Theresa Heyd: The algorithmic imaginary: talking the posthuman into being

In this talk, I offer a sociolinguistic exploration of what Bucher (2016) calls the algorithmic imaginary: how do we make sense of, interact with, and talk into being, discourse at the intersection between human and nonhuman agency? In the words of Jones (2019), we will consider “how people experience digital texts as both computational processes and textual performances, and how they themselves come to perform with and for algorithms in their day-to-day practices of reading digital texts”. We will use this approach to explore metadiscursive positions – how do people talk about algorithmic text? – but also to analyze (sometimes real, sometimes fictitious or imagined) discursive interactions with not-quite-human textual agents. The data points that we will consider are related to my ongoing research on gender and posthuman linguistics, namely (1) the website thispersondoesnotexist.com and (2) the digital practices surrounding reborn dolls.

Prof. Dr. phil. Theresa Heyd ist Professorin für Anglistische Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität Greifswald.