[Lgpolicy] Call for papers: Language Policy and Planning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

[Liddicoat, Tony via Lgpolicy]

Call for papers
Language Policy and Planning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Special issue for Current Issues in Language Planning https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rclp20
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the ways in which language is produced, mediated, governed, and valued across societies. Systems based on large-scale machine learning now play a growing role in translation, content moderation, speech recognition, language learning, and administrative communication. As AI technologies become embedded in language practices in educational and governmental institutions, workplaces, and individuals, they are increasingly shaping linguistic practices and hierarchies, raising urgent questions for the field of Language Policy and Planning (LPP). This special issue seeks to examine the complex and evolving relationship between AI and LPP from two complementary perspectives: the governance of AI itself and the consequences of AI systems for language policy.

First, AI technologies have become a new object of policy and planning. Governments, international organisations, and technology companies are actively developing frameworks to regulate AI development, deployment, and accountability. Within these debates, language plays a crucial yet often overlooked role. Decisions about which languages are supported by AI systems, how linguistic data are collected and governed, and how multilingualism is represented in AI models all have significant implications for linguistic rights, language maintenance, and digital inclusion. Policies concerning data governance, algorithmic transparency, and technological standards may therefore function implicitly or explicitly as forms of language policy. Understanding how language considerations are incorporated into AI governance is thus an important emerging area of LPP research.

Second, AI technologies themselves are becoming powerful actors in the language policy landscape. Automated translation systems, generative language models, and speech technologies increasingly mediate communication. These tools can expand access to information across languages, but they may also reproduce or intensify existing linguistic inequalities if they privilege high-resource languages or encode biases present in training data. The integration of AI into institutional and everyday communication may therefore reshape language practices, influence language learning priorities, and alter the perceived value of different languages and varieties.

This special issue invites contributions that critically examine how AI is reshaping LPP across global, national, and local contexts. By exploring both the policy frameworks governing AI and the LPP consequences of AI technologies, this issue aims to advance understanding of how emerging technological infrastructures are transforming the governance, distribution, and future of language in the digital age.

Suggested themes include, but are not limited to:

  *   AI governance and regulation as forms of LPP, including linguistic dimensions of frameworks such as the European Union AI Act.
  *   How LPP decisions in the design and implementation of AI systems developed within Natural Language Processing have consequences for representation, bias, and inequality of languages.
  *   LPP relating to the use of AI-mediated communication tools (e.g., automated translation, chatbots, and generative systems) in public institutions and their implications for language access and linguistic rights.
  *   LPP as evidenced in linguistic data governance, including questions of data ownership, consent, and the extraction or stewardship of language resources used to train AI systems.
  *   How AI is redefining policies for digital literacy
  *   The influence of generative AI on language norms, standardization, writing practices, and perceptions of linguistic authority.
  *   LPP responses to AI in educational institutions, workplaces, and other organizational contexts, including implications for multilingualism and language learning.
  *   AI as a non-human LPP agent

If you wish to contribute to this special issue, please send an abstract to Tony Liddicoat (A.Liddicoat at warwick.ac.uk<mailto:A.Liddicoat at warwick.ac.uk>) and Catherine Chua (catherine_chua at np.edu.sg<mailto:catherine_chua at np.edu.sg>) by 31 May. Selected papers will be due for submission on October 31 October.



Professor Tony Liddicoat (he,him, his)
Applied Linguistics
University of Warwick
Coventry CV7 4AL
United Kingdom

Executive editor, Current Issues in Language Planning, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rclp20/current
Series Editor, Language and Intercultural Communication in Education, https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/series-results/languages-for-intercultural-communication-and-education/

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