In 2016, Facebook released the personal data of over 87 million users to Cambridge Analytica, which used the data to support the political campaign of right-wing candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.Footnote 1 Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, major software design companies such as Facebook (now Meta), Google, or Amazon have been viewed with a certain amount of mistrust. Their involvement in economic and political scandals has become the norm rather than the exception; it is now quite apparent that these companies are also implicated in social, economic, and political systems of control. Notwithstanding such overt examples of the politics and power of software companies, what I hope to have shown throughout this book is that these companies also exert power in more subtle ways: through the technological artefacts they produce and the cultural values that are articulated through these artefacts. My main concern has been to document how these sociocultural politics surface in the production of digital media and specifically in the work of UX writers. I have shown, for example, that the interfaces which UX writers produce are inherently and unavoidably normative in at least two ways: on the one hand, as texts that can reiterate existing, ideological views but, on the other hand, also as embodied experiences, whereby the interaction between technology and user reproduces hegemonic norms. It is this second normativity that I want to explore further in my conclusion here, suggesting that a posthumanist approach to digital media interfaces can help scholars produce a more complete account of the way power operates in and through contemporary digital media.
As a way to establish what I mean by a posthumanist approach to digital media interfaces, I return to Facebook (now Meta), specifically, to the visual and linguistic design of Facebook’s status update interface, as shown in Figure 7.1. Along with written status updates, the interface allows users to select an emoticon to indicate their current mood. While most of these emoticons are gender-neutral (some are even objects), two of them stand out in particular due to their gendered design: those labelled ‘beautiful’ and ‘funny’. ‘Beautiful’ is indexed through a decidedly feminized representation with a bob haircut, red lips, and long, black eyelashes. ‘Funny’, on the other hand, is indexed through bushy eyebrows, glasses, a pronounced nose, and a moustache. Presumably, this is a reference to the American comedian Groucho Marx, and, therefore, an ethnocentric design choice. At the same time, ‘funny’ is of course also subtly encoded as male. The emoticons remain the same regardless of the gender or preferred pronoun users choose in their profile settings. Clearly, these emoticons are neither random nor neutral, instead perpetuating that ‘funny’ is something men and ‘beautiful’ something women are (or can be). Facebook’s status update interface therefore reinforces gendered stereotypes. More importantly, though, it makes anyone who uses these emoticons complicit in perpetuating these stereotypes. If I want to express in my status update that I feel ‘beautiful’, I cannot do so without making reference to a very specific, heteronormative idea of beauty, where beauty is expressed through a particularly normative notion of femininity. Small interface moments like this significantly shape and sometimes literally determine what can be said and how things can be said by people using digital media.
Figure 7.1 ‘Feelings’ in Facebook’s status update interface
Figure 7.1Long description
The first screen shows how so-called feelings can be picked in Facebook’s status update interface. The text reads, How are you feeling, with tabs for feelings and activities. The tab for feelings lists the following excerpt of a selection of feelings that users can choose to include in their status update, along with the corresponding emojis. Happy, loved, lovely, excited, crazy, blessed, sad, thankful, in love, and grateful. The second screen shows an example of how feelings are used in a status update. The text reads, Lara Portmann is feeling happy. A smiley face icon is shown next to the words feeling happy. The third screen shows the two feeling options, beautiful and funny, along with the relative emojis. The emoji for beautiful is coded as stereotypically feminine, with long hair, long eyelashes, and red lips. The emoji for funny is coded as stereotypically masculine, with bushy eyebrows, a big nose, a mustache, and glasses.
That interfaces are normative is certainly not a new claim (e.g. Selfe & Selfe, Reference Selfe and Selfe1994; Djonov & van Leeuwen, Reference Djonov, van Leeuwen, Flowerdew and Richardson2017). Having said which, current approaches in digital discourse studies tend to address the normativity of interfaces primarily by examining interfaces as textual artefacts. Based on my own research, however, I would like to make the case for extending this by attending to the more-than-representational aspects of interfaces and to how interfaces exert their power not just through textual and discursive aspects but also – or especially – through the way they incite users to act upon and through them. In what follows, I first offer a brief summary of the five analytical chapters of this book and consider how my findings relate to matters of status, power, and normativity. My main point is simple: in order to understand the cultural politics of digital media, it is necessary to examine not just the use of digital media or digital media as such but to also investigate the production processes that shape them. Such a perspective allows for a more complete picture of the social and semiotic norms that come to be encoded in digital media (cf. Djonov & van Leeuwen, Reference Djonov, van Leeuwen, Flowerdew and Richardson2017) and that influence what users (can) do with these technologies.
