Down the semantic chain: Examining meaning-ful shifts between human and AI language in plurilingual contexts

This paper presents the results of case studies of the writing process using AI models online. Using data from individuals who have self-confessed to using AI in their writing, the main concern this study seeks to respond to is what makes the difference between the meaning produced by AI and those produced by people? To answer my research concern, I examine the writing process beginning with the prompts inputted on AI up to the point when the individual writer revises what was produced by AI into something their own, to suit their purposes. Data was drawn from an industry practitioner who writes for a living and from students who have admitted to me, their teacher, that they use AI to respond to the assessments I give them. As I am writing from the context of plurilingual Philippines, part of this study also examines how AI language and local language/s interact in the production of meaning. This presentation will be valuable to teachers who want to know how to assess student production in the age of AI, researchers who are interested in a systemic examination of shifts as meanings (re)instantiate from one “author” to the other, and finally, to those who are interested in how our meaning-making systems change as our technologies evolve.

Bio

Priscilla Angela T. Cruz is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, Ateneo de Manila University, in Manila, the Philippines. As a teacher, she works with undergraduate students on writing and literature courses. With graduate students, she focuses on working with them on discourse analysis, appliable linguistics, and research in their own teaching contexts. As a researcher, she has published on Systemic Functional Linguistics, educational linguistics, language variation, World Englishes, mother tongue education, and transdisciplinary approaches which involve linguistics and other fields such as health and business. Recently, she has started work on Systemic Functional Linguistics and the local languages of the Philippines.