Who are we?

The programme is a cooperation between Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), funded by swissuniversities. It is geared towards doctoral students whose research project focuses on languages, data, argumentation and narration.

What do we offer?

• Supervision: the programme offers individual supervision of research work by USI and ZHAW professors.
• Courses: seminars, colloquia and transdisciplinary workshops encourage scientific exchange between the participants of the programme and facilitate the transfer of skills between the academic and professional spheres. Courses take place in Winterthur, Lugano and/or online. The language of communication is English.
• Financial support: available for participation in international conferences and publications in academic journals.

The programme

Managing Languages, Arguments and Narratives in the Datafied Society

In our PhD school, we analyse language itself as well as the languages used in a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence. We focus on arguments and narratives as fundamental modes of human sensemaking through language and their multilayered interplay in educational, professional and public discourse in the current datafied societies. We explore the opportunities and challenges this creates for both research and practice. Our ultimate goal is to identify the value that humans can add to artificial intelligence in datafied societies and their increasingly algorithmic practices of language processing.

Three-dimensional analysis

The school prepares tomorrow’s researchers for the analysis of human language use in datafied societies by combining three analytical dimensions: the context, the media and the modes perspectives.

• From a context perspective, we look at arenas of language use with semiotic, interactional and multilingual foci. Such views enable applied linguists to understand languages as systems that support constructing shared meanings and interacting in dynamically changing contexts. On a practical level, they help address linguistic variation and diversity by interacting with real-life problems that require sustainable solutions.
• From a media perspective, we focus on the treatment of linguistic data in society, professional practices and research. In doing so, we analyse and reflect on corpus-based and corpus-driven use of and research into languages using digital and digitised data on a large scale and on instruments such as machine translation that are used to manage linguistic diversity today.
• From a modes perspective, we foreground the interplay of two fundamental discourse modes that are particularly critical for understanding the changing sensemaking practices in a datafied society: argumentation and narrative.

Argumentation is an exchange in which reasons are provided in support of a viewpoint on an open issue. Recent research on argumentation has emphasised its potential for rational deliberation and how attempts at argumentation through digital communication platforms can easily become unproductive and polarised. We examine argumentation with a preference for investigating large-scale discussions in society and with a special attention to the growing field of Argument Technologies, such as Argument Mining and Debating Agents.

Narrative is a mode of discourse capable of making the world understandable and of creating identification that is prominently used in the construction of public spheres and discourse, e.g., in journalism, public communication, corporate communication and marketing. From a discourse viewpoint, we address the changes brought about by digitalisation in these fields, e.g., the practices of oral and written narration in fragmentary contexts such as social media. Particular attention is dedicated to the challenges posed by unchecked stories and the disruptions created by the clash of competing narratives.

Multidisciplinary approach

The courses and the other activities of the school will address each perspective at three levels of disciplinarity by:

• showcasing the most significant theoretical and methodological developments in the field of applied linguistics and neighboring disciplines, building on deep and rigorous disciplinarity;
• foregrounding technological developments in general and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in particular for both language use and language research, in integrative interdisciplinarity with AI research;
• focusing on potential human and social values added to AI-driven language use and research, through emergent transdisciplinary collaboration with experts from academic and professional fields.

Fundamental and advanced digital skills for linguists

On a hands-on level, the school includes methodological courses (with an emphasis on corpus-based methods) as well as basic and advanced courses in natural language processing (NLP) and Computational Linguistics, with the aim of training linguists who have sufficient literacy in these fields to do fundamental and applied research on language in the datafied society.

About us

Co-directors

Daniel Perrin (ZHAW)

Andrea Rocci (USI)

Programme managers

Eva Kuske (ZHAW)