At the same time, turning to the production of digital media and its producers opens up possibilities for a potential dialogue between researchers and practitioners. It is with this in mind that in the second part of the conclusion, I return to UX writers’ own understandings of language and communication that I have teased out in the preceding chapters in order to ask what it is that sociocultural linguists might perhaps learn – or at least appreciate – from UX writers. Concretely, I suggest that UX writers are particularly attuned to the ways digital media interfaces operate not just through what is said but, above all, through the action(s) they incite. In light of this, I propose that the expertise of UX writers can offer a starting point for extending the recent posthumanist turn in sociocultural linguistics (Pennycook, Reference Pennycook2018a) with regards to digital media. In the final section, I reflect on what such a posthumanist sociolinguistics of digital media might look like and how it can be used to examine how the work of companies like Google or Meta is political not just when they are involved in literal politics but also when people use such software for everyday activities – like posting a status update on their Facebook page.
7.1 Summary: Status, Power, and Normativity in UX Writing
While digital discourse scholars have conducted substantial research on how people communicate with and through digital media (e.g. Thurlow & Mroczek, Reference Thurlow and Mroczek2011; Jones et al., Reference Jones, Jones, Chik and Hafner2015; Georgakopoulou & Spilioti, Reference Georgakopoulou and Spilioti2016), little attention has been paid to the role of the producers of these media and how people like UX writers shape the way people (can) communicate. Some might argue that what producers intend does not matter and that what counts is what users end up doing with digital media. Yet, as I have argued in this book, regardless of how people choose to use digital media, the software itself always posits an ideal way of using it (cf. Chapter 6). Stanfill (Reference Stanfill2015) thus suggests that ‘[t]he interface makes a normative claim’ (p. 1061) – it entails an inbuilt ideal users have to respond to, even if that response is to contest the norm the software produces. Importantly, and as I hope to have shown through this book, software interfaces and their normative claims are not coincidental; rather, they are purposefully designed by people like UX writers. In this way, I have sought to unpack both the practical and ideological implications of UX writing, showing that focusing on the production of interface texts can provide a valuable perspective on the conditions of UX writing as elite language work but ultimately also on the broader cultural politics of digital media.
To examine the connection between UX writers’ elite language work and the cultural politics of software interfaces, I began in Chapter 2 by mapping the (language) work and expertise of UX writers. In this regard, I highlighted some of the key ways in which UX writing is connected to other professions in software design, most notably to user experience design and human-computer interaction (HCI). This, in turn, impacts how UX writers approach language in their own work: they tend to view microcopy (i.e. interface texts) not necessarily as something users are meant to read but more so as something users ought to act upon. What started to emerge is that UX writers are very much concerned with what is going on besides language and with the overall outcomes or effects of language. More broadly, I illustrated in Chapter 2 that UX writers can be understood to work as wordsmiths (Thurlow, Reference Thurlow and Thurlow2020c); they are markedly high-end, relatively elite language workers whose work is valued highly, both in symbolic and in material terms.
In the second part of my book (Chapters 3 and 4), I explored UX writers’ status as wordsmiths in more depth, asking in particular how they negotiate their position in the local and wider hierarchies of (language) work. In Chapter 3, I looked at this by focusing on skill discourse, discussing the construction and codification of writing-as-designing as a unique skill that UX writers claim in order to establish the (more) privileged status of their language work. As such, UX writers typically frame their work as being concerned with the communicative function of words rather than their verbal form. I explored this (ideological) distinction between form and function further in Chapter 4, where I discussed how UX writers (dis)avow creativity. Again, my primary focus in Chapter 4 was on UX writers’ status claims and on how they establish and maintain their position as relatively elite language workers. In this regard, I suggested that claiming non-creativity is another way for UX writers to establish the boundaries of their professional field, all while framing their own work in a positive light. As a whole, Chapters 3 and 4 highlighted UX writers’ strong orientation to design as a professional field, and with this, the professional and also cultural norms of UX design – norms that, as I showed in Chapter 5, can be both deep-seated and problematic. These two chapters thus showed that status and normativity are closely connected in UX writing. It is UX writers’ elite position that grants them status; at the same time, their elite position at least partially depends on accepting and reproducing existing, hegemonic norms that persist in UX and software design.
In the third part of my book (Chapters 5 and 6), I turned to discussing the normative consequences of UX writers’ work in more detail. In Chapter 5, I examined the ideology of the invisible interface in UX writing. Central to their status as wordsmiths, UX writers’ (supposedly) invisible language work has, I argued, wider, cultural-political consequences. The invisibility UX writers strive to produce depends on privileging a particular, normative position from which things are rendered (in)visible. In this way, UX writers approach and imbue digital media with ideal or idealized uses and users. This was the focus of Chapter 6, where I discussed the normative impact of UX writers’ work in terms of how UX writers ultimately engage in inventing, stylizing, and crafting particular audiences. As such, this final analytic chapter underscored the normativity of interfaces; they are normative not just as texts that reproduce ideological views but, above all, through the dynamic (inter)actions they incite.
