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Call for Publications
Theme: Technologies in a Multilingual World
Publication: Technology and Language
Date: Special Issue
Deadline: 5.7.2022
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Technological creativity has been described as active adaptation to
the world. What if this world is a multilingual world - an
environment in which we are surrounded by a multiplicity of languages
and codes, more than anyone can produce or understandbut which have
to be navigated nonetheless? Aside from all the „natural languages“
such as the many variants of spoken, written, or signed English and
all the pidgins and local dialects, these include the language of the
ticketing-machine as well as the language of powerpoint, the language
of traffic signs as well as technologically enhanced communication
means known as augmentative and alternative communication. With the
help of technology, we are building a tower of Babel. If it doesn‘t
crash down and disperse us, this is due to technology again. The
cacophony of languages is at the same time a well-structured
environment.
From a socio-linguistic point of view, multilingualism appears to be
categorically different from bilingualism. If the latter refers to
the personal ability of rendering the same meaning in different
languages, multilingualism stands for an encounter with languages
that provide affordances, create recognizable spaces for action,
effect the participation in collective routines. The transformation
of cookbooks and user manuals might be an example of this.
From the point of view of language teaching and cultural studies, we
always learn more than one language at once as students bring their
languages to the classroom and the classroom itself is full of
software and hardware, technologies and techniques. One doesn't even
need to hear any sounds in order to appreciate multilingual urban
life in silent movies like "Man with a Movie Camera" or "Berlin -
Symphony of a City." Technology enables new forms of sociality just
as much as it underwrites the cultural hegemony of global capitalism.
From the point of view of the philosophy of technology, one can ask
whether technologies mitigate or aggravate the challenge of
multilingualism. Many technologies have been devised to offer
translations. Some of these, like the use of human interpreters, rely
on the representation of meaning, others, like algorithmically based
electronic systems, exploit pattern recognition. All such
technologies introduce a new layer of language, produce new
linguistic habits, dampen the expressiveness of communication, and
need to be learned in their own right.
Deadline for submissions is July 5, 2022.
Editors:
Larissa Aronin, Daria Bylieva, and Alfred Nordmann
About the Journal
"Technology and Language" is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed
open-access scientific journal. The manifold relations of technology
and language are subject from the point of view of history,
linguistics, cultural studies, anthropology, philosophy, literary and
media studies.
Publisher: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St.
Petersburg, Russian Federation Periodicity of publication: 4 times a
year.
ISSN 2712-9934
Publication in the journal is open and free for all authors
regardless of the affiliations.
All articles are subject to compulsory single-blind review. Articles
are reviewed by independent reviewers who are experts on the subject
of the reviewed materials.
Articles are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors retain the copyright and publishing rights without
restrictions.
Queries, suggestions, and submissions can be addressed to
soctech(at)spbstu.ru or to Daria Bylieva (bylieva_ds(at)spbstu.ru) and
Alfred Nordmann (nordmann(at)phil.tu-darmstadt.de).
Journal website:
https://soctech.spbstu.ru/en/