Wednesday, 2024/03/13, 16:15
Lecture in German (without translation)
English title: Networked multilingualism: language repertoires in the nexus of writing, the public sphere and language technologies
Jannis Androutsopoulos is professor in German and Media Linguistics and the University of Hamburg. His current research is on digital language variation, multilingual practices in polymedia environments, and the semiotic landscapes of schools.
With the concept of networked multilingualism, the lecture presents a theoretical and analytical framework for multilingual practices in social media. The aim is to grasp the specific characteristics of multilingual action in the digital world without falling into a deterministic understanding of technology as the cause of human behaviour. The starting point for the approach is the realisation that linguistic action on the Internet is characterised by dialogue and interaction and is always carried out in interaction with semiotic resources and algorithmic processes. On this basis, three parameters for multilingual behaviour online are examined and illustrated using examples from social media: (a) the primarily visual and written-based character of multilingual communication, (b) the orientation towards networked audiences, (c) access to language technology resources such as machine translation or AI-generated text modules. The interaction of these three parameters contributes to the fact that digital multilingual practices exhibit specific traits that can neither be fully attributed to technological framework conditions nor to a direct analogy to oral language use.