Across all the chapters, I have been particularly interested in UX writers’ own understanding of language and communication and the beliefs they hold about how language works – or is supposed to work – in digital media interfaces. Ultimately, I have shown that examining UX writers’ views of language is central to understanding both their role as wordsmiths and the cultural-political implications of their work. On this basis, I now want to reconsider how UX writers approach language; although this time, I am not concerned with the normative implications of UX writers’ semiotic ideologies, but rather with the possibility that sociocultural linguists might learn something from UX writers.
7.2 The Role of Wordsmiths and Language Scholars
In this book, I have written about UX writing from an academic perspective; as a former practitioner, however, my interest in UX writing has always been twofold. On the one hand, and as an academic, I have been keen to document this work from a critical perspective and to understand its particular, cultural-normative impact. On the other hand, and as someone who is still actively involved in the UX writing community, I am also interested in what my research might mean to UX writers themselves and how they might respond to it. In this regard, I want to briefly consider how these two perspectives could be integrated. This brings me full circle to the question of how sociocultural linguists might look at UX writers not just as language workers but also as language experts in their own right.
In reflecting on the differences between how practitioners and academics might think differently (or not) about language, I find myself drawn to the work of scholars like Macgilchrist (Reference Macgilchrist2017, Reference Macgilchrist and Thurlow2020), who demonstrates how discourse ethnographic approaches can create not only novel theoretical insights but may also constitute a form of knowledge exchange between academics and other language experts. The different conditions under which wordsmiths and sociocultural linguists conduct their work are at the heart of Macgilchrist’s (Reference Macgilchrist and Thurlow2020) work. Discussing the work of history textbook authors, she reflects on how the educational publishing industry as an institution that governs what counts as worth knowing affects the language work of these authors. In her case study on (post)colonial discourse in textbooks, Macgilchrist highlights that the particular knowledge textbook authors have of the publishing apparatus and of schools themselves ultimately makes them better at formulating a postcolonially oriented textbook than discourse scholars. She shows that the authors’ work, which from a text-analytic perspective may not seem particularly progressive, is in fact more likely to effect postcolonially oriented change, due to it being more ‘teachable’ than a progressive text. Here, it is the concrete expertise of applied language experts that turns out to be at least as valuable as that of sociocultural linguists.
Especially inspiring is Macgilchrist’s (Reference Macgilchrist and Thurlow2020) ethical commitment to remaining critical of the work of textbook authors while also acknowledging these wordsmiths as experts themselves. In this regard, Macgilchrist makes a case for replacing the all-too-comfortable academic but with a Deleuzian and, holding space for academic critique and also for the expert knowledge of wordsmiths themselves. Instead of hedging the positive insights of wordsmiths through the use of but (e.g. they may have applied knowledge, but they still reproduce normative discourses), Macgilchrist integrates the expertise of wordsmiths with the critical thinking of academia, seeking to hold both perspectives together and recognizing them as equal. Similarly, several case studies in Perrin and Kleinberger (Reference Perrin and Kleinberger2017) point to the value that applied linguistic research has when engaging other language professions and how ‘research in the workplace’ (Ehrensberger-Dow et al., Reference Ehrensberger-Dow, Heeb, Jud, Angelone, Perrin and Kleinberger2017) can lead to mutual learning between academics and professionals; while scholars in applied linguistics (e.g. Candlin & Sarangi, Reference Candlin and Sarangi2003; Sarangi, Reference Sarangi2005) have long argued against treating (language) workers only as objects of study rather than as sources of valid linguistic insight.
Meanwhile, Thurlow and Britain’s (Reference Thurlow, Britain and Thurlow2020) recent work on dialect coaches is exemplary in showing how the work of wordsmiths can help academics revisit their own conceptualizations of language and communication. In particular, Thurlow and Britain are keen to not simply critique wordsmiths’ work but to be open to learning from them, acknowledging that academic perspectives on dialects are neither better nor more objective than those of dialect coaches (cf. also Irvine & Gal, Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000). As Thurlow and Britain note, these differences are in part due to the somewhat different objectives of wordsmiths and academics: while wordsmiths are usually concerned with specific, individual cases, language scholars are typically expected to offer a (more) generalized argument. How language is conceptualized thus depends on the particular conditions under which it is imagined (cf. Urciuoli, Reference Urciuoli2016). In other words, the material and structural conditions of practitioners’ and academics’ work lead to a somewhat different but perhaps not incompatible understanding of language. It is with this in mind that I want to offer some final remarks on the language work of UX writers, reflecting on the connections (rather than differences) between ‘their’ work and ‘ours’.
