0000000000321410
AUTHOR
Dave Sayers
LITHME : Language in the Human-Machine Era
The LITHME COST Action brings together researchers from various fields of study focusing on language and technology. We present the overall goals of LITHME and the network’s working groups focusing on diverse questions related to language and technology. As an example of the work of the LITHME network, we discuss the working group on language work and language professionals. nonPeerReviewed
The Dawn of the Human-Machine Era: A forecast of new and emerging language technologies
New language technologies are coming, thanks to the huge and competing private investment fuelling rapid progress; we can either understand and foresee their effects, or be taken by surprise and spend our time trying to catch up. This report scketches out some transformative new technologies that are likely to fundamentally change our use of language. Some of these may feel unrealistically futuristic or far-fetched, but a central purpose of this report - and the wider LITHME network - is to illustrate that these are mostly just the logical development and maturation of technologies currently in prototype. But will everyone benefit from all these shiny new gadgets? Throughout this report we …
Using language to help people, or using people to help language? A capabilities framework of language policy
Language policy is a hugely diverse field, united only by the intent to influence language use in some way. Much early research in the field asserted that language policy had an emancipatory drive, to empower downtrodden minorities against the cruelty or indifference of majoritarian politics. But over the years, critical accounts have increasingly questioned who precisely benefits from promoting minoritized languages. Indeed, can the language itself, valorized as an emblem of heritage, sometimes become invested with its own separate value? Can that value even outweigh concerns over improving people's prospects and capabilities? In what follows, I compare that balance between people's capabi…