Journal of Sociolinguistics最新文献

{"title":"Existential challenges and interactional sociolinguistics/linguistic ethnography","authors":"Ben Rampton","doi":"10.1111/josl.12685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12685","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I am not a specialist in digital communication, and instead I do interactional sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography (henceforth ‘IS’ and ‘LE’), a syncretic research programme that draws <i>inter alia</i> on linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis and Goffman, usually cross-referring to relevant work in other disciplines (Rampton, <span>2022</span>).<sup>1</sup> IS/LE centres on the careful ethnographic observation, recording and analysis of embodied communication, and it investigates communication's embedding in a layered and interweaving multiplicity of social, cultural and material systems and processes. Depending on the questions and arguments that it is addressing, IS/LE certainly varies both in the forms of semiosis and the systems that it attends to (and I myself have tended to focus on spoken interaction in recreational and educational locales affected by racism, social class and securitisation). But when Helen Kelly-Holmes asks whether artificial intelligence (AI) now departs from ‘the known world for sociolinguistics’, it is a timely opportunity to reflect on the possibilities for—or indeed possibility <i>of</i>—IS/LE.</p><p>Kelly-Holmes speaks of a ‘seismic shift’ in the scholarly universe, citing Jan Blommaert (<span>2017</span>, p. 7), who also advocated ‘an acute eye for change’, saying that ‘reality changes. The bastard changes all the time; society refuses to sit still’ (Blommaert & Van de Aa, <span>2020</span>, p. 6). But Blommaert could also be rather equivocal about the significance of these changes, and elsewhere recommends less spectacular adaptations—‘we have to adjust… [and] what you do needs to be relevant, so don't go for the big recipes’ (2020, p. 6). Not knowing more about AI, I cannot gauge authoritatively the magnitude of its implications for IS/LE, but pursuing Blommaert's more muted second option, I can see several ways in which AI can remain a researchable empirical topic (Rampton, <span>2016</span>, pp. 314–324).</p><p>A lot of this can be studied empirically (Georgakopoulou et al., <span>2020</span>). Yes, these technological developments are likely to stretch IS/LE's methodological repertoire, also warranting the formation of new interdisciplinary collaborations with, for example, different kinds of computer scientist. But digital processes like these are actually drawn into analytical salience by one of IS/LE's foundational preoccupations: ‘algorithmic knowledge and media ideologies are now – alongside other semiotic resources and language ideologies – central in <i>having a voice</i>’ (Maly, <span>2022</span>, p. 15; emphasis added).</p><p>At least two terms figure prominently in this shift, driven by reckonings not only with AI but also with coloniality and the climate emergency (Chakrabarty, <span>2012</span>; Kell & Budach, <span>2024</span>; Pennycook, <span>2018</span>). Post-humanism is one, inter alia proposing a ‘philosophical critique of the Western humanist ideal of the “man o","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"38-43"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12685","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Artificial intelligence and the future of sociolinguistic research: An African contextual review","authors":"Patience Afrakoma hMensa","doi":"10.1111/josl.12679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12679","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"26-30"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142691210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language is not a data set—Why overcoming ideologies of dataism is more important than ever in the age of AI","authors":"Iker Erdocia, Bettina Migge, Britta Schneider","doi":"10.1111/josl.12680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12680","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Helen Kelly-Holmes’ call to explore the implications for sociolinguistics arising from the increased commercially driven digitalization of society is very timely. Like Kelly-Holmes, we share the view that the growing prevalence of online and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in all aspects of our lives requires a critical assessment of assumptions, approaches, and practices that have grounded sociolinguistic research since its inception. While our discussion confirms Helen's observations, we also urge the development of a general critical attitude toward understanding language as digital data. The starting point for our argument is Helen's claim that there is an erasure of “authentic” languages from public digital spaces, “making it more difficult to gather data on real usage because it would be necessary to rely on public areas and/or negotiate access to these private spaces” (p. 5). For us, her observation brings to the fore that treating language as data has always been problematic. We want to raise two issues: the general epistemological limitations of using digital user data as a representation of language and community, and the consequent need for methods that take seriously the study of language in its social, political, and technological context. We suggest ethnography as a method for understanding what speakers actually do, and an opening of language research to also consider the workings and socio-political embeddings of digital and generative AI language technologies. Our discussion is in the spirit of a joint fruitful and constructive debate.</p><p>Let us start with a general critique of approaching language as “data” that correlates with social groups, which is so far a neglected aspect in the debates surrounding language, sociolinguistics, and AI. Historically, this discussion links to the colonial backgrounds of Western science and linguistics specifically. Colonial or missionary linguistic research (e.g., Deumert & Storch, <span>2020</span>; Errington, <span>2008</span>) demonstrates that dominant Western epistemologies of language and research methods in linguistics were shaped during the period of European colonialism. An important legacy of European colonialism is that it “sought to fundamentally change and reorganize the social and economic order of the societies it colonized, as opposed to satisfy itself with extracting tribute” (Couldry & Mejias, <span>2019</span>, p. 70). Part of this endeavor involved language “development” activities aimed at the goal of Bible translation and turning the colonized into Christian disciples. This was based on constructions of language that are still dominant today. They developed on the grounds of “collecting data” (in colonial times, often from single speakers) and then transforming the human capacity of embodied, interactive and collaborative meaning-making into word lists, grammar books, or dictionaries (e.g., Deumert & Storch, <span>2020</span>; Gal & Irvine, ","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"20-25"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12680","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"(Socio)linguistics and generative AI: Taking the reins as researchers and steering its use toward ethical outcomes","authors":"Matt Kessler, J. Elliott Casal","doi":"10.1111/josl.12682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12682","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"31-34"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fairness, Relationship, and Identity Construction in Human–AI Interaction","authors":"Jie Dong","doi":"10.1111/josl.12687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12687","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"35-37"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142691212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Claiming the research expertise on human–GenAI interaction for sociolinguistics","authors":"Kok-Sing Tang","doi":"10.1111/josl.12683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12683","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"16-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"AI, power and sociolinguistics","authors":"Ico Maly","doi":"10.1111/josl.12681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12681","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ico Maly is associate professor Digital Culture Studies (Tilburg University, The Netherlands).