Automation in Communication: The Ideological Implications of Language Machines

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.

Lionel Wee is a Provost’s Chair Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore. He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, English World-Wide, Sociolinguistic Studies, Multilingual Margins and Studies in World Language Problems.