Lecture by Professor Bao Zhiming
Speaker Biography
Bao Zhiming is a linguist whose research aims to bridge theoretical inquiry and real-world impact. After earning his graduation certificate in English from Fudan University and his PhD in linguistics from MIT, he taught at Fudan University, University of Wisconsin, and St Mary's College of Maryland before joining the National University of Singapore in 1993. Bao's first academic papers, published in Philosophy East and West and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, explored the concept of language in Chinese antiquity and problems of translation in ancient texts. In linguistics, he has published widely in major generalist journals (Linguistic Inquiry, Language, Journal of Linguistics), specialized journals (Language in Society, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, World Englishes), and Chinese journals (Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Linguistic Forum, Linguistic Sciences). His books are published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and the Chinese Social Science Press.
Lecture Time & Venue
Lecture Time: May 19 (Tuesday), 14:00 – 15:00
Lecture Venue: Lecture Hall 136, Teaching Building No. 5, Songjiang Campus
Lecture Title
Finding Alzheimer's Disease in Natural Language
Lecture Abstract
After a century of research, the linguistic characteristics of patients with Alzheimer's disease are well understood. However, we know little about the language of patients with early asymptomatic Alzheimer's disease. In addition to neuropsychologists, linguists are also interested in this topic. Generative linguistics holds that grammar consists of three parts: abstract syntactic representations and the lexicon, an external interface (articulatory-perceptual), and an internal interface (conceptual-intentional). Which part is affected by Alzheimer's disease? Neuropsychologists have not focused on this question. In recent years, several linguistics-based studies have attempted to answer this question. These studies suggest that Alzheimer's disease affects the conceptual-intentional interface, but not the syntactic or articulatory-perceptual interfaces.
Lecture by Professor Gwen Bouvier
Speaker Biography
Gwen Bouvier (PhD, University of Wales) is a Distinguished Professor at the Institute of Language Sciences, Shanghai International Studies University. Her main research interests are digital communication and civic debate on social media. Professor Bouvier's publications have drawn on critical discourse analysis, multimodality based on social semiotics, and online ethnography. She is Editor for Social Semiotics and Book Review Editor for Discourse & Society and the Journal of Multicultural Discourses. Her latest publications include the book Qualitative Research Using Social Media (Routledge, 2nd edition forthcoming 2026) and the articles Cancel Culture and Trigger-Ready Fragmented Interest Groups (TV and New Media, 2025); Social Media and the New Canon of Use for Social Protests (Discourse, Context and Media, 2025); and Evaluating the American-Chinese Trade War on Chinese Social Media: Discourses of nationalism and rectifying a humiliating past (Critical Discourse Studies, 2025).
Personal Homepage:https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/social-sciences/people/jason-rothman
Lecture Time & Venue
Lecture Time: May 19 (Tuesday), 15:00 – 16:00
Lecture Venue: Lecture Hall 136, Teaching Building No. 5, Songjiang Campus
Lecture Title
How can Humanities and Social Sciences research AI? The Marxian Spectacle
Lecture Abstract
Marx urged the proletariat not to rally against new kinds of machines per se, even if at first glance fears arose that these could further their subjugation and alienation. Rather, the point was to see who was deploying these technologies, and for what purposes. Behind the spectacle and moral panic of the new, there may be something very familiar, once we look more closely.
Fears of new machines and new technologies have been around as long as they have emerged, with panics over the forms of changes and dangers they will bring, and moral panics about the effects on people and society. There were early fears about the train, both about physically riding them, but also about this new kind of mobility in society. There have been moral panics about all new kinds of media, such as books and television, each imagined to lead to delinquency and moral decline. Fears about the computer in the 1950s were perhaps the start of some of the spectacular fears we have about AI, with cultural fears of human-mechanical hybridity and technological autonomy (Grenham, 2020). Although these were rooted too in wider fears about the new technologies of science and medicine, viewed through a trope of a 'violation of the natural order' (Carroll, 2004, p. 40). The 'overreacher plot' is well-trodden in science fiction and horror where the scientist extends the boundaries of the natural and thereby creates a monster (Carroll, 2004, p. 118).
Following the advice of Marx, Critical Discourse Studies scholars have an important role in regard to AI. We need to look beyond the spectacle, the wild fantasies and moral panics, and consider carefully where this new technology is in fact being deployed in a concrete sense, by whom and for what underlying aims. And as is the job of CDS, to consider the effects of this on knowledge, on society and the wellbeing of people. In this talk I look at one small, yet concrete, case of using AI to manage levels of theft in stores in Japan. I use this to consider some of the kinds of questions we might, in the humanities, need to be asking.
