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.

KEYWORDS:
Digital Language; Symbolic Clash; Communication

RESUMO

A crescente digitalização do mundo fez emergir novas formas de interação. O surgimento de programas capazes de produzirem textos modifica a própria concepção de enunciadores. Algoritmos, simples instruções matemáticas, agora parecem também produzir linguagem. Deparamo-nos, assim, com o seguinte questionamento: qual é o limiar entre aquilo que entendemos como nossa linguagem e a linguagem da máquina? Argumentamos que existem três aspectos que singularizam a linguagem humana (a referencialidade, a corporeidade e a sensibilidade da enunciação), que não podem ser reproduzidos pela máquina. Nossos argumentos pautam-se, inicialmente, na distinção entre duas ordens simbólicas que se opõem: a linguagem humana, composta por um sistema de signos linguísticos, e a linguagem da máquina, constituída por signos de ordem (os signos numéricos). Defendemos que há, na atualidade, um embate e um entrelaçamento entre esses dois simbolismos.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Linguagem digital; Embate simbólico; Comunicação

Introduction

Man is a being of language. Of all the species that inhabit this place, man is the only one that uses a completely symbolic language, a language built from signs that symbolize things, relationships, emotions, and the most diverse situations. Our language is composed of signs capable of establishing a world of its own. In the beginning was the word - and the word, the word alone, decreed that the interest rate should be raised; that the currency would no longer be backed by gold; and so it was done. The world was made by an act of language.

Man is a being of interaction - a being who, in order to constitute himself, interacts with others. The ways in which we interact have, however, undergone changes in recent years. The increasing digitalization of the world has given rise to new forms of interaction. The architecture of interaction - from the analog “one for all” to the digital “all for all” - has been completely changed. More than that, the very concept of enunciators has also changed with the emergence of programs capable of producing texts of the most diverse genres. Algorithms, simple mathematical instructions, now also seem to produce language.

These findings lead us to question something that had never been questioned until recently, since we believed that about a century of linguistic research would have already answered these questions. However, once again, we find ourselves faced with these questions: What is human language? What makes this essential component of our lives unique? Or, more precisely: What is the threshold between what we understand as our language, as something essentially human, and the language of machines?

In the following pages, we will argue that there are three aspects that make human language unique and that cannot be reproduced by machines. These three aspects can be summarized as the “soul” of language. These are dimensions that have been presented as sensitive indicators of changes in digital communication media, but which, precisely because they are undergoing such changes, have generated a growing crisis in different aspects of our lives.

Our arguments are initially based on the distinction between two opposing symbolic orders: human language, composed of a system of linguistic signs, and machine language, composed of signs of order (numeric signs). Based on Ernst Cassirer (1957),¹ we will distinguish these two symbolic orders (signs of things and signs of order), to establish the core of our discussions: the computing machine is not structured, in its elementary mechanisms, by linguistic signs and their symbolism. The machine is structured by signs of order, and it is from the signs of order that it - the machine - converts and represents human language.

We will argue that there is, therefore, a “symbolic battle,” a clash between two representations, two distinct “symbolisms”: the symbolism of the signs of things and the symbolism of the signs of order. Starting from Franco Berardi (2012,² 2018³), Byung-Chul Han (2017,⁴ 2024⁵), Valentin Vološinov (1976),⁶ and Mikhail Bakhtin (1990),⁷ we will discuss different aspects of this symbolic struggle.

1 From Human Language to Machine Language or: From Signs of Things to Signs of Order

We base our arguments on an initially obvious observation: the computing machine, which has been integrated into life or even replaced humans, is structured not from linguistic signs, but from numerical signs, in their most elementary form. “Computing” is enumerating, an operation that consists of mapping a set of numerical signs to a set of elements. The text editor that we now use to write these words, these reflections that are then developed, is not understanding my speech in order to transcribe it - the editor merely converts my action into digital representation.

With this initial observation, we seek to delimit the existence of two distinct symbolic orders: the order of human language, composed of a system of linguistic signs, and the order of machine language, composed of a system of numerical signs. These sign systems oppose each other in different aspects. The first of these is referentiality.

Human language is composed of a system of referential signs. To explain exactly what it means to use a referential sign system, we refer here to the chapter “Language and Science: Signs of Things and Signs of Order,” found in volume 3 of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, by Cassirer (1957).⁸ We will not dwell on Cassirerian theory of symbolic forms; we will only focus on the distinction that the philosopher makes between two sign systems that oppose each other in terms of referentiality: signs of things and signs of order.

Cassirer (1957)⁹ deals with language and science (specifically mathematical science), arguing that the latter - science - tends towards the pole of pure meaning, but that this spiritual process continues the work begun by language: the work of dematerialization and detachment.

By freeing itself from the concrete thing as a real attribute, language inserts us into a new order: the order of the symbolic world. Thus, when referring to any object, I do not need to indicate material proof of the object in question for the statement to have meaning - I can refer to the object ideally, or even mention objects that do not exist in the world. Cassirer (1957) cites the studies of Karl Bühler, to conclude that “the step from the material sample to the genuine sign and the essential detachability of the sign from the things for which it functions as a sign - which constitutes the particularity and the characteristic meaning and value of human speech” (Cassirer, 1957, pp. 332-333).¹⁰

Cassirer (1957)¹¹ argues that dematerialization and detachability, initially carried out by verbal signs, are radically deepened by the conceptual signs of theoretical science. In his words: “In science the process that was devised and initiated in language is completed.” (Cassirer, 1957, p. 333).¹² To the philosopher, although verbal signs begin this work of dematerialization and detachment, these same signs never detach themselves from the intuitive world as a whole. Even if the sign is used with a function of pure relation, with a predicative function, it never loses its connection with the function of “indicating something,” that is, with the deictic function. The author briefly revisits his studies carried out in volume 1 of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Cassirer, 1980),¹³ arguing how “the predicative function gradually develops from the deictic function” (Cassirer, 1957, p. 333).¹⁴ Thus, he concludes that even the most apparently logical contents of language never completely lose their connection with the sphere of intuition. This is the threshold between the signs of things, that is, linguistic signs, and the signs of order, the signs that underlie the exact sciences (numerical signs). Let us see:

