TalkCorfiota: Conceptual Design of an AR and AI-Based Language Tourism Framework for the Promotion of the Corfiot Dialect

Abstract

Language tourism combines language learning with cultural exploration and offers new opportunities for engaging visitors with local linguistic heritage. Recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled the development of immersive tourism experiences; however, their application to low-resource dialects remains limited. This paper proposes TalkCorfiota, a conceptual framework that integrates AR, conversational AI, geolocation services, and cultural storytelling to support language tourism experiences centered on the Corfiot dialect. Drawing upon situated learning, experiential learning, and digital heritage perspectives, the framework conceptualizes dialect learning as a form of heritage interpretation through which visitors engage with local identity, collective memory, and place-based cultural narratives. The proposed architecture combines location-aware cultural exploration, AR-enhanced contextual interaction, and AI-supported conversational engagement within a unified tourism ecosystem. The framework is supported by a structured linguistic resource developed during the course of this study from publicly available repositories of the Corfiot dialect. The primary contribution of this research is the conceptual design of the TalkCorfiota architectural framework, which is the foundation for future development and evaluation on AR- and AI-supported language tourism applications for low-resource dialects.