Automation in Communication: The Ideological Implications of Language Machines

by Lionel Wee

By drawing on multiple examples from healthcare, religion, service encounters and poetry, Lionel Wee presents rich insights into the use of automation in communication through a posthumanist lens.

As communication becomes increasingly automated, the use of automation creates significant conceptual challenges for ideologies about language, beliefs about the nature of language, as well as assumptions about the roles that interpretation, anthropomorphism, and folk theories of mind play when language is used in communication. This book unravels the ideological implications of automation in communication and provides a new theoretical ground to address the major issues raised by automation. Wee discusses the importance of thinking carefully about how we identify and distinguish the roles of speaker and hearer. He also argues that we re-evaluate our understanding of the relationship between language and community.

This book will be vital to students interested in studying the intersections of AI, language and communication, as well as researchers working in communication studies, linguistics and the broader sociology of language in the age of technological change.

160 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2024

About the author

Lionel Wee works on language policy, sociolinguistics and new Englishes. His publications include The Singlish Controversy (Cambridge, 2018), The Language of Organizational Styling (Cambridge, 2015), Markets of English (2012) and Language without Rights (2011).