Expression and Erasure: AI, English, and the Shaping of Digital Futures

This article critically examines the entanglement of language and technology especially in connection to issues of participation and self-expression by L2 Speakers. 1 To demonstrate the issue, I build on two autobiographical vignettes exploring my own use of Chat-GPT as an L2 Speaker across different settings.These vignettes illustrate the paradox inherent in the uses of algorithmic technologies for writing and self-expression: that they can be liberating and yet simultaneously act as a form of erasure, stifling new ways of thinking by conforming to dominant linguistic conventions.I situated this paradox within critically oriented reflections at the intersection of language, technology, and systems of domination and marginalization to outline three broad research areas for futures of computing, grounded in the inextricable entanglement of computing with language.