The way UX writers think about language is not necessarily so different from that of sociocultural linguists. For instance, how they understand matters such as multimodality (cf. Chapters 2 and 5) in fact aligns quite well with current scholarly approaches. (I will comment on this in more depth in Section 7.3.) In thinking about the cultural-political consequences of UX writers’ language work, I am equally reminded that while UX writers may be less aware of the ideological and normative implications of their work, that is not to say that they are unaware of them altogether. For instance, one of my interviewees remarked that the meaning of the word ‘share’ has changed in the wake of digital/social media, with ‘sharing’ now referring to the sharing or publishing of information more so than communal sharing. This is, of course, the central argument of media and communication scholar John (Reference John2017) in his recent book The Age of Sharing. Another interviewee pointed out the significant influence Silicon Valley culture has on whether (and which) words and discourses are circulated globally; others yet considered how UX writing shapes people’s experiences in terms of social in- and exclusion (for instance, through gendered language), or they reflected on the role UX writers can play in abolishing racist terminology (such as the still prevalent use of ‘master/slave’ or ‘blacklist/whitelist’ in software engineering practices). More generally, there has been a shift in UX design as a whole in recent years. Topics such as sociocultural impact, ethics, and UX practitioners’ responsibility in shaping cultural discourses have increasingly become prime topics at industry conferences; these matters are also publicly discussed in podcasts and blog posts produced and circulated by industry practitioners, including UX writers.Footnote 2
There is necessarily a difference in how much space matters of language and cultural discourses take up in the work of UX writers and in that of sociocultural linguists. Engaging with such matters once or twice a year at a conference is certainly not the same as doing so on an ongoing basis in one’s day-to-day work. Evidently, this is tied again to the different structural conditions of practitioners and academics. Language scholars, especially those working in fields like critical sociolinguistics or critical discourse studies, are paid to think about such matters. UX writers, of course, are not; they are primarily paid to produce writing that ‘works’. Perhaps, then, the difference in ‘our’ and ‘their’ thinking is not so much a qualitative but a quantitative one. It is certainly true that the conditions of UX writers’ work do not allow them to spend as much time thinking about cultural-political aspects as sociocultural linguists can, but that does not mean that they never think about these matters. Given this, it makes all the more sense to move beyond the ‘academic but’ (Macgilchrist, Reference Macgilchrist and Thurlow2020), which necessarily hedges and de-valorizes the insights of non-academic language experts like UX writers.
Indeed, perhaps it is most productive to think of these wordsmiths not just as research informants but also as valid sources of sociolinguistic insight or even theory (cf. Sarangi, Reference Sarangi2005). This is not to say that UX writers themselves engage in such theorizing (not in the same way sociocultural linguists would); what I am suggesting is rather that respecting the work and expertise of these practitioners can offer new opportunities for expanding sociolinguistic theory. In the second part of this conclusion, I now turn to exemplifying this mindset by considering how the expertise of UX writers can help expand the recent turn to posthumanism in sociocultural linguistics.
7.3 Learning from UX Writers: Transmodality and Embodiment
In turning to a posthumanist perspective, I start by considering two concepts UX writers employ in their work, but which have received, until only recently, slightly less attention from sociocultural linguists (especially from those working in digital discourse studies): transmodality and embodiment. These two concepts have surfaced in the previous chapters as core approaches of how UX writers theorize language and communication. With regards to the first, transmodality, I suggest that UX writers are especially good at understanding how semiotic modes are interrelated. While multimodality is certainly not a new topic in sociocultural linguistics, I propose that the way UX writers approach this in their work entails a deeper engagement with, and understanding of, transmodality and transduction (Bezemer & Kress, Reference Bezemer and Kress2008; see also Thurlow & Jaworski, Reference Thurlow, Jaworski, Cavanaugh and Shankar2017b). Furthermore, and turning to embodiment, UX writers are also particularly well-attuned to non- or more-than-representational aspects of communication (cf. Lorimer, Reference Lorimer2005; Thrift, Reference Thrift2007) and the way that texts are not just read but experienced by readers in an embodied way (cf. Jones, Reference Jones, Demata, Zorzi and Zottola2022a). These two issues, transmodality and embodiment, are connected insofar as they both de-centre linguistic and textual aspects; it is in this way that they ultimately serve as a starting point for developing a posthumanist approach to digital media.
