Sociolinguistics and AI
Category: Event
Please visit www.ai-uni.dk for the full and updated call for papers. // As we write this, in November 2025, three years after ChatGPT was made available to the general public, ‘AI’ seems to be everywhere. Strong in connotation, weak in denotation, and deeply entangled in contradictory discourses of desire and anxiety, profit and prejudice, power and injustice, capitalism and environmentalism, ‘AI’ has – for better and for worse – become a keyword of our times. A range of different technologies branded indiscriminately as ‘AI’ have acquired a discursive and material presence in the social world, affecting the lives of millions of people around the globe, in different ways and with different consequences. // Though not the only form of ‘AI’ around, large language models and their deployment as part of text-generative tools have come to be seen as prototypical exemplars of ‘AI’. Language plays a central role in ‘AI’ – not only as part of the discourses surrounding the technology, but also as part of the technology itself. It is therefore not surprising that sociolinguists have been keen to explore ‘AI’ from a range of different perspectives. Many important insights have started to emerge, but a seemingly endless list of questions concerning the interface between sociolinguistics and ‘AI’ nevertheless remains to be explored: // If ‘AI’ is indeed a keyword of our times, then what does sociolinguistics have to say about it? How can sociolinguistics as a discipline help us understand the ‘new’ technologies that are being introduced at breakneck speed? And what about the implications of the technologies for fundamental human concerns such as identity, social relations and, indeed, humanity? Is ‘AI’ changing the way we use language, think about language or think about humans as a languaging species? Is it changing language itself? Do we need new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between language, technology and the environment? Do we need new methods and theories to bring sociolinguistics into the era of ‘AI’ – or will established approaches suffice? // Against this background, we are pleased to invite submissions for the conference Sociolinguistics and AI, hosted by the AI-UNI group at the University of Copenhagen, 19–21 August 2026. The conference is an in-person event. We welcome contributions from all research traditions associated with the field of sociolinguistics, including but not limited to (and in no particular order): sociocultural linguistics, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, linguistic ethnography, linguistic anthropology, (critical) discourse studies, language policy and planning, social semiotics, variationist sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, and ecolinguistics. // Contributions should address ‘AI’ in some respect while clearly relating it to themes and issues commonly addressed within sociolinguistics, including but not limited to: multilingualism, social interaction, language and power, agency, identity, language and education, (language) ideologies, minoritised languages, heritage languages, linguistic diversity, language policy and planning, language variation and change, (de)standardisation, (de)coloniality, language policy and planning, the Anthropocene, mediatisation and sociolinguistic change. // We particularly encourage submissions that report on empirical work, but we also welcome papers that are methodological or theoretical in nature. For more info please visit www.ai-uni.dk
Initiator(s):
Janus Mortensen
,
The AI-UNI research group at the University of Copenhagen
Deadline: 30.01.2026
Event
Sociolinguistics and AI
19.08.2026 - 21.08.2026
Post created by: Janus Mortensen