Language that Lost Its Soul: Reflections on Language and Communication in the Digital Era
ABSTRACT Increasing world digitalization has provoked the emergence of new interaction modes. Emergence of computer programs that may produce texts modifies the enunciator concept itself. Algorithms, which are simple math instructions, now also seem to produce language. Therefore, we come up with the following questioning: What is the threshold between what we understand as our language, and the language of the machine? We argue there are three human language singularizing aspects (referentiality, corporeality, and enunciation sensibility), which may not be reproduced by machines. Our arguments are initially guided by the distinction between two opposing symbolic orders: human language, composed by a linguistic sign system; and machine language, consisting of order signs (numerical signs). We reason nowadays there is a clash and an entanglement between these two symbolisms.