Computer programs are addressed to two different audiences: to the computer, which interprets the program according to the formal semantics of the programming language in which it is written, and to human readers, who try to discern how the program will operate in a real-world context. In this paper, we use Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, along with recent research in psycholinguistics and evolutionary psychology, as a theoretical basis for reflecting on the way in which computer programs embed cooperative communicative norms between programmers and program readers, and how these can be and sometimes are exploited in the program text. In doing so, this provides an important set of theoretical lenses for undertaking and interpreting empirical research in computer science education.