discourse analysis – Perspektivbrocken

19. May 202620. May 2026

Checking AI? Why we need more discourse analytical enlightenment

The following text is an extended version of the presentation given at the DiscoursNet Workshop “The Digitalization of the Knowledge Economy: how AI is changing our view on the world” (8.–9.5.2026). It presents preliminary thoughts for a more extended research on generative AI in third party funding and research evaluation.

I would like to offer you a simple yet, I would say, significant perspective.

We misconceive AI because we misconceive what texts are and how they work.

Or, a bit more nuanced:

Todays understanding of AI, specifically AI Chatbots, is very much rooted in our collective representation of what texts are and how they work socially. And I would argue, that this is a source of trouble, because our collective textual practices – how we do things with texts in our everyday life – are largely marked by normative but often mistaken presuppostions about what a text is, how its truth is constituted, and what role the subject plays for this, both as an author and as a reader.

4. May 20264. May 2026

Office Architecture as Discourse Machine?

I had the pleasure to present some aspects of my PhD research in the Open DiscourseNet Seminar, London. If you are interested in how office buildings are construed as places of productive communication and which contradictions arise from this in the everyday work practices in those spaces, you can rewatch the talk here:

10. October 202210. October 2022

Call for Abstracts: Discourse & Critical Theory

Thematic Session at the DiscourseNet & ALED congress: Discourses and their impacts on a world of multiple crises | 25–28 July, 2023 | University of Valencia, Spain (PDF version)

From its beginnings, Critical Theory has developed a strong interest in language and in the relationship between the symbolic, our ways of thinking and material reality. Not only as a cultural element to enrich Marxist analysis, but also as a product and producer of social reality and of the subjects that inhabit it. The aim of this thematic session is to discuss the role of language within the variegated approaches within Critical Theory and to put it in dialogue with the most relevant contemporary currents within discourse studies (CDA, post-structuralism, post-foundationalism and others). Ultimately, the aim is to see to what extent contemporary discourse studies and Critical Theory can mutually enrich each other. In this thematic session we are interested in the relevance of these currents from a multidisciplinary perspective, including linguistics, sociology, philosophy, political science, aesthetics, cultural and communication studies, among others.

We invite you to send in abstracts of 250 words for our thematic session until November 30, 2022. Please use the DNC5 Conftool webpage: https://www.conftool.pro/dnc5aled-2023.

Feel free to contact us, if you have any questions concerning our thematic session: david.adler@uni-oldenburg.de.