Electrified Language
Verbal Matters, Media Revolutions, and Shifts of Literacy (1900–Present)

Project by

Anna [Anouk] Luhn
Early-Career Fellow 2025–2026

What are the implications of a fast-growing reliance on algorithmic text production? How can we investigate the changes brought about by the large-scale implementation of tools powered by Large Language Models (LLM) in virtually all areas of life—and is it possible to intervene in the new language regime they impose?

The project suggests that we can gain insights into the current paradigm shift by revisiting earlier moments when technological innovations challenged and ultimately changed the ways we access and use language—and that literature, in particular, serves as a crucial site for examining how media of linguistic interaction have been encountered, contested, or metabolized in societies at large. As a textual archive, literature records the language politics and doxa of specific times and communities. As a practice of linguistic attention by default, it also provides the means for critical engagement: inciting activism, calling for disobedience, and dismantling ideologies.

Focused on a forthcoming book manuscript, Anouk’s investigation into multimodal “language crises” in late modernity aims to contribute to urgent discussions about a shared ‘matter of concern’ in our platformed society—one fundamentally conditioned by the power dynamics of language.