</p><p>In her opening essay, Hellen Kelly-Holmes asks herself and us ‘how Artificial intelligence will change the way that sociolinguists carry out research’. Instead of giving a clear-cut answer to that question, I would like to take one step back. Before we can think about the concrete ways sociolinguists can use artificial intelligence (AI), it would not be a luxury to first have a sociolinguistic theory on AI. AI is not a neutral tool, it has its own epistemology, produces specific discourses and changes sociolinguistic environments. I do not pretend to have such a full-blown sociolinguistic theory of AI, but I would like to use this opportunity to give a first preliminary sketch of what such a sociolinguistic theorization of AI could look like.</p><p>Starting with the latter, it strikes me how Kelly-Holmes downplays her own work and states that ‘the writing (of ChatGPT) is substantially more correct than my own rambling’ (Kelly-Holmes, 2024). She is clearly not alone in such an assessment of AI. Most users of ChatGPT are equally impressed. It explains the success of the app among our students, and the world at large. By February 2023, the app had 100 million people using it on a weekly basis. And in 2024, that number would rise to 180 million. ChatGPT is now so omnipresent that we have to understand it as a <i>cultural force</i>.</p><p>The discourses ChatGPT produces are being used in a vast number of fields: journalism, law, academia, marketing, politics and digital culture in general. And more, the app is now also embedded in social media like Instagram. Other companies have their own LLMs implemented in search engines, smartphones and social media platforms. AI generates language and is used to moderate language, to help you search, to give you a more personalized digital experience and much more. AI has become a central social structure (re)producing and policing language. And in that sense it gives direction to discourse and culture.</p><p>It is exactly this success that warrants sociolinguistic attention as it has effects on individuals, society and language. On the most micro-level, understanding the relation between AI-produced language and society warrants studying it as interaction. When we do that, we see that users are entering a specific type of communicative relation with specific communicative norms. One entity—the human—is taking up the role of the one asking for information, placing the other—the AI—system in a position of knowledge. This framing of the AI bot as the producer of knowledge is a cultural format. It is steered by the example prompts on the ChatGPT website, but also by the many social media pages and YouTube videos that are dedicated to developing the ‘correct prompts’. The other side of the interaction—the chatbot—is programmed to respond in particular ways. This specifically programmed relation is inherent in the d","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"11-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12681","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reviewing and Rebuilding Objects of Inquiry","authors":"Inês Signorini","doi":"10.1111/josl.12686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12686","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"49-51"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142691211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Artificial intelligence and the future of our sociolinguistic work","authors":"Helen Kelly-Holmes","doi":"10.1111/josl.12678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12678","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to have a substantial impact on the field of sociolinguistics. AI has the potential to change the landscape of sociolinguistic research in a number of ways. For example, AI tools can assist sociolinguists in analyzing large volumes of social media data to study language variation, linguistic trends, and changes in language use over time. Sentiment analysis and topic modeling algorithms can reveal insights into societal attitudes and language dynamics, helping us to study language ideologies.</p><p>AI-powered speech recognition technologies can aid in the automatic identification and analysis of dialects and accents. AI can streamline the process of conducting large-scale surveys and collecting sociolinguistic data. Chatbots or automated interview tools can be employed to gather responses from diverse populations, facilitating more comprehensive studies of language variation.</p><p>AI can assist in the analysis of linguistic markers related to identity and representation in texts and speech. This includes studying how language is used to construct and express social identities, such as gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. AI algorithms can help sociolinguists analyze social networks and communities based on linguistic interactions. This can provide insights into how language is used within specific social groups and how linguistic patterns contribute to the formation of social networks.</p><p>AI tools can support ethnographic research by automating certain aspects of data analysis. For example, natural language processing algorithms can assist in categorizing and extracting themes from qualitative data, making the analysis process more efficient. AI can contribute to the analysis of language policies and their impact on society. This includes assessing the effects of language planning initiatives on linguistic diversity, language maintenance, and language shift within communities.</p><p>Sociolinguists can use AI to conduct digital ethnography by examining online communities, forums, and virtual spaces. This allows researchers to explore how language is used in digital environments, contributing to a deeper understanding of online sociolinguistics. Collaboration between sociolinguists and computational linguists can lead to the development of AI tools specifically tailored for sociolinguistic research, combining linguistic expertise with computational methods.</p><p>Sociolinguists will need to be mindful of biases in AI models and algorithms. Ensuring fairness and addressing biases is crucial, especially when studying sociolinguistic phenomena that are sensitive to issues such as race, gender, or socioeconomic status. While AI offers exciting possibilities for advancing sociolinguistic research, ethical considerations and the importance of human interpretation and context cannot be understated. Sociolinguists will continue to play a critical role in guiding and interpreting AI-driven analyses to ensu","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"3-10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12678","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142691209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Machines built out of other people's words: Comment on Helen Kelly-Holmes’ discussion article","authors":"Ilana Gershon, Courtney Handman","doi":"10.1111/josl.12684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12684","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 5","pages":"44-48"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142685298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}