Project Details
Projekt
Human and Technology. Controversial discourses on the mechanisation of the living world (TP 2: Human and Technology, Phase 2: Digitisation)
Subject Area
Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441142207
Subproject 2 of the research group „Controversial Discourses“ examines the discourse history of basic semantic concepts relating to humans and technology since 1990. While the first funding phase examined bioethics debates as case studies, the second focuses on discourse surrounding digitalisation. This includes the discourse-historical foundations of the current debate on artificial intelligence. The aim is to trace the emergence and development of the conceptual network surrounding 'digitalisation', and how it is represented lexically and grammatically in public discourse. This sub-project aims to reconstruct the dynamics of discursive meaning formation and linguistic routinisation in debates on digitalisation. Key questions include the shift in the image of humanity following technological transformations, how new technologies are integrated into social knowledge bases, how argumentation figures change over time, and conflict between individual freedom and technological restriction. The methodological approach combines statistical data exploration, manual and semi-automatic annotation, and discourse-historical interpretation. Alongside relevant newspaper articles and Bundestag speeches from the research group's core corpus (1990–2025), the dataset includes contributions from key figures in the digitisation debate, including the Chaos Computer Club, the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung (University Forum on Digitisation), the Industrie 4.0 platform and the re:publica podcast. The analysis focuses on lexical developments, morphosyntactic routinisation and conceptual relations. Particular attention is paid to frame dynamics, discourse grammar (morphology, syntax and connectors) and argumentative topoi. Work packages include expanding and preparing the corpus, conducting statistical and semantic analyses, annotating frames and topoi, investigating discourse grammar and metaphorical concepts, and comparing the results with those from project phase 1's analysis of the bioethics discourse. In addition to methodological publications and a research assistant's thesis, the subproject will produce an empirically based narrative history of language and discourse concerning the fundamental semantic relationships between humans and technology. Additionally, a digitally processed, collaboratively annotated research corpus will be created, connecting to existing infrastructures to ensure the sustainability of the results. Overall, Subproject 2 will make an important contribution to the overarching goal of the research group: to explore the linguistic constitution of controversial social debates historically and systematically.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Subproject of
FOR 5182:
Controversial discourses: Language history as contemporary history since 1990
International Connection
Switzerland
Cooperation Partners
Professor Dr. Noah Bubenhofer; Professorin Dr. Juliane Schröter