7.3.1 Transmodality
As I have shown throughout my book, UX writers understand communication as inherently multimodal (see especially Chapters 2 and 5). To them, separating the linguistic or verbal aspects of an interface from its visual design seems counterproductive, if not impossible. While multimodality studies have led sociocultural linguists to think beyond the written and spoken word, the field’s primary focus is, for better or worse, still language. Consequently – and in contrast to how UX writers approach language – sociocultural linguists are prone to separating out the linguistic aspects of communication at the expense of what is going on besides language (see Thurlow, Reference Thurlow2016). Given that their primary focus tends to be language, it is perhaps not surprising that sociocultural linguists might struggle with examining what lies besides language. This is, however, exactly what UX writers excel in. Language is also their key concern; yet, they understand well that communication is always more than words and that sometimes, words are not the point at all. As I discussed in Chapter 5, they certainly understand that language cannot be separated from other semiotic modes. To illustrate and extend this idea, I offer Extracts 7.1 and 7.2, where two different UX writers describe how they think about and incorporate other modes in their work processes. Both Extracts are taken from my own interviews with UX writers. In the first instance (Extract 7.1), Mona, who has been working as a UX writer for about ten years, talks about how the visual design of an interface may influence her writing.
Extract 7.1: Mona on transmodality in UX writing
1. Here are three possible palettes on how we can approach it [the design]. … So, I
2. came in and was like, “Okay let me let me design language around each of those.”
3. So, you know, this one has sharper corners, let’s use a more, you know, staccato
4. kind of language. This one has a softer feel to it, so let’s use more descriptive
5. language. … It’s just like anything else, it has a tone, it has a feel.
In Extract 7.1, Mona refers to her practice as ‘design[ing] language around’ the visual aesthetic of the interface (line 2). As such, the visual design of the software appears to centrally shape the style of her writing. In her explanation of how the visual and verbal aspects of the interface are connected, Mona invokes even more modes: note how she uses musical terminology (‘let’s use a more … staccato kind of language’, lines 3–4) and refers to touch (‘this one has a softer feel to it’, line 4) to describe her work. To scholars of language, Mona’s description may seem somewhat trivial. Certainly, sociocultural linguists have developed different and perhaps more nuanced metalanguage for describing these phenomena. A ‘staccato kind of language’ (lines 3–4) might be described as parataxis, characterized by short sentences without subordinate clauses, while language that ‘has a softer feel’ (line 4) might entail more voiced sounds or rounded graphemes, which tend to be associated with round shapes (cf. Ramachandran & Hubbard, Reference Ramachandran and Hubbard2001; see also Cuskley et al., Reference Cuskley, Simner and Kirby2017 on orthographic and phonological aspects of sound symbolism). Regardless of this, though, Mona’s approach to writing clearly goes beyond considering only linguistic aspects. To her, UX writing appears to be an inherently and necessarily transmodal matter.
As a second example of UX writers’ transmodal approach to their work, I offer Extract 7.2 from my interview with Celia, an experienced UX writer working at a major international software company in the United States. Here, she responds to my question about what UX writing generally entails. Like Mona, she seems to understand her work as inherently transmodal, and she appears to be particularly attuned to the interplay of various modes.
Extract 7.2: Celia on transmodality in UX writing
1. Say, it’s a login screen and there’s, like, one field and then there’s a second field
2. below it and a big button. I don’t think many people read what’s the label on that
3. field and what’s the label on that button. They’re just like, “Oh it’s ‘username’ and
4. ‘password’”, and then they do it. … We have to be aware of what are the times
5. when the visuals are going to make it impossible for our copy to do anything. …
6. And that’s not always a weakness, right, sometimes it’s a strength, sometimes the
7. job is about “Hey, I’ve see– I think I know how this screen should look just because
8. I know what people will expect to see here.” … It is not just did we craft stringsFootnote 3
9. that get the message across, but are those strings being presented in a way that
10. they get a chance to do that.
In this instance, Celia explains how regardless of the words she writes, sometimes the people using the interface will not read these words because they are too focused on other modes: sometimes ‘the visuals are going to make it impossible for our copy to do anything’ (line 5). As a consequence, Celia’s approach to writing microcopy has to be a transmodal one from the start. She has to consider not just what to write but also how the writing will be presented alongside other modes: ‘[i]t is not just did we craft strings that get the message across, but are those strings being presented in a way that they get a chance to do that’ (lines 8–10). More than this, Celia appears to not just consider the influence of the visual design on her writing but to actively make use of the interplay between various modes: she claims that the dominance of the visual mode may also be a strength she can exploit (line 6). Sometimes, then, the work of a UX writer is not about writing specific words, but rather about understanding when the words don’t matter. UX writing is therefore based on the fundamental understanding that language functions not in isolation but as part of an assemblage of modes. This is, of course, a truism in sociocultural linguistics nowadays, but my research shows how practitioners (already) work with the same fundamental understanding.
