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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell

New Frontiers of Speech: Linguistic Meaning and Communication in the Information Age

Alternative title: Nye Kommunikasjonsformer: Mening, Kommunikasjon og Kunstig Intelligens

Awarded: NOK 9.1 mill.

Rapid advances in information and communication technology (ICT), and in artificial intelligence (AI), and their subsequent rapid uptake by society at large, have changed linguistic communication in a variety of ways. An under-explored question is what the impact of all these changes are for our understanding of the nature of linguistic meaning and communication. One answer is Revisionism: that these developments have substantially changed the nature of linguistic meaning and communication, or at least revealed that they are not as we thought, and that many of our concepts and theories require revision. If Revisionism is correct, it has implications for how we understand and, ultimately, respond to a range of critical societal issues such as responsibility for online speech, how to identify and regulate deceptive communication online, and how to treat the role of bots, algorithms and AI in shaping online discourse. This project takes seriously the possibility that Revisionism is true and aims to develop Revisionist models. More specifically, the project will address the following six research questions: 1. What are the meanings of new referential and anaphoric devices that arise in online/digital communicative environments - like hashtags and hyperlinks? 2. What are the felicity conditions of the new kinds of speech acts that form part of our online/digital communicative environments? 3. How should we account for the content of ?speech" produced by bots and AIs of various kinds? 4. How has online/digital communication changed the nature or prominence of existing speech acts, like assertion? 5. Are our current notions of "utterance'", "context?, "discourse" and "information structure" adequate to the task of understanding online/digital linguistic meaning and communication? Do they serve the appropriate meaning-determining role in the semantics of context- and discourse-sensitive terms? 6. Can bots/AIs lie or intentionally mislead?

Rapid advances in information and communication technology (ICT), and in artificial intelligence (AI), and their subsequent rapid uptake by society at large, has significantly changed linguistic communication in a variety of ways. An important and underexplored question is what the impact of all these changes are on the nature of linguistic meaning and communication, and to the fundamental concepts that underpin our accounts of language use. One answer is Revisionism: the view that these developments have substantially changed the nature of linguistic meaning and communication, and that many of our concepts and theories require revision. But which phenomena motivate revisionism and what might these revisions be? The central aim of the project is to develop revisionist models to accommodate changes to the nature of linguistic meaning and communication as a result of the increased prominence of online and digital environments, and artificial language users. More specifically, the project will address the following six research questions: 1. What are the meanings of new referential and anaphoric devices that arise in online/digital communicative environments - like hashtags and hyperlinks? 2. What are the felicity conditions of the new kinds of speech acts that form part of our online/digital communicative environments? 3. How should we account for the content of "speech" produced by bots and AIs of various kinds? 4. How has online and digital communication changed the nature or prominence of existing speech acts, like assertion? 5. Are our current notions of "utterance'", "context", "discourse" and "information structure" adequate to the task of understanding linguistic meaning and communication in online/digital environments? Do they serve the appropriate meaning-determining role in the semantics of indexicals, and other context- and discourse-sensitive terms? 6. Can bots/AIs lie or mislead? What is it to deceive in the (mis)information age?

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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell