@inproceedings{brixey-traum-2026-code,
    title = "Can code-switching improve the user experience with a dialogue system app for recording endangered languages?",
    author = "Brixey, Jacqueline  and
      Traum, David",
    editor = "Riccardi, Giuseppe  and
      Mousavi, Seyed Mahed  and
      Torres, Maria Ines  and
      Yoshino, Koichiro  and
      Callejas, Zoraida  and
      Chowdhury, Shammur Absar  and
      Chen, Yun-Nung  and
      Bechet, Frederic  and
      Gustafson, Joakim  and
      Damnati, G{\'e}raldine  and
      Papangelis, Alex  and
      D{'}Haro, Luis Fernando  and
      Mendon{\c{c}}a, John  and
      Bernardi, Raffaella  and
      Hakkani-Tur, Dilek  and
      Di Fabbrizio, Giuseppe {''}Pino{''}  and
      Kawahara, Tatsuya  and
      Alam, Firoj  and
      Tur, Gokhan  and
      Johnston, Michael",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology",
    month = feb,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Trento, Italy",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/dashboard-stats/2026.iwsds-1.37/",
    pages = "369--378",
    abstract = "This paper investigates whether a multilingual spoken dialogue system can be used to help collect and preserve endangered language data. In this work, we extend {DAPEL} (Dialogue {AP}p for Endangered Languages), which is designed to help preserve any language. Our focus, for testing purposes, is on the {A}merican Indigenous language {C}hoctaw. The system uses {E}nglish as a common language, and we test whether incorporating code-switching{---}the act of alternating between languages{---}enhances the user experience and/or increases the amount of recorded language data. Our results indicate that users have a positive response to interacting in both languages with the system, that the system plays a meaningful role in language documentation, and, notably, that participants who speak {C}hoctaw as their first language are more receptive to a code-switching system than to a monolingual {E}nglish-based system."
}