[Linganth] CfP 4S/EASST Panel on LLMs and Linguistic Anthropology

[Anna Weichselbraun]

Dear colleagues,

 

Wishing you all a happy new year.

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.

Feel free to email me with any questions.

We look forward to your contributions!

 

Very best wishes,

 

Anna Weichselbraun (Vienna)

With Michael Castelle (Warwick) and Siri Lamoureaux (Siegen)

 

 

LLMs <https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14375>  and the
Language Sciences: Material, Semiotic, and Linguistic Perspectives from STS
and Linguistic Anthropology

4S/EASST: 16-19 July 2024, Amsterdam <https://www.easst4s2024.net/> 

 

Link to panel: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst-4s2024/p/14375

 

Convenors: 

Anna Weichselbraun, anna.weichselbraun at univie.ac.at
<mailto:anna.weichselbraun at univie.ac.at> 

Siri Lamoureaux, Siri.Lamoureaux at uni-siegen.de
<mailto:Siri.Lamoureaux at uni-siegen.de> 

Michael Castelle, M.Castelle.1 at warwick.ac.uk
<mailto:M.Castelle.1 at warwick.ac.uk> 

 

Short abstract:

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 

 

Long abstract:

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.

 

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. 

 

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?)

 

 

-- 

Universitätsassistentin (post-doc) | Department of European Ethnology |
University of Vienna

 <https://twitter.com/annaweichselb> Twitter

 <https://www.annaweichselbraun.com/> https://www.annaweichselbraun.com/

 

New publication! Special Issue: Anna Weichselbraun, Shaila Seshia Galvin,
and Ramah McKay, “Introduction: Technologies and Infrastructures of Trust,”
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 41, no. 2 (September 1, 2023): 1–14,
<https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2023.410202>
https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2023.410202.

 

 

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