices. The second part (2. Dialogical engagement from human to machine), will present the means deployed to mobilize in speaking subjects the resources of this specifically human activity in the context of dialogue with objects. The third part (3. Human and machine in continuum), will question the transformations of the what and the who in this natural dialogue, whose artificiality is not self-evident.