Making Sense of the World through Language and Stories – a Digital Humanities Perspective with Prof. Michaela Mahlberg.

The AI boom has put language into the spotlight like never before. While linguistics is the scientific study of language, language has always been a topic that everyone has a view on simply because of its ubiquity (see also Cameron 1995). The latest ‘tech’ angle adds another dimension to popular attitudes and practices – from naïve adoption of AI tools to complex human-computer relationships. In this new world, digital humanities research needs to step up its efforts. Beyond the development of digital methods, we need theoretical foundations for a big picture view of language. People use language to act, to do things and to interact with one another. Language is what makes us human. It is used to tell the stories and create the narratives that shape our society, our culture and our reality. In my talk, I will look at case studies that emphasise the real-world impact of storytelling, including examples from environmental humanities as well as narrative fiction. Building on the case studies, I will propose the beginnings of a digital humanities approach that is able to to account for language in today’s world.

References
Cameron, D. (1995). Verbal Hygiene. The Politics of Language. Routledge.

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Bio
Michaela Mahlberg is Professor of Digital Humanities & Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, as well as honorary Professor of Corpus Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the editor of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, the President of the international Dickens Society, and the host of the Life & Language podcast. With her team, she has developed the CLiC web app for the digital reading of fiction.