Digital linguistic imperialism: can we decolonize English when the AI writing tools are colonial?

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

Abstract The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools into language learning presents a paradox: while promising democratization, they often reinforce linguistic hegemony. Through a methodological innovation, this study employed a 12-week critical post-human ethnography in an Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, combining algorithmic audits of Grammarly, QuillBot, and ChatGPT with classroom observations of 23 MA EFL advanced university students (including screen recordings, interviews, and think-aloud protocols) and a counter-infrastructure co-design workshop. Drawing primarily on frameworks of infrastructural violence and agential realism, with data colonialism and a contextualized understanding of raciolinguistic ideology serving as contextual lenses, results indicate AI tools function as colonial infrastructures that systematically pathologize non-Inner Circle linguistic features, eliciting responses ranging from linguistic shame to defiance. Crucially, co-designing a localized micro-model validated translingual identities and enabled infrastructural sovereignty. The study contributes a novel methodological framework for auditing digital linguistic imperialism and proposes a decolonial post-human pedagogy centered on infrastructural co-governance.