Here scientific concept formation and scientific terminology go one step further, freeing the sign from all its restrictive sensuous conditions. The processes of dematerialization and detachment continue; the sign tears itself free from the sphere of things, in order to become a purely relational and ordinal sign (Cassirer, 1957, p. 333; our highlights).¹⁵

Linguistic signs are not only capable of establishing pure abstract relations (although they also do this). In essence, they are “signs of things” because they name “things” (real or imaginary) in the world. A language will never be structured based on pure logical relations. The intuitive element exerts a weight that, so to speak, “balances” the logos pole of the language. On the other hand, signs of order are “freed” from this intuitive element, at the same time as they are freed from the referential component, establishing pure relations in a system. Let us think, for example, of natural numbers: any number, such as “5,” does not have a referent, but is constituted from an ordered relation in a counting system. When I refer to the number alone, I do not have a referent as I do when I refer to things like “house,” “car,” “flowers.” The number is simply an ordering in a serial system. This happens from the fact that natural numbers are generated from the representation of the absence of value (the number zero), the unit (the number one), and a generative rule of incrementing by one unit (the previous number plus one, which establishes the order in the system).

The computing machine is structured based on “signs of order,” the signs that tend towards the pure pole of logos and that have no referent. The theoretical model of the computer popularized today is based on the concept of the Turing Machine (Turing, 1937). Turing explains the machine by using a metaphor of a system consisting of a tape of infinite extension to the left and to the right, and a reading and writing head. At each position on the tape, only one symbol can be written. The Turing Machine tape can be moved one position at a time, to the right or to the left. The head can read a symbol that is written at that position or write a symbol at that same position. The machine is “aware” only of the symbol read at any given moment. But by changing the machine’s settings, it is possible to “remember” the symbols that were read previously. The behavior of the machine at any given moment is defined by the configuration and the symbol scanned. Therefore, the behavior of the machine is determined by the configuration and the symbol read at that moment. The configuration is a finite set of conditions for computing a number.

In the physical implementation of a Turing machine, in the form of digital computer programs, the machine configuration can be understood as instructions at a high level of abstraction. These instructions, close to human language, are called “programming languages.” Programming languages are written with words similar to those in the vocabularies of human languages and are converted to low-level representations (machine language). In a traditional computer system, all processing is carried out through a type of self-referencing of the ordering of elements, thus evidencing the absence of a referenced object outside the computer system itself.

The communication that is established through the machine - automatic, “spectral” and “viral,” as we will mention in the following topics, based on Han (2017)¹⁶ - is based on the logic of a symbolic system that is not natural to us. It is not natural to us because it is typical of human language to be constituted from a sign system that, besides being referential, does not obey the imperative of identity, as does the sign system of the machine - based on the signs of order.

Regarding this imperative of identity, Cassirer (1957)¹⁷ argues that language, based on signs of things, cannot establish its meanings in a homogeneous way, as a system based on signs of order does. Thus:

Language (...) is this living flow which at every step produces new and more highly developed forms. Herein lies its true and fundamental strength, but from the standpoint of the concept and of conceptual thought also its weakness. For the concept in the strict sense tends to set a goal for this surge and flow; it demands stability and unambiguousness (Cassirer, 1957, p. 336; our highlights).¹⁸

Identity (the “stability and unambiguousness,” in the words of Cassirer, 1957)¹⁹ is the imperative of the signs of order. To obey this imperative means to homogenize the message, to purify it of ambiguity, so that it can be compatible with a system capable of processing it. The word of the language is characterized by variability, by “its variability, its variegated ambiguity” (Cassirer, 1957, pp. 339-340),²⁰ while the signs of order maintain the constancy of meaning.

To exemplify this constancy of meaning with which the machine operates, let us take, for example, the algorithms of the sub-area of Artificial Intelligence (IA) known as Natural Language Processing (NLP). Traditional NLP methodologies involve processes such as: stop word removal, lemmatization, and stemming (Kochmar, 2022). In NLP, words like conjunctions and prepositions may be considered unnecessary and are removed. In lemmatization, the word is reduced to its base form. For example, the word “cats” would be converted to “cat” by removing the number ending suffix. In stemming, the affixes of verbs in conjugated forms are removed to convert them into their verbal stems. Then, the sentences from which the stop words have been removed (sentences containing the lemmatized and stemmed words) undergo a process of sequential concatenation in which groups of n words are labeled with numbers. This process of assigning numbers is called tokenization (Kochmar, 2022). The sequences of numbers that represent the sentences are given as inputs to algorithms that apply mathematical and statistical equations and theorems to perform processes such as grouping and categorization of patterns. Clearly, in this process, factors that may cause ambiguity are eliminated, as well as constant patterns are established in the text.

Communication established by machines, governed by algorithms, imposes the logic of a symbolic order which, in principle, is not our own. We develop under the aegis of the signs of things. We establish our communication based on a referential, ambiguous, pulsating, non-homogeneous language. Communication in the digital age, mediated by machines, has broken with this logic.

2 The Symbolic Battle: Language without a Referent

Berardi (2012)²¹ analyzes this “symbolic battle” or “struggle” between distinct symbolic orders from a semioeconomic perspective, showing the intertwining between finance and language. The Italian author analyzes the psycho-semiotic mechanisms of financialization, showing an intertwining between language and finance. In our reading, we conceive that this intertwining referred to by Berardi (2012)²² can be interpreted, in a broader view, as a tension between the signs of order (the signs of numbers, percentages, interest, and unpayable debt) and the signs of thing.

What is the relationship between language and finance? Asks the author. To Berardi (2012),²³ both language and finance have undergone a process of progressive abstraction, from which they have become dereferentialized. Berardi (2012)²⁴ starts from the thesis that financialization is the most abstract degree of economic symbolization and argues how the intertwining of language/finance occurs: Finance does not refer to something “real,” concrete. Finance is the result of acts of language (interest rates, for example, are defined by technocrats, in periodic meetings. They are, therefore, the product of acts of language): “Debt is an act of language, a promise” (Berardi, 2012, p. 31).²⁵

While finances result from language (they are products of acts of language, they do not refer to anything concrete, “palpable” in the physical world). Language, in turn, in the era of financialization/virtualization of the world, is affected by the logic of finance (by the “signs of order,” in our reading), in such a way as to become automated. According to Berardi (2012),²⁶ the automation of language occurs on two levels. First, the word is subjected to the logic of the financial cycle. In this subjection, signs are made compatible with digital-financial formats, so that they can be processed. In the background, we have the indexing of the language, which allows the standardized word to be recognized in search engines. According to Berardi (2012, p. 17),²⁷ this automation of language “cancels the instinctual side of enunciation.”

