Applied to the development of an sXAI, a practice captures the ways in which people use a technology and for what purposes. It refers to some structured and routinized actions that have become established within a social group. In this sense, a practice can show in what context of human actions an XAI is embedded, and how it creates a context for behaviors or actions. A communicative practice is of particular interest here, because it makes an adaptive and co-constructive way of interacting possible. However, for a communicative purpose, this concept has many ‘relatives.’ In order to characterize the phenomenon for sXAI, we will delineate the concept of a practice in general, and of a communicative practice more specifically, by first showing similarities to and differences from other concepts that are used for technology design. Second, we will highlight the potential of this structure. Third, we will identify the limits of current interaction design with respect to this structure. Finally, with the notion of pragmatic frames, we suggest a definition that focuses on some key aspects of a communicative practice that can be used and useful in sXAI.