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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Dear colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Wishing you all a happy new year.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Please consider submitting a paper abstract to our panel which seeks to bring linguistic anthropological perspectives on LLMs to STS. The deadline is February 12, 2024.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Feel free to email me with any questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>We look forward to your contributions!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Very best wishes,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Anna Weichselbraun (Vienna)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>With Michael Castelle (Warwick) and Siri Lamoureaux (Siegen)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><a href="https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14375" target="_blank">LLMs and the Language Sciences: Material, Semiotic, and Linguistic Perspectives from STS and Linguistic Anthropology</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><a href="https://www.easst4s2024.net/" target="_blank">4S/EASST: 16-19 July 2024, Amsterdam</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Link to panel: <a href="https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14375">https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14375</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Convenors: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Anna Weichselbraun, <a href="mailto:anna.weichselbraun@univie.ac.at" target="_blank">anna.weichselbraun@univie.ac.at</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Siri Lamoureaux, <a href="mailto:Siri.Lamoureaux@uni-siegen.de" target="_blank">Siri.Lamoureaux@uni-siegen.de</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Michael Castelle, <a href="mailto:M.Castelle.1@warwick.ac.uk" target="_blank">M.Castelle.1@warwick.ac.uk</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Short abstract:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>This panel convenes linguistic anthropology and STS to consider how large language models (LLMs) emerge from language-ideological and material-semiotic practices. We invite papers that contribute to better understanding the constitutive work of LLMs at multiple stages from developers to programmers <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Long abstract:</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>This panel proposes to bring together linguistic anthropology and STS to consider how large language models (LLMS) are transforming both the language sciences (linguistics, computational linguistics, NLP) and technosocial practices in various domains. With the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, discussions have focused on what its uncannily human-like generated text means for politics, education, knowledge production, authorship, sociality, care, etc. Despite the interest of social scientists in critiques of LLMs over, e.g., the reproduction of biases in datasets, minority representation, and energy consumption, much of this work now takes place in computing sciences and/or industry. Few of these internalist critiques, however, center language as a form of social and cultural action, a perspective which is the purview of linguistic anthropology. This panel addresses this gap, encouraging both linguistic anthropologists and scholars of the language sciences to interrogate the construction, development, and imaginaries surrounding LLMs.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Linguistic anthropology challenges Enlightenment notions of “language” and “representation” prevalent in the computational and social sciences, and instead emphasizes the situated, pragmatic and indexical functions of language. While interested in the technological mediation of language, it has largely overlooked the transformation of the concept of language at the hands of computational linguists, scholars in NLP, and the designers of programming “languages”. In turn, posthumanist trends in STS have favored a “material-semiotics” set in opposition to language-as-representation — a contrast being actively dissolved by LLMs. And yet, both fields could contribute to understanding LLMs in new ways. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>We invite papers that contribute to understanding the constitutive work of LLMs at multiple levels from upstream to downstream, in any setting of implementation (healthcare, banking, law etc.) on questions of (1) language policy and governance (e.g., how do policymakers understand LLMs? What language ideologies motivate the efforts to police LLMs?); (2) R&D in practice (what are the implicit or explicit language ideologies of individuals, professions or companies developing large language models?); (3) users and implementation (with what expectations do users encounter and interact with LLMs? What do these reveal about language practices?)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif'>-- <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222'>Universitätsassistentin (post-doc) | Department of European Ethnology | University of Vienna<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222'><a href="https://twitter.com/annaweichselb"><span style='color:blue'>Twitter</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><u><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1155CC'><a href="https://www.annaweichselbraun.com/"><span style='color:blue'>https://www.annaweichselbraun.com/</span></a></span></u><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222;background:white'>New publication!</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222;background:white'> Special Issue: Anna Weichselbraun, Shaila Seshia Galvin, and Ramah McKay, “Introduction: Technologies and Infrastructures of Trust,” <i>The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology</i> 41, no. 2 (September 1, 2023): 1–14, </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2023.410202" target="_blank"><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1155CC;background:white'>https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2023.410202</span></a><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222;background:white'>.</span><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='background:white'><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>