Automation in Communication

The Ideological Implications of Language Machines

Lionel Wee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781040119280
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Machines Are Talking … But Are They Actually Speaking?
• 2. Laying the Groundwork: Posthumanism, Boundaries, and Assemblages
• 3. The Death of the Speaker
• 4. A Hearer-Based Pragmatics
• 5. Gradations of Anthropomorphism
• 6. Creativity and Heritage: Two Elephants in the Room
• 7. Towards Posthumanist Organizations
• 8. Assemblages and the Emergence of Language from Communication
• References
• Index