What Extracts 7.1 and 7.2 reveal is that UX writers seem to be good at understanding both the ‘division of labour’ (Kress, Reference Kress2010) between different semiotic modes as well as the relationships between modes, how they may supplement one another (as in Mona’s case) or work differently or even in opposition (as in Celia’s case). Especially intriguing, however, is how these UX writers approach transmodality not simply as a combination of individual, separate modes (as sociocultural linguists tend to do); rather, they understand texts – in this case, interfaces – as an assemblage of modes that are inherently intertwined and interdependent. In simple terms, they understand that the sum is more than its parts. This difference between ‘our’ and ‘their’ approach is not surprising; while sociocultural linguists may be interested in disentangling texts in order to understand how they work, UX writers are primarily concerned with putting these texts together – a task where separating out language from other modes is likely counterproductive.
Despite the different goals that UX writers and language scholars may have, though, sometimes, it is exactly the synaesthetic (Kress, Reference Kress1997) interplay between different semiotic modes that matters most, also for sociocultural linguists. In this regard, Thurlow and Jaworski (Reference Thurlow, Jaworski, Cavanaugh and Shankar2017b) illustrate that approaching texts as semiotic assemblages can extend scholars’ understanding of the cultural work and impact of such texts (see also Jaworski, Reference Jaworski2017; Thurlow, Reference Thurlow and Rippl2015, Reference Thurlow2020d). As a case in point, they show, for instance, that things such as a plastic frequent-flyer membership card acquire their meaning only when one considers them as a transmodal practice – it is through the interplay of words, colours, and materials that the card becomes a membership card instead of a just a worthless piece of plastic. Similarly, UX writers understand that language can produce a particular effect, for instance, a ‘softer feel’ (Extract 7.1, line 4), not alongside but only in combination with other modes.
UX writers also understand well how different modes may influence or condition one another. As Celia (Extract 7.2) notes, depending on the look of an interface, users may be more or less likely to read the individual words in that interface. Users may recognize a login interface, Celia explains, not because they see the words login, username, or password, but rather because they know where (or when) they can expect that interface, and because they perceive its overall layout: ‘there’s … one field and then there’s a second field below and a big button’ (lines 1–2). What Celia recognizes is that these layout practices condition the interface as a transmodal text: one mode (layout) determines how another mode (written language) can or will be perceived.
Working with another applied context, Murphy (Reference Murphy2012) discusses the way different semiotic modes relate to and condition one another as an aspect of transmodality. Analyzing the day-to-day interactions of two furniture designers as they work on completing a new assignment (the design of a candleholder), Murphy observes that the design and physical form of the candleholder is shaped by sketches and computerized 3D drawings but also by words (e.g. ‘soft and nice’) and bodily movements (such as a sloping gesture). Importantly, he shows how actions carried out in one mode shape subsequent actions in other modes. A round and sloping gesture may become a sloping shape in the computer drawing, with the gesture thus conditioning the shape of the 3D model. This leads Murphy to argue that modes are not simply layered on top of each other; rather, they are interdependent. Different modes influence one another as well as any subsequent communicative action;, they ‘perforate and interpenetrate each other’ (p. 1969) through what Murphy (Reference Murphy2012) calls semiotic modulations. Relatedly, Goodwin and Alim (Reference Goodwin and Alim2010) speak of transmodal stylization in order to theorize how sociolinguistic style may be produced in a way that ‘cuts across various modalities’ (p. 191), by which they mean that multiple, possibly opposed, social meanings may be expressed simultaneously through the deployment of more than one mode (e.g. gesture and spoken language) that each index a different sociolinguistic style.
Writing from an explicitly social semiotic perspective, Jaworski (Reference Jaworski2017) similarly speaks of the ‘moiré-like’ nature of the interplay between semiotic modes. ‘Moiré’, in this case, refers to the layering of particular semiotic patterns on top of each other, whereby different modes ‘fluctuate in a constant ebb and flow of interactional synchronicity and rupture’ (Jaworski, Reference Jaworski2017, p. 535). As such, different modes are understood as only ever partially responsible for the interaction that takes place. All of this points to a more dynamic view of meaning making.
