| Summary: | AI potential to recolonise language practices by reproducing existing
marginalisations in novel ways has already instilled fears of a ‘contemporary
dystopia’ (Miras et al., 2022) — a space of cultural and linguistic erasure.
Accents represent a distinctive aspect of language practice associated with
one’s sociocultural, and ethno-racial characteristics. They account for one’s
social identity, status, and proficiency (De Klerk & Bosch, 1995). This makes
practices of artificially modifying accents particularly concerning, since
they play into the ‘zero’ accent ideology. As a result, any deviation from the
norm is marked as abnormal or deficient, and in need of, artificial
correction. Using AI accent generators, therefore, has the capacity to further
aggravate power inequalities between the linguistically privileged and
underprivileged, and to encourage changes in self-representation towards
what is perceived as the normative Standard.
Artificial modification of self to match a desired representation is not
new, given the long-standing discussions on digital image alterations and
their negative relationships to self-perceived attractiveness (Ozimek et al.,
2023). This conceptual paper explores the (re)colonial and subversive
linguistic potential of AI accent generators through the lens of the social
tendency of individuals to strive to meet a given Standard. Using the notion
of ‘technologies of the self ’ (Foucault, 1988), we draw a parallel between
self-perceived attractiveness of bodies and accents, to explain how artificial
modifications do not straightforwardly support diversities, but instead
encourage ‘self-corrections’ in line with those standardized sets of features
which seem to promise a ‘better’ socioeconomic and educational standing
within neoliberal societies.
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