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style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">Dear
members of the listserv,</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">In
order to continue the discussions started with our Panel 296 at
the recent 4S/EASST Conference in Amsterdam entitled "<a
href="https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14375"><span
style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">LLMs and the Language
Sciences</span></a>", we'd like to invite you to a monthly
reading workshop. The aims of this seminar are to bring together
STS and Linguistic Anthropology in order to think through LLMs as
sociotechnical artefacts, largely structured by language
ideologies. <span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">First
online meeting:<span> </span><b>September 23, 2024 - 18:00-20:00
Central European Time (CET)</b></p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt;">Zoom link:</span><br>
</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"></p>
<div
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</div>
<div
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont;"><span
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">RSVP</span><span> </span>here: </span><span
style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 12pt;"><b><a
href="mailto:languagemachinesnetwork@gmail.com"
target="_blank" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">languagemachinesnet<wbr>work@gmail.com</a></b><span>
by September 20th </span>to receive the<span> </span><b>Zoom</b><span> </span>link
and the<span> </span><b>paper</b>. </span></div>
<div
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</div>
<div
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">Our
first meeting will discuss Michael Castelle's (Warwick) paper:</div>
<p
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</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><span
style="font-size: 1.1em; display: block; margin: 0px 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0.5em 1.6em 0.5em 0.5em; color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">Contextualizing
high-dimensional communication: the relevance of linguistic
anthropology for theorizing large language models </span></p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"></p>
<div id="m_-5207541806058309609gmail-x_paper-details-86281"
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols; padding: 0.6em 0.6em 0.3em 2.5em; color: rgb(33, 37, 41);">
<h4
style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 0.9em;">Short
abstract:</h4>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 1em;">This paper provides an
overview of the fundamental relevance of the field of linguistic
anthropology to the understanding and/or critique of Large
Language Models, clarifying aspects of current debates about
LLMs within NLP research as well as among those in the social
science and humanities.</blockquote>
<h4
style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 0.9em;">Long
abstract:</h4>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em;">At the core of the
controversiality of Large Language Models (LLMs), on the one
hand, their implicit rejection of influential theories in
mainstream linguistics and cognitive science; and on the other,
the unconscious adoption of interactional paradigms — such as
the overt dialogicality of the "instruction-tuned" ChatGPT —
championed more frequently in the humanities and social sciences
as fundamental to sense-making. Indeed, many computer scientists
in contemporary NLP do not find it necessary to concern
themselves with the wide variety of past or present theories of
language and learning. However, a prominent and arguably
misguided assumption has been made by members of the AI research
community that applying increasing scale to these models'
training data, training time, and/or architectural size is
likely to lead to the achievement of superhuman intelligence;
this perspective, like many individualist approaches to
cognition, necessarily downplays the role of indexical
embodiment, social interaction, and contextually reflexive
cultural practices in already-sociotechnical human
communication. I will argue that a better understanding of the
field known as linguistic anthropology can help understand both
current and future successes and failure modes of LLMs, as well
as helping social scientists and humanists to avoid some common,
but misguided, avenues of critique for LLMs. From century-old
works of American anthropological linguistics to the more
contemporary insights of Michael Silverstein's theories of
pragmatics and metapragmatics, this resolutely empirical — but
semiotically and ethnographically well-grounded — school of
thought provides surprising insights into both the intriguing
strengths and fundamental limits of these computational
artifacts.</p>
</div>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">Please
feel free to circulate this call for participation. If you intend
to join the meetings, please<span> </span><span
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">RSVP here:<span> </span><a
href="mailto:languagemachinesnetwork@gmail.com"
target="_blank" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">languagemachinesnetwork@gmail.<wbr>com</a></span> by
September 20th to receive the paper and the Zoom link!</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">Hoping
to see you all there!</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;">Siri,
Anna and Michael</p>
<p
style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif, Helvetica, EmojiFont, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", NotoColorEmoji, "Segoe UI Symbol", "Android Emoji", EmojiSymbols;"><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p><span
style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif; color: #222222;">Universitätsassistentin
(post-doc) | Department of European Ethnology | University of
Vienna</span></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/annaweichselb"><span
style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif; color: #1155cc;">Twitter</span></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-weichselbraun/"><span
style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif; color: #1155cc;">LinkedIn</span></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.annaweichselbraun.com/"><span
style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif; color: #1155cc;">http://www.annaweichselbraun.com</span></a></p>
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