Linguistics in the Digital Dimension

Held for the second time at BSUFL, the conference “Language in the Era of Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence Development” has firmly established its international standing and expanded its geographical reach. The event brought together scholars and researchers from the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the People's Republic of China, Spain, the Republic of Uzbekistan, and Japan. Participants included 22 Doctors of Sciences, 63 Candidates of Sciences, alongside postgraduate researchers, doctoral candidates, master's students, and undergraduates.

The first day commenced with the conference's official opening. Welcoming the participants, Elena P. Beten, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at BSUFL, addressed the gathering:

“Language has always been mobile and dynamic. However, the speed of change and the sheer force of the factors driving this change have arguably never been so staggering. Language, traditionally captured in dictionaries and grammars, which had only just adapted to the challenges posed by social media, messaging platforms, and online communication in general, is now compelled to adjust to AI, neural networks, and new kinds of text and meaning generators. The key task facing linguists today is to explain how this new linguistic landscape operates, what its hidden mechanisms are, and what consequences it holds for the language community.”

The welcoming session continued with a video address from Zheng Chenjun, Vice-Rector of Beijing International Studies University (BISU), China. Zheng Chenjun emphasised the timeliness of the conference theme, shared BISU's experience in implementing artificial intelligence for scientific research, and expressed confidence in the promising future of continued collaboration between the two universities.

The first day's programme proceeded with two plenary sessions, featuring presentations by 11 distinguished and leading scholars, experts in the fields of corpus and computational linguistics, text and discourse linguistics, and experimental phonetics.

The framework set by the plenary sessions guided the direction of further discussions during the parallel sessions held on the second day. Across six discussion platforms, 92 papers were presented, exploring key facets of contemporary digital linguistics. A series of presentations focused on natural language processing, computational lexicography, and corpus studies, reviewing both the current state and future prospects of these technologies. Particular attention was given to the field of education. Scholars examined how digital technologies and artificial intelligence are transforming language training, touching upon the psychological and pedagogical aspects of this process and forging new approaches to teaching translation. Presenters analysed the specifics of multimodal communication in virtual spaces, the role of neural networks in media, and the application of digital tools in intercultural communication. Many studies were interdisciplinary, demonstrating the powerful potential of textual data analysis for tackling complex scientific challenges.

The culmination of two days of intensive work within the 2nd International Scientific Conference was the publication of a collected volume of scientific articles.

It can be stated with confidence that the conference achieved its primary objective: to unite the efforts of scholars from different countries in seeking answers to the challenges that digital transformation presents to language and communication.