To Berardi (2012),²⁸ dereferentialization is a process of intertwining language with finance, a process of progressive abstraction of the world. The author adopts Marx's concept of “abstract labor,” that is, the “increased distancing of human activity from its concrete usefulness” (Berardi, 2012, p. 23).²⁹ For Marx, who theorized in the era of industrial capitalism, it did not matter what products were actually produced. The factory owner could produce shoes, food, or any other product. What really mattered was the accumulation of value generated by this activity. In Marx’s time, however, as Berardi argues, the industrial capitalist was still forced to produce “useful things” (Berardi, 2012, p. 23). The bourgeois, in effect, was someone tied to a territory, to the factory (the “burg”); he built schools and developed activities around the workers’ villages. In the current phase of capitalism, in the era of financialization, there is no longer the production of useful things to achieve the goal of accumulation. In our era, we have capital that generates capital, in a totally abstract process. The bourgeois of yesteryear is the agent of the financial market who no longer has ties to any place, to any territory. The headquarters of a big tech company can be located in a country and its employees can be distributed anywhere on the planet. The world has become not only without a reference, but also deterritorialized.

Berardi (2012)³⁰ uses the term “semiocapital” with the meaning of the interweaving of language and finance. Language, “captured” by this process of violent abstraction, becomes an automatic language. The financial world is an abstract world without a referent. In this abstract world, language is equally dereferentialized.

The author considers that the technological revolution has deregulated both the relationship between time and value, and the relationship between sign and thing. This last relationship - sign and thing - has become, in Berardi's view (2020, p. 28), “blurred,” “as the ontological guarantee of meaning based on the referential status of the signifier has broken apart” (Berardi, 2012, p. 27).³¹

Berardi (2012)³² locates the first experiments with language in the symbolist movement, in the sense of “abolishing” the referent. According to Berardi (2012),³³ symbolist poets wanted to represent not the thing itself, but the experience, the impression caused by the thing. The emancipation of the sign in relation to the referent. That is, the dereferentialization of language finds parallels in the operation that led to the fierce financialization of the world in 1972. In that year, American President Richard Nixon broke the Bretton Woods agreements, de-indexing the currency to an economic referent. According to Berardi (2012, p. 30),³⁴ “the American president said that the dollar would have no reference to reality, and that its value would henceforth be decided by an act of language.”

Further on, Berardi makes an observation that we consider extremely interesting. The Italian author states that neoliberal ideology adopts the discourse of being a liberating force, “that emancipates capital from state regulation, but it in fact submits production and social life to the most ferocious regulation, the mathematization of language” (Berardi, 2012, p. 31).³⁵

For the author, this “mathematization of language” consists of “the reduction of social life to the mathematical implications of financial algorithms” (Berardi, 2012, p. 31).³⁶ Life as a whole is subsumed by this logic, which has caused the most diverse illnesses to the entire population.

Regarding this reduction of life to the logic of mathematical language (the logic of signs of order), let us consider one of the most sensitive indicators of changes and crises that humanity is going through: communication. The symbolic struggle that we referred to earlier (the subsumption of the symbolic logic of signs of things, pulsating, ambiguous and based on referentiality, to the logic of signs of order, homogeneous, dereferentialized), reveals itself in the establishment of a form of communication that is not our own: communication resulting from the algorithmic, discretized, ordered and sanitized language made available by computer systems. At this point, we call upon Byung-Chul Han's sensitive reading of communication in the era of language automatisms.

In the essay In the Swarm (2017),³⁷ Han treats automatic language as being the language that, among other aspects, has elided the referent, becoming spectral and viral. It is a language that is no longer full of meaning, but of information. To Han (2017),³⁸ more information does not necessarily bring more meaning. On the contrary: excessive information becomes noise. Han (2017)³⁹ differentiates the act of telling (narrating) and the act of enumerating, to argue that, in the language of the machine, a narrative is not possible, only an enumeration. “Likes” in social media tell nothing, they only establish an additive logic. Here we consider yet another dimension of the struggle of symbolic orders mentioned above. Human referential language is not a language that essentially aims at enumeration, at computation - that is the logic of algorithms, of machine language. The machine counts, “computes,” orders.

This idea - the opposition between narrating (something typical of our language) versus enumerating (a typical operation of order signs) - is developed in the essay The crisis of narration. In it, Han (2024)⁴⁰ contrasts narration and information. The former is linked to the community (let us think of the emblematic image of people gathered around a campfire, telling stories), presupposes an attentive listener, preserves its strength over time, and requires what Han (2024)⁴¹ calls “psychic relaxation,” that is, a state of deep attention, typical of a contemplative state. Information, in turn, is not linked to the community, but to the individual who, in his solitude, browses, “swipes” the screen of a smartphone, in search of news. Information presupposes high spiritual tension, stimulus of surprise and fragmentation of attention. The language of the machine is not capable of narrating, but of informing.

One of the aspects that most differentiates our human mode of communication from the regulated communication of algorithms is the possibility of processing large amounts of information. We are not capable of processing the (almost) infinite amount of information that the machine processes. Our apparent limitation in processing is linked to meaning. The machine is capable of processing infinite information because it is standardized, in order to reduce the ambiguity inherent in enunciation - let us remember that the signs of order obey the imperative of identity, something that is not inherent to human language, to the signs of things, always so fluctuating in their established meanings.

