Futuring Interculturality: Culture and AI

Exploring the new challenges and possibilities for futuring interculturality in light of generative AI, revisiting our core research questions in the context of rapidly evolving technology

Location: Chemical and Process Engineering SR (4.06) and MS Teams (Join the event online)

We are delighted to welcome Professor Rodney H. Jones, who will open the event by sharing his research-based perspectives to stimulate discussion around possibilities, challenges, and critical reflections. Professor Jones is based in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading. His research focuses on language and digital media, health communication, language and sexuality, and language and creativity. His recent books include Understanding Digital Literacies: A practical introduction, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2021), Viral Discourse (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and Introducing Language and Society, (Cambridge University Press, 2022). His new book, Innovations and Challenges in Digital Literacies, will soon be published by Routledge.

Talk Blurb:

‘Enoughness’ and Posthuman Performances of (Inter)culturality

In this talk I interrogate how heuristics of authenticity shape performances of ‘humanness’ and (inter)culturality in everyday encounters with generative chatbots,  drawing on Blommaert’s (2011) notion of ‘enoughness’—the observation that performances of cultural identity are often accomplished through the strategic deployment homeopathic doses’ of semiotic resources designed to make speakers ‘suitably recognisable’ to particular audiences — and on recent posthumanist approaches to interculturality (e.g. Ferri, 2020), which reconceptualise culture as an emergent property of more-than-human assemblages. The data for my discussion consist of a corpus of metapragmatic artefacts:  text and voice dialogues with various chatbots (ChatGPT, Sesame.ai, ‘Replikas’, and Character.ai ‘characters’), which people post on social media sites such as Reddit and TikTok, inviting commentary from other users about the ‘appropriateness,’ ‘humanness’ or ‘authenticity’ of the chatbot’s performance. I show how, in these interactions users and AI systems dynamically co-produce boundaries of authenticity through the patterned deployment and uptake of enregistered linguistic/discursive features (dialect variants, stance markers, face strategies). In the process, humans and machines continuously recalibrate what counts as culturally competent interaction, each prompt–response sequence functioning as a material-discursive ‘cut’ (Barad, 2007) that helps to interactively shape the emerging patterns of agency and identity. Through the the micro-politics of these encounters, broader socio-technical and cultural imaginaries are formed, which users carry into their subsequent interactions with generative AI. These findings highlight how cultural boundaries emerge through distributed agency across technological systems and human interlocutors, with significant implications for the design of AI applications in education, therapy, and customer service. They also provide a more nuanced understanding of the ways that generative AI systems perpetuate cultural stereotypes and exploit the affective labour of users.

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.

Blommaert, J. (2011). Enough is enough: The heuristics of authenticity in superdiversity. (2013). In J. Blommaert & P. Varis, Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity (pp. 143–160). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.2.10blo

Ferri, G. (2020). Difference, becoming and rhizomatic subjectivities beyond ‘otherness’. A posthuman framework for intercultural communication. Language and Intercultural Communication, 20(5), 408–418. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2020.1774598

In the second hour of our event, we will discuss the following paper:  

Hua, Z., Dai, D., Brandt, A., Chen, G., Ferri, G., Hazel, S., Jenks, C., Jones, R., O’Regan, J. & Suzuki, S. (2025). Exploring AI for intercultural communication: open conversation. Applied Linguistics Review, 16(2), 809-824. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2024-0186 

About the Project

Futuring Interculturality seeks to involve colleagues and students from across the University. Our goal is to shape the future of interculturality at Leeds through a virtuous cycle in which research, teaching, professional services, and students’ and PGRs’ experiences inform and enrich one another. These events function as collaborative working groups for visioning, critique, and idea generation with all those interested in contributing.

We look forward to seeing many of you at the event!