Approaches emphasizing transmodality are of course not entirely new in sociocultural linguistics and have, for instance, been discussed under the rubric of synaesthesia (Kress, Reference Kress1997) or resemiotization (Iedema, Reference Iedema2003). In this regard, Kress (Reference Kress1997) asserts that multimodality (or what more recently has been called transmodality) always entails the complementary processes of transformation and transduction, that is, the reshaping of semiotic resources within and across modes, respectively. Such reshaping of meaning leads to what Kress calls synaethesia, whereby something that has been translated from one mode into another leads to qualitatively new forms of meaning. Relatedly, Iedema (Reference Iedema2003) proposes the concept of resemiotization in order to theorize how semiotic resources are translated from one mode into another as social processes unfold, arguing that meaning making is an inevitably dynamic and socially situated process. More recently, scholars have discussed the relationships between modes also under the label intermodality (cf. Stöckl, Reference Stöckl, Norris and Maier2014, on intermodal harmony; see also papers in Maier, Reference Maier2017). In general, however, the dynamic interplay between modes is still only occasionally addressed in sociocultural linguistics. Contrary to this, such transmodality is firmly rooted in the work of UX writers, who understand that modes other than written language may well determine not only how but also if people will read their writing.
7.3.2 Embodiment
UX writers are particularly attuned not just to the transmodal nature of interface texts but also to their more-than-representational aspects (Lorimer, Reference Lorimer2005). As Extract 7.2 starts to show, UX writers are well aware of the dynamic, situated nature of software interfaces, recognizing that users tend to fluidly click through interfaces and thus understand interfaces as one single interaction rather than as individual, separate texts. It is this which brings me to a second aspect that is particularly prominent in UX writers’ work: embodiment. Unlike many language and discourse scholars, who have, as Thurlow (Reference Thurlow2016) points out, often centred textual aspects of communication and paid only ‘little attention to the embodied, intuitive, affective ways of doing and knowing’ (p. 507), UX writers themselves frequently place the embodied experience of texts at the centre of their work. In this regard, I offer Extract 7.3 from my interview with Miriam. At the time of our interview, Miriam had been working as a UX writer for seven years; here, she explains how she usually processes a new assignment.
Extract 7.3: Miriam on embodied experience in UX writing
1. We try to figure out what we want to say, how we want to, how we want to say it
2. … you know, (we) try to get the right experience. And my tools are the words, but,
3. like, everything combined with visuals, with interaction creates this experience.
What is particularly apparent in this case is how Miriam’s understanding of communication is decidedly more-than-representational. Naturally, Miriam’s work as a UX writer entails making decisions about the words that will be used in an interface and ‘figure[ing] out what we want to say, how we want to … say it’ (line 1). She suggests, though, that what ultimately matters is ‘everything combined with visuals, with interaction [which] creates this experience’ (line 3). Like Mona and Celia (Extracts 7.1 and 7.2), Miriam thus understands her work as inherently transmodal; and what she sees as the outcome or goal of her work is not an interface, but an ‘experience’ (lines 2 and 3).
I have commented on UX writers’ use of the word experience in Chapter 5, identifying it as a key organizing principle that UX writers use to describe their work. The term experience, I argued, indexes UX writers’ orientation towards the field of UX design, but it also erases or obscures the materiality of digital media. Here, I am interested primarily in how this focus on something more-than-representational also influences UX writers’ understanding of language, and, specifically, how it is connected to an embodied understanding of communication. Notice, for instance, how Miriam singles out ‘interaction’ (line 3) as a key aspect of the experience she and her colleagues are seeking to create – evidently, she sees this as an important aspect of how interfaces work. In doing so, she again draws attention to the dynamic nature of the interface (cf. Chapter 2); this, I propose, is connected also to an understanding of communication as inherently embodied (cf. Bucholtz & Hall, Reference Bucholtz, Hall and Coupland2016), as something people do with all their senses.
To illustrate UX writers’ more-than-representational and embodied approach to interfaces, I offer another example (Extract 7.4), this time from my interview with Tina, a senior UX writer working at a large, internationally known software company. In this instance, Tina talks about her general approach to (UX) writing.
Extract 7.4: Tina on embodied experience in UX writing
1. Besides language, there is the positioning of the language, where that language
2. appears, if it appears at all. … I had a designer reach out a couple days ago who
3. said, “I need, I need a piece of copy here”, and I looked at the page and I realized
4. there’s no copy needed. Like it’s already– it’s clear to the user where they are, all
5. they need is the button to get to the next page.