There is an interesting dialogue that can be drawn between Berardi (2012)⁴² and Han (2017;⁴³ 2024).⁴⁴ Berardi (2012)⁴⁵ addresses this growing circulation of information (but not of meaning) as an “inflationary crisis.” The Italian author makes an analogy with the world of capital: when one seeks to increase accumulation, one produces a certain product on a shorter scale of time. Thus, surplus value increases, based on this accelerated production. This excess product may not be able to be consumed, thus accumulating. This process is currently occurring with the meanings. There is a hyperinflation of signs produced, of signs in circulation; too much information is produced daily by the most diverse digital media. These excess signs cannot be “consumed,” they cannot be processed by the human mind. According to Berardi (2012),⁴⁶ there is a crisis of attention caused by the acceleration of the production of signs - signs that bring information, but do not necessarily bring more meaning. Berardi uses the expression “semio-inflation” to characterize this crisis of meaning: “when you need more signs, words, and information to buy less meaning” (Berardi, 2012, p. 96).⁴⁷

Han (2017)⁴⁸ also conceives that semiotic overproduction is, in fact, constructing a world poor in meaning; a world in which “Information overflow weakens thought” (Han, 2017, p. 60).⁴⁹ We are daily bombarded by different semiotic stimuli, images, sounds, and videos. However, this growing mass of stimuli has not brought more information, but has instead weakened our analytical capabilities. In Han’s vision (2017),⁵⁰ increasing information does not in itself bring more meaning. On the contrary: “Today, things are becoming less and less meaningful. They are giving way to information.” (Han, 2017, p. 57, author’s highlight).⁵¹ In Han's (2017)⁵² view, information and meaning are opposed, since meaning presupposes attention, careful reading, contemplation. Information, in turn, does not presuppose any reading: like a virus, information only needs to spread quickly, instantly.

We interpret this viral mode of communication that Han (2017)⁵³ speaks of as only possible as language loses its referentiality, becoming mere code. A language based on referentiality needs reading time to be processed. Language that is no longer linked to a referent, that has become mere code, can be discretized and reproduced at the speed of a viral contagion. In this sense, meaning and information are opposed.

In short, returning to the question about the threshold between human language and machine language, we reaffirm that referentiality is the first aspect that separates us - humans - from machines. Our language is referential, based on signs of things. Because it is a referential language, a language that is linked to a being, our language also tends towards ambiguity, towards informational non-homogeneity. Machine language is structured based on signs of order - non-referential signs, which derive their meaning from an ordered relationship in a system. The imperative of identity arises from this symbolic ordering. This imperative, at the same time, enables the emergence of new forms of communication, such as automatic communication - communication that emanates information, but not necessarily meaning.

In the next topic, we will discuss the second aspect that makes our language unique: corporeality.

3 Language without a Body

The second aspect that essentially characterizes human language (and place it far from machine language) refers to corporeality. Language is profoundly marked by the body from which it emanates. Spatiotemporal relations, deixis, are marks, like “scars” of the body that enunciates. We can conceive that the instances inscribed in language (space, person, and time), which Émile Benveniste (1971),⁵⁴ speaks of, are these “scars” that proceed precisely from a referential language. There are no marks of person, space, and time in a system of signs of order.⁵⁵ A system of signs of order does not presuppose an “I” that, by enunciating, establishes a “you,” in the “here” and “now.” In truth, there is no enunciation in a system of signs of order - not this act of transforming language into discourse, from virtuality into actuality. Numerical signs are not in the order of discourse, but in the order of virtuality, and it is the inscription in this virtual order that allows homogeneity, the imperative of identity of this sign system.

Language comes from a body that enunciates - and this fact cannot be disregarded, neither if we take language as a structure, nor if we think about one of the things we do with it, that is, if we think about communication.

Considering language as a structure, in Cassirer (1980),⁵⁶ we find reflections on how language is shaped by the body from which it emanates when expressing the need to objectify the world. Spatial relations, even when indicated by abstract particles such as prepositions, originate from expressions that, in principle, originate in words that indicate parts of the body. Many languages still maintain this referential system, by using concrete words that refer to parts of the body to designate what is in front or behind. Regarding this spatial representation, let us observe what Cassirer states:

If we attempt to follow still farther the ways by which language progresses from its first sharply defined local distinctions to general spatial specifications and terms, we seem to find here again that the direction of this development is outward from the center. The “differentiation of locations in space” starts from the situation of the speaker and spreads in concentric circles until the objective whole, the sum and system of local specifications has been articulated. At first, local distinctions are closely linked with specific material distinctions-and it is eminently the differentiation of the parts of his own body that serves man as a basis for all other spatial specifications. Once he has formed a distinct representation of his own body, once he has apprehended it as a self-enclosed and intrinsically articulated organism, it becomes, as it were, a model according to which he constructs the world as a whole. (Cassirer, 1980, p. 206).⁵⁷

Cassirer (1980)⁵⁸ is based on the Kantian idea that space is a vehicle for the expression of substance. Thus, it argues that spatial relations in language precede the representation of substance. For example: the definite article, which initially serves the function of substantiation, finds its origins in deictic representation.

According to Cassirer (1980),⁵⁹ space is also a landmark from which the notion of time originates. The notion of time is certainly a more abstract notion, less intuitive than the notion of space - both of these notions, according to the German philosopher, develop progressively, in a direction that goes from the concrete to the abstract. Language shows itself as a force that oscillates, or rather, balances these two tendencies: the tendency towards concreteness, towards corporeality, and the tendency towards abstraction, towards pure relation.

The linguistic genesis of numbers itself illustrates this tendency: numbers, before becoming pure signs of order, were initially linguistic numbers. The linguistic signs that represent numbers, although they have a content that symbolizes order, are still tied to the things they represent, and in doing so, that is in representing something, they initially start from notions established from the body that enunciates. Let us verify this:

The origins of number carry us back to a realm in which language does not yet seem to have attained its independence, its autonomy. Phonetic language and gesture have not yet separated, but are still closely intertwined. The meaning of the enumerative act can only be grasped with an appropriate bodily movement, a specific gesture of counting. (Cassirer, 1957, p. 342).⁶⁰

The author then returns to examples presented in volume 1 of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, which illustrate this genesis of the numerical concept in language, in intimate intertwining with the body: there are languages in which the word “five,” for example, literally means “hand,” since this limb is used to count.

