Quote Originally Posted by alexsms View Post
The word 'interlocutor' is sorely underused in English. Красиво сказано, уважаемый Duck! В моём словаре даётся примечание, что слово 'interlocutor' - книжно-литературное (kind of bookish). Is it so? Though, getting off topic a little bit...
Yes, it is generally seen as a rather literary word. In fact I didn't even know this word existed until 2 or 3 years ago, and that was only because I was learning about the Platonic dialogues in my philosophy class. It just seems like a useful word that is hardly ever used, and there's no reason it shouldn't be used outside of literary contexts... other than the fact that your interlocutor might not know the word "interlocutor"

Quote Originally Posted by Romik View Post
conversation partner, listener, person to talk to
Yes, these expressions would be encountered more widely, but "conversational partner" and "person to talk to" aren't exactly concise, and "listener" doesn't have quite the same meaning. In fact, I think the most commonly used phrase is "the person [that] I/you/he/she/we/they am/are/is/was/were talking to", which is horribly un-concise.

(Derailing topics is getting to be a bad habit of mine...)