[EASST-Eurograd] CfP Technology & Language: Overstretching the Idea of Language?

[Alfred Nordmann via Eurograd]

Another issue of "Technology and Language" has appeared, and with it a
new call for contributions that takes on the big question, perhaps
provocation, that is posed by this journal. It concerns the very idea of
language and how far it can be stretched beyond spoken and written
natural language? Is “language” used only metaphorically when one speaks
of musical language or technology as a language of things? This is a
question for science for socio-linguistics and semiotics, for
anthropology and cultural studies, for STS, for communication science
and technologies.

https://soctech.spbstu.ru/en/issue/23/

www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/T_and_L

The latest issue features 11 papers on Voice(s), guest edited by Hardy
Frehe, Maria José Rios, and Anna Shcherbak: To have one‘s voice heard is
fundamental to human sociability, it is a matter not just of politics
but also of microphones and media platforms. In this collection of
papers, the many relations of voice and technology come to the fore
especially in regard to art and aesthetic practice. Two composers give
voice to seemingly mute objects - Iraida Yusupova scoring a silent
movie, Arne Gieshoff sounding a World War II air-raid bunker. The
discussions cover a broad spectrum from the mechanical voice of the
Russian avant-garde to the uncanny smart home, from propaganda radio to
decolonial textile sound systems, from microphones that afford
authenticity to the technically advanced gusli that upholds musical
heritage. – Contributed papers include a reconstruction of Husserl's
critique of technical understandings and a study of the semiotics of
urbanism in contemporary cinema.

This is the new CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS “Overstretching the Idea of
Language?” (deadline July 5, 2027): The title of the journal /Technology
and Language/ is innocuous enough as long as it refers to the many ways
of "talking about technology." It becomes deeply provocative, however,
when it suggests the possibility of /Technology as Language/: do the
flashes, beeps, and algorithmic outputs of a machine really constitute a
language? – In an era of conceptual hyperbole, where we readily
attribute "intelligence" to machines, trees, and octopi, we must
rigorously ask if we are similarly diluting the concept of "language."
While many semiotic systems exist, not all signs are linguistic. A
full-fledged language requires syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and
crucially, the capacity for displacement: while animals signal to each
other, only human language can refer to absent things that happened in
the past or only hypothetically. But what, then, about the grammar for
composing the elements that will form a machine? And does a given state
of a machine also refer to hypothetical states in the future or the
past? When Ludwig Wittgenstein noted that "in a sentence a world is put
together experimentally," did he propose an isomorphism between
linguistic and technical composition? – We are hoping for a vigorous
debate on these questions, including detailed case studies. We are also
hoping to hear what pre-modern, modern, and post-modern thinkers from
different cultures and traditions have said about this – mystics,
analytic philosophers, and linguists alike.

Other open calls (shortened):
“Theatrum Machinarium” (deadline: Oct 5, 2026) The technologies of the
theatre begin with the buildings themselves and how they organize the
spectators' orientation towards a performance. They go on with curtains
and fly-systems, lighting and sound, with make-up and video projection,
with fabrics and props.  All of these disclose a space for action of a
certain type, they organize perception and the creation of meaning. 
Theatre, in this sense, does not just operate with technologies but
functions as a technology of its own. And so, role-playing is a
theatrical technique as are reenactments. And then there is dramaturgy
itself and the mechanisms it proposes for the proper incitement of
passion. – Aside from history and philosophy ot theatre and technology,
transdisciplinary reflections from cultural and media studies are
welcome, as is the appreciation of literary devices, or empirical
participant-observation of theatrical experiments. (Guest editors:
Yerevand Margaryan and Lucien von Schomberg).

„Natality: Technologies and Languages of Birth and Becoming“ (deadline:
April 5, 2027): How From Caesarean sections to surrogacy, from
incubators to genetic screening, technologies of birth have always
redefined the boundary between the natural and the artificial. But they
also transform human-world and social relations and who counts as a
political subject. How do linguistic acts – legal definitions, medical
terminology, translations within genetic diagnosis, ritual speech, even
the words spoken to a child in the womb – co-determine the transition
from biological life to political personhood? (Guest editors:  Alexander
Markov and Christina Schües)

Issue 8:1 (deadline: Jan 5, 2027) will be dedicated to Open Submissions
on any subject at the intersection of Technology and Language.
Beyond these calls for special topics, submitted papers and
interdisciplinary explorations at the interface of technology and
language are always welcome and can be submitted at any time.
“Technology and Language” is a quarterly journal: international, peer
reviewed, Scopus listed, online, open access, academic (no fees).
Queries, suggestions, and submissions can be addressed to
soc...@spbstu.ru or to Daria Bylieva (bylie...@spbstu.ru) and Alfred
Nordmann (nord...@phil.tu-darmstadt.de).

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