However, the author warns us that even in this apparently primitive way of naming numerals, there is a spiritual movement that tends towards logos, since the idea of an enumeration, of an ordering, already exists. In short, the signs of things are always balancing these two tendencies: logos and intuition. On the other hand, the signs of order break with the need for concrete representation. The path to pure abstraction, merely drawn by language, is trodden without obstacles by the signs of order.

So far, we have been dealing with the body, the importance of the body in the constitution of language as a system of signs. However, the body also has an extremely important dimension in terms of communication. Regarding this relationship between corporeality and communication, let us reflect: what is it, and what does communication without the body represent? Let us think on two levels. First, human communication mediated by machines. The way we communicate and how we represent ourselves (assuming communication also presupposes representation) in digital media clearly severs the “way of being” of analog communication. Spatial and temporal relations are completely reconfigured.

The digital communication space is, in effect, non-space, “deterritorialization.” Hundreds of people can now gather in a virtual room and share their ideas. The limitation of physical space has been broken. I can gather people from the most diverse parts of the world in a virtual room. Why, then, is this room often much quieter than a physical room? Why are people who would be there to debate so often not debating at all? We believe that the body that I lack in space has an effect on the way I see myself, how I represent myself. Several studies have demonstrated the two paths of human relationships in cyberspace: (i) the psychological influence that social networks have on the mechanisms of acceptance of one's own appearance, especially among young people;⁶¹ ii) the effects on behavioral and personality traits that the appearance of avatars in virtual environments provokes in users of such environments (e.g., the Proteus Effect).⁶²

I often fear speaking (or on the contrary, I say things I wouldn't say in person, going too far) because I believe I will be misunderstood: there, in the virtual space, in the space that has elided my body, I often don't have the anchoring of resources that are available to me in the physical space.

Digital communication is poor to look at, says Han (2017).⁶³ The South Korean author argues that in communication the share that belongs to the verbal is small, because “The verbal component of communication is very slight. Nonverbal forms of expression such as gestures, facial expressions, and body language constitute human communication.” (Han, 2017, p. 44), Han (2017, p. 22)⁶⁴ adds that “The digital medium strips communication of tactility and physicality.” Digital communication brings more convenience and efficiency, but at the same time, as Han (2017)⁶⁵ emphasizes, this form of communication “without a body and without a face” (Han, 2017, p. 22)⁶⁶ has brought a consequence to human life that is difficult to measure: the banishment of all forms of negativity, understanding “negativity” as being everything that does not concern me, that is, the other. According to Han (2017),⁶⁷ digital media distances us from others in several aspects: it distances us because, immersed in ourselves, in our networks, we are often unable to communicate with those who are by our side; it distances us because, in a space without a body and without a face, we are unable to see anything more than the mirror of ourselves.

Taking time into account, it is clear how digital communication takes on other formats that reconfigure temporality. In the same way that digital communication is spaceless and deterritorialized, it is also timeless. Han (2017)⁶⁸ emphasizes how there is no birth or death in digital media. In the words of the author: “The digital medium knows nothing of age, destiny, or death. Time itself is frozen: it is a timeless medium” (Han, 2017, p. 29).⁶⁹ To Han (2017),⁷⁰ analog media suffers from a temporality. The author cites the example of a photograph on paper, which wears out over time. Digital media, which breaks with this physicality of the material, does not suffer from this suffering of time: there, in the digital medium, an image remains, forever. The communication that occurs mediated by these media is, therefore, a communication that deterritorializes and is not inscribed in time.

Let us consider, however, that there is another level - the level of non-human communication (that is, communication that occurs without any human mediation, such as automatic messages), the communication that emanates from algorithms, the spectral and ghostly communication that Han (2017)⁷¹ speaks of. This communication is also viral. Viral messages spread daily at a speed impossible for the human mind to process. Here, in the spectral, ghostly, and viral message, we have the semiotic inflationary crisis referred by Berardi (2012),⁷² cited in the previous topic: information that, not emanating from a body, not having the limits of space and time, is disseminated with little meaning. More and more signs are needed to produce little meaning. We interpret this “inflationary crisis” as also arising from the way the message is produced: it is a message made up of signs that were not “born” in a body - a body that, if limited by space and time, anchors and constructs its meanings in these two dimensions. The machine - made up of signs of order, of algorithms that are unaware of reference, space, or time - does not anchor meanings in the way that humans do.

Finally, there is another aspect that needs to be considered when it comes to machine language and disembodied communication: the importance of the mother's body. Human language is characterized not only by the fact that it emanates from a body, but, above all, our language is marked by the fact that it comes to me through the body of another: the mother's body.

In his semiotic and economic interpretation of the relationship between language and finance, to address the processes of digital abstraction and their impacts on the social environment, Berardi (2012)⁷³ cites Luisa Muraro’s studies on the importance of the other, of the mother's body, in the constitution of language. Berardi (2012, p. 107)⁷⁴ argues that mothers have been replaced “by linguistic machines that are constantly talking and showing. The connective generation is learning language in a framework where the relation between language learning and the affective body tends to be less and less relevant.” The author then questions the long-term effects of this form of learning, of language acquisition that occurs without the affective body. There are still no answers to this question. However, to this Italian author, psychosocial research, art, literature, etc. have shown and represented various mental pathologies that afflict humanity, such as attention deficit disorders, depression, suicidal ideation, etc.

In the essay by the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin, Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity, at the beginning of the 20th century - a time when we did not yet have digital technologies, a time when human language had not yet been invaded by the automatisms and imperatives of the signs of order - we find interesting reflections on the importance of the other in the constitution of my own language:

In fact, as soon as a human being begins to experience himself from within, he at once meets with acts of recognition and love that come to him from outside-from his mother, from others who are close to him. The child receives all initial determinations of himself and of his body from his mother's lips and from the lips of those who are close to him. It is from their lips, in the emotional-volitional tones of their love, that the child hears and begins to acknowledge his own proper name and the names of all the features pertaining to his body and to his inner states and experiences. The words of a loving human being are the first and the most authoritative words about him; they are the words that for the first time determine his personality from outside, the words that come to meet his indistinct inner sensation of himself, giving it a form and a name in which, for the first time, he finds himself and becomes aware of himself as a something (Bakhtin, 1990, pp. 49-50).⁷⁵

In the excerpt highlighted above, we see how not only the constitution of my language, but how the constitution of the idea of myself, as corporeality, comes from the loving gaze of the other. Bakhtin (1990)⁷⁶ argues that the loving language of the other gives consistency to an integral vision, to a vision of my inner body. Man is totally constituted by this gaze, by this language - his name is not given to him by himself, but by the other; the words he pronounces come to his lips because they were first pronounced by the other. In short, language is not only a language that represents me; but rather, it is a language that to represent myself, it is (re)presented to me by the other.