Once again, Tina appears to be very aware of how (written) language intersects with other modes and that owing to this, sometimes, ‘there’s no copy needed’ (line 4). She also addresses that writing always entails more than just the selection of particular words: ‘where that language appears [and] if that language appears at all’ (lines 1–2) matters just as much. In this way, Tina recognizes that meaning is always also linked to the compositional and the interpersonal (meta)function of language (cf. Halliday, Reference Halliday1978; Kress & van Leeuwen, Reference Kress and van Leeuwen2001). What interests me most about Tina’s account, however, is how she discusses the interface as a dynamic object that is made up of more than individual screens. Tina’s decisions about what to write (and whether she should write anything at all) appear to be made primarily based on users’ (imagined) movement through the interface. As such, Tina takes a decidedly embodied perspective on interface texts: she spatially locates users in the interface (‘it’s clear to the user where they are’, line 5). In fact, she goes on to explicitly characterize users’ engagement with the interface as a form of movement by suggesting that users need to ‘get to the next page’ (lines 5–6). Tina’s approach to (UX) writing thus highlights the fact that users do not read interface texts in isolation; rather, Tina illustrates how users engage in a more embodied form of using the interface that entails the physical clicking or touching of buttons (line 5) and a dynamic movement through the pages of the interface.
In sociocultural linguistics, embodiment is still a relatively recent topic of interest (cf. Bucholtz & Hall, Reference Bucholtz, Hall and Coupland2016; see also Thurlow, Reference Thurlow2016), despite the fact that it is, as Bucholtz and Hall (Reference Bucholtz, Hall and Coupland2016) point out, central to both the production and reception of language: speaking, listening, reading, and writing all depend on people’s use of their bodies. Notwithstanding, the human body is increasingly foregrounded in certain areas of sociocultural linguistics. For example, scholars in mediated discourse analysis have long centred the role of the historical body and the way discourse is constituted also through the embodied habitus of people (e.g. Scollon & Scollon, Reference Scollon and Scollon2004; Norris & Jones, Reference Norris and Jones2005);Footnote 4 conversation analysts have centrally investigated the use of the body in interaction (e.g. C. Goodwin, Reference Goodwin2007; Mondada, Reference Mondada2011; Cekaite & Mondada, Reference Cekaite and Mondada2020); and there is a growing body of research examining matters of language and gender from an explicitly embodied perspective (e.g. Peck & Stroud, Reference Peck and Stroud2015; Hall et al., Reference Hall, Borba, Hiramoto and Stanlaw2020). However, discourse-focused scholarship has, as Thurlow (Reference Thurlow2016) observes, tended to fetishize the text and centre the textual and representational. This is perhaps particularly true for digital discourse studies, despite the fact that, as Jones (Reference Jones2022b) recently pointed out, the body is increasingly reasserting itself in digital communication, especially through new forms of ‘synthetic embodiment’ such as digitally enhanced Snapchat pictures or Apple’s Animojis, which transpose the recording of a users’ face onto an animated emoji. In this sense, I see embodiment not as a wholly new concern but as a somewhat neglected perspective in sociolinguistic research on digital media.
Writing about digital literacy, Jones (Reference Jones, Demata, Zorzi and Zottola2022a) suggests that an often overlooked dimension when it comes to digital media is their material qualities and the fact that digital media are always experienced as embodied practices. This is not to suggest that there is no research attending to the embodied nature of how users engage with digital media; in fact, Jones’s own research (e.g. Jones, Reference Jones, Thurlow and Mroczek2011, Reference Jones, Jones, Chik and Hafner2015, Reference Jones, Thurlow, Dürscheid and Diémoz2020c) is exemplary in addressing the entanglement of human bodies and technologies in digitally mediated interaction. In this regard, Jones discusses, for instance, the entextualization of the human body in amateur skateboarding videos (Jones, Reference Jones, Thurlow and Mroczek2011) or through self-tracking apps (Jones, Reference Jones, Jones, Chik and Hafner2015); more recently, he has also addressed the role of embodiment with regards to visual digital practices (Jones, Reference Jones, Thurlow, Dürscheid and Diémoz2020c). Similarly, Keating’s (e.g. Reference Keating2005; Keating & Mirus, Reference Keating and Mirus2003) earlier work on sign language users in video-mediated online interactions highlights the intersections of bodies and technologies, just as research on language and sex/uality online has likewise tended to centre matters of embodiment (e.g. Adams-Thies, Reference Adams-Thies2012; Varis, Reference Varis2021; see also Jones, Reference Jones2009). Crucially, research like this shows how it is never just the body that is being represented digitally; rather, the material (the body) and the digital (the interface) mutually affect and constitute one another.
Despite some digital discourse scholars’ engagements with embodiment, when it comes to interfaces in particular, scholars still tend to often neglect the fact that interfaces are something people also physically and tangibly click through; instead, scholars prefer to discuss interfaces as static, bounded entities. However, approaching interfaces as something embodied might allow scholars to better understand how they function not just on the level of representation but also in terms of the patterns of usage they create, that is to say, how their ‘eventfulness’ (Dieter, Reference Dieter, