Global Language Justice & Digital Sphere

This seminar course takes concerns around rapidly diminishing language diversity as the starting point for an interdisciplinary, trans-regional, and trans-lingual investigation of the role of digital communication technologies in these global shifts. Digital technologies appear to be contributing to language extinction, with a potential for 50-90% loss of language diversity this century. While an increasing number of languages are digitally supported, this process is largely market-driven, excluding smaller or poorer language communities. This course investigates the role of digital design and governance in including or excluding languages from the digital sphere.