The signs of things also have their instinctual dimension due to the fact that they are constituted in an emotive-volitional relationship (to appropriate the Bakhtinian expression) with my own body, which enunciates. This body of mine is not given to me from “inside out,” but “from outside in,” that is: the image of myself is constituted from the vision I have of the body of the other. I am incapable of having a complete spatial vision of myself. I see myself in fragments - arms, legs, hands. I do not have a view of my back or my head. I am, as Bakhtin (1990)⁷⁷ points out, “a-spatial,” since I do not have a view of myself as a whole, nor can I visualize myself integrated into the landscape. On the other hand, my other is spatial: I see the other in their completeness and I frame this as an image integrated into the landscape that is before my eyes.

Here we raise a pertinent reflection on the distinctions in the ways of representing oneself. In analog communication, I do not have this complete image of myself - I see the other as an integral body and I see myself as a fragmented body. In the digital world, on social networks for example, I represent myself as a completeness; I project my body as an image, through photographs, videos, avatars. It seems there is a strangeness in this representation of myself. The man who projects himself, who creates an image of himself, according to Han (2017),⁷⁸ often resorts to filters, to resources that free us from reality, that create a “hyper-real.” The “improved” images, optimized by filters, in the words of Han (2017, p. 27),⁷⁹ “destroy the original, iconic value of the image.” These images break with the referent - and, here, we return to the initial point of our discussions: the dereferentiality, typical of signs of order, permeates different domains of our existence. The world as a whole seems to be lost in the dereferentialization.

In the next topic, we will discuss the third aspect that makes our language unique (an aspect also linked to referentiality): the sensitivity of language.

4 Language without Soul

When dealing with the subsumption of the linguistic sign to financial logic, Berardi (2012,⁸⁰ 2018),⁸¹ considers that the financial function tends to neutralize the impulsive side of the enunciation, so that the enunciation is compatible with the digital format. However, human language is not just syntax, it is not simply a structure that can be discretized. Beyond the code, there is an impulsive side that moves language. The author compares this loss of the impulsive, of the capacity to “feel” in language, to the loss of sensitivity and bonds of solidarity of workers around the world. Financial capitalism not only removes the “pulse,” the feeling of language to make it compatible with the digital-financial format, but also makes us lose any sense of solidarity, collectivity, and cooperation with others.

The author speaks to us of “sensibility” as being the “ability to understand what cannot be verbalized” (Berardi, 2012, p. 143).⁸² He alerts us that sensibility “reveals itself to be useless and even damaging in an integrated connective system, because sensibility tends to slow down the processes of interpretation, make them ambiguous” (Berardi, 2012, p. 144).⁸³ In his argument, in order to expand, the digital network needs to reduce a large number of elements to the same format, “a standard, and a code that makes compatible different elements” (Berardi, 2012, p. 124).⁸⁴ In the view of the Italian author, what is underway is a profound change in the modes of interaction, through the insertion of the electronic into the organic. Let us observe:

The process of change underway in our time is centered on the shift from conjunction to connection as the paradigm of exchange between conscious organisms. The leading factor of this change is the insertion of the electronic into the organic - the proliferation of artificial devices in the organic universe, the body, communication, and society. But the effect of this change is a transformation of the relationship between consciousness and sensibility, and an increasing desensitization in the exchange of signs (Berardi, 2012, pp. 124-125; our highlights).⁸⁵

The sensibility referred to by Berardi - a sensibility incompatible with a digital, automatic system - can be interpreted, in Bakhtinian terms, as the valuation that involves every utterance, that links the participants in the discourse, that goes through what is expressly “said” - the unsaid, which, although unsaid, is fully significant. Language not only has meaning, it does not only mean; it, in fact, means because it expresses something, because it values the world.

In Vološinov (1976),⁸⁶ we find an idea similar to this “sensibility” that Berardi (Berardi, 2012),⁸⁷ speaks of, understood by the Italian author as the communicative conjunction that links us; the ability to interpret something that is not expressly “said” in verbal signs, but which, nevertheless, is fully significant.

Vološinov (1976)⁸⁸ argues that the verbal discourse “is not self-contained” (Vološinov, 1976, p. 105). In all communication, there is a considerable amount of meaning that transcends what is merely expressed in words. In every utterance, there is something that is not said, but “felt” by the participants - and this mere “meaning,” this “something” that is not, or cannot be, expressed in words, is fully significant in the utterance. The Russian author gives us the example, already well debated among scholars of the work of the Bakhtin Circle, of two participants, locked in a room, in the middle of May, bored with the snow falling outside. One of them says “Well” and the other doesn’t answer a thing. Vološinov (1976)⁸⁹ continues arguing that for us who are not participating in the situation, the utterance taken in isolation is incomprehensible. “Nevertheless, this peculiar colloquy of two persons, consisting of only one - although, to be sure, one expressively intoned - word, does make perfect sense, is fully meaningful and complete” (Vološinov, 1976, p. 99).⁹⁰

The “Well” in itself may be semantically empty. However, the two participants understand each other perfectly, because what is said is linked to the situation (where they both are, what they both observe, and, above all, how they both value what they observe). What is said in this hypothetical scene is intoned, expressing the way in which the speaker, in conjunction with his listener, evaluates the situation (boredom due to bad weather, for example).

Vološinov (1976)⁹¹ argues that to a large extent, the enunciation is based on what is not verbally expressed, on what is implied. An important part of what is implied concerns the implied valuations - the values that determine, from within, the structure of the enunciation, which organize the very form of the utterance. This statement is conceived by Vološinov (1976)⁹² as a totality between the word and the extraverbal. The utterance only means, because beyond the word, the code itself, the participants understand the situation and value it together.

In this sense, the word itself is “neutral,” because different intonations can be attributed to it. The “Well” in the example cited can be joyful, tedious, spiteful, etc. In the essay Constructing a Sociological Poetics, Vološinov /Bakhtin (1994)⁹³ argues that almost all words can have different meanings, according to the general meaning of the utterance. In the famous 1953 essay The Problem of Speech Genres, Bakhtin (1986)⁹⁴ also concludes that the word itself, the linguistic code, takes its meaning not from the dictionary, but from other utterances. In itself, the word is neutral.

The Russian authors lead us to reflect on a peculiarity of human language: language, a sign of things, opposes signs of order in yet another aspect in addition to those mentioned in this essay (the latent corporeality of the word; referentiality, present in signs of things and absent in signs of order). Language, as signs of things, presupposes what we could call here “appropriation.” Let us explain.

There is a distinction between the virtual, ideal plane and the concrete, real plane. In a reinterpretation of Kant, Cassirer (1944)⁹⁵ opposes the real, as part of the physical world, and the symbolic, as being the “possible.” In his words: “for symbolic thought it is indispensable to make a sharp distinction between real and possible, between actual and ideal things. A symbol has no actual existence as a part of the physical world; it has a ‘meaning’” (Cassirer, 1944, p. 80).⁹⁶ In this distinction, numbers occupy the purely symbolic plane, since they are neither linked to the concrete thing nor derive their meaning from it: in fact, the meaning of the number is given solely by its position in the system. Let us see:

We cannot speak of single or isolated numbers. The essence of number is always relative, not absolute. A single number is only a single place in a general systematic order. It has no being of its own, no self-contained reality. Its meaning is defined by the position it occupies in the whole numerical system (Cassirer, 1944, p. 267).⁹⁷

Cassirer (1980;⁹⁸ 1944)⁹⁹ compares language, signs of things, and numbers, signs of order, in terms of this capacity for serial ordering in a system. The symbolism underlying these signs is completely different. Although we find in language the first efforts at classification, it is still an “uncoordinated” classification (Cassirer, 1944),¹⁰⁰ since the signs of language are still very much linked to the thing, to being; while numbers, completely detached from being, are able to achieve a synthesis of multiplicity in a uniform way.

Signs of order, due to their detachment from being, exist on the plane of the ideal, of the “possible.” They do not presuppose - or rather, they “repel” any appropriation. There is no “enunciation” or any correlate in signs of order: freed from being, they are also free for the meaningful ordering based on seriality. On the other hand, signs of thing also have their existence as a “code,” as a possibility. Language can be analyzed, understood as structure, as syntax - this is the aspect of the “signality” of language, as Vološinov (1976)¹⁰¹ would say. However, language needs to be “appropriated” by speakers. Signs exist as ideal signs, but at the same time, they presuppose an enunciator who appropriates these signs.

This appropriation, the transformation of the virtual field into “real” is what leaves marks, “scars” on the language, eliminating uniformity. Signs of order do not suffer from ambiguity, because they are not appropriated; they do not bear the marks of the body that enunciates, nor of the situation, nor of space or time. There is no intonation in a sign of order. While a “Well” is open to different appropriations, to different utterances, to different world values, a number, a sign of order, repels this appropriation.

In terms of communication, we can ask: what does it really mean to subject language to digital formats, to the logic of order signs, uniform in meaning, averse to any appropriation? In our view, we are subjecting the human linguistic world, full of “sensibility” - a term used by Berardi (2012)¹⁰² -, full of intonations, of evaluative accents - as Vološinov (1976)¹⁰³ would say -, to a uniformity, a homogeneity that language repels.

In essence, we are faced with two distinct symbolic orders. Human language is referential, corporeal, and sensitive. In turn, machine language is language without a referent, without a body, and without sensibility. Machine language is language reduced to signaling, which can be discretized, or, in other words, it is language that, discretized, uniform, and without ambiguity, has lost its soul.

Final Considerations

In this article, we establish distinctions between language constituted by linguistic signs (the signs of things) and the language of signs of order. We argue that human language, based on signs of things, presents three aspects that make it unique: sign referentiality, corporeality, and sensitivity. Machine language, in turn, is constituted from signs of order, lacks referentiality, does not emanate from any body, and repels any enunciative sensitivity (considering the imperative of uniformity that it obeys).

There is one observation that must be made, however: for some time now, our life has been completely intertwined with the order of the machine. The world we inhabit is the info-semiotic real, increasingly deterritorialized, more “insensitive” (since it is not corporeal): the world is increasingly abstract.

It is possible that what we understand as “human,” what makes us unique and what is linked to our language, is also in the process of changing. Systems based on the Turing machine are not yet capable of reproducing the referentiality, corporeality, and sensitivity of our language. But how long will we continue to be like this - corporeal, referential, sensitive?

• 1
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• 2
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• 9
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• 19
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• 21
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• 23
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• 24
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• 25
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• 26
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• 27
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• 28
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• 29
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• 30
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• 31
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• 32
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• 33
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• 34
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• 35
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• 36
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• 37
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• 38
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• 39
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• 40
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• 41
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• 43
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 44
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• 45
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 46
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 47
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 48
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 49
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 50
  For reference, see footnote 4.
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  BENVENISTE, Émile. Problems in General Linguistics. Translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1971.
• 55
  Numbers are used to represent time marking. By themselves, they do not have this marking.
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• 57
  For reference, see footnote 13.
• 58
  For reference, see footnote 13.
• 59
  For reference, see footnote 13.
• 60
  For reference, see footnote 1.
• 61
  Riesmeyer et al. (2021) studied the behavior of female adolescents on the social network Instagram, in relation to nutritional behavior (posting and reading food-related content) and the relationship of this behavior with their self-representation. Photos of food play a marginal role in girls' online self-representation. However, girls who follow more restrictive diets tend to post more photos of food than others. Riesmeyer et al. (2021) state that the reception of images of food and bodies pressures girls to conform to ideals that lead to a negative impression of the images.
• 62
  The Proteus Effect refers to the phenomenon of online behavior changing according to the appearance of avatars. For example, users who have taller avatars tend to negotiate more aggressively online. Yee et al. (2009) provide evidence that changes in avatar appearance can affect users' behavior in the online environment. Yee et al. (2009) also assess the persistence of behavioral changes related to the Proteus Effect. To investigate this issue, the behaviors of World of Warcraft players who deliberately changed their avatars in terms of attractiveness and height were analyzed. Statistical analyses show significant dependencies between the attractiveness/height variables and players' expectations regarding the character's level.
• 63
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 64
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 65
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 66
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 67
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 68
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 69
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 70
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• 71
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• 72
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• 73
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• 74
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 75
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 76
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 77
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 78
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 79
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 80
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 81
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 82
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 83
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 84
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 85
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 86
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 87
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 88
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 89
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 90
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 91
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 92
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 93
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• 96
  For reference, see footnote 95.
• 97
  For reference, see footnote 95.
• 98
  For reference, see footnote 13.
• 99
  For reference, see footnote 95.
• 100
  For reference, see footnote 95.
• 101
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 102
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 103
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• Translated by Betty Jean Brandt de Oliveira [e-mail]
• Reviews
  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso [Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

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• Editors in Charge
  Luciana Salazar Salgado (Universidade Federal de São Carlos - UFSCar)
  Lucia Santaella (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC-SP)
  Tony Berber Sardinha (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC-SP)

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About the reviewerSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

The article is appropriate to the proposed theme, and also explains the objective of the work. It is coherent in its textual development. It is in accordance with the Journal and demonstrates up-to-date knowledge of the bibliography. It presents original reflection and contribution to the field of knowledge, in a clear manner and with correctness and adequacy of language for a scientific work. Some parts of the work could be improved, namely:

1. The end of the abstract could go beyond this statement, which was generic: “We hold that nowadays there is a clash and an entanglement between these two symbolisms.” Some excerpts are very interesting: “Communication established through machines, governed by algorithms, imposes the logic of a symbolic order that, in principle, is not our own. We develop under the aegis of the signs of things. We establish our communication based on a referential, ambiguous, pulsating, non-homogeneous language. Communication in the digital age, mediated by machines, has broken with this logic.” AI is a language without ethical constraints (we all boarded a kamikaze plane), without interpretative and imaginative analyses, without parameters for educational conductance/guidance, which is why we need clear signs of how we should act when using it. The narrative as a human work (ethical and aesthetic) under the codes of the machine becomes pastiche. Just as aesthetics without ethics is cosmetics.

2. Reduce Cassirer's second direct quote, which is too long.

3. I would add a paragraph in the conclusions indicating future directions for the discussion. I see that an ethical education could create social guidelines and coordinate the ways of using AI, attributing a referentiality to the field of humanities. Perhaps highlight the social critique of the soulless machine language devoid of educational thinking (the importance of the other in the constitution of the language itself to awaken the passion for knowing the world and learning), which requires the presence of the other for the evolution of collective work. At the same time, AI in the language game is not just a technical and neutral resource, but interferes in all dimensions of human activities. Suggestions to complement this in future projections/conclusions:

a) CONTE, Elaine; MARTINI, Rosa Maria Filippozzi. As Tecnologias na Educação: uma questão somente técnica? Educação e Realidade, v. 40, pp. 1191-1207, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-623646599

b) LEE, Kai-Fu; QIUFAN, Chen. 2041: como a inteligência artificial vai mudar sua vida nas próximas décadas. Rio de Janeiro: Globo Livros, 2022. APPROVED WITH SUGGESTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  25 Jan 2025

Review III

About the reviewerSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review III

The article “Language that lost its soul: Reflections on language and communication in the digital era” presents an analysis of the transformations of language in the digital age, contrasting it with traditional human language, and thus establishing a conceptual basis for discussing some possible distinctions between “what we understand as our language and the language of the machine.” In this sense, the authors note how increasing digitalization has promoted new forms of interaction, with algorithms capable of producing texts, raising questions about the threshold between human and machine language. Based on the theoretical basis adopted, the central discussion of the article revolves around three aspects that would distinguish human language: referentiality, corporeality, and the sensitivity of enunciation, elements considered by the authors to be absent in machine language. Thus, the article explores the distinction between human language, composed by a system of linguistic signs (signs of things), and machine language, composed of signs of order (numerical signs), arguing for the existence of a clash and intertwining between these two symbolisms. In turn, the loss of referentiality in digital language would be associated with its automation exemplified by financial logic (Berardi, 2020), in addition to having something spectral and viral (Han, 2018), privileging information over meaning. Following this reasoning, the absence of corporeality in forms of communication mediated by machines would impact interaction and self-perception (Han, 2018; Cassirer, 2001; Bakhtin, 2003.a), considering aspects of the sensitivity of human language, linked to valuation and the unsaid (Berardi, 2020; Volóchinov, 2013.a), a fact that contrasts with the uniformity of algorithmic language. In short, the article postulates that machine language, devoid of referentiality, corporeality, and sensitivity, represents a language that has lost its human essence as such. With the appropriate use of sources such as Cassirer, Berardi, Han, Vološinov, and Bakhtin, the relevance of the research topic is undeniable, given the growing influence of digital technology on our communication and on the very constitution of language, offering a well-founded reflection on a crucial topic of contemporary times. Thus, this opinion considers that the analysis of the distinctions between human and machine language, focusing on referentiality, corporeality, and sensitivity, significantly enriches the understanding of the implications of digitalization for our communicative experience and for the very definition of human. However, one caveat is in order: although the article demonstrates a consistent theoretical foundation in the articulation of concepts about human language, it should be considered that the intense evolutionary framework underway has increasingly dissolved the boundaries around referentiality, corporeality, and enunciation, as the brief reflection in the last paragraph of the Final Considerations points out. It seems that discerning between machine language and human language will be an increasingly arduous task, which may require other and new instruments of analysis, going far beyond the Turing Test. Or, that we may be facing an expansion of the horizons of human language itself, a hybrid soul, in a peculiar metamorphosis with its synthetic form. APPROVED

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  13 Mar 2025

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 Aug 2026
• Date of issue
  Jul-Sep 2026

History

• Received
  14 Oct 2024
• Accepted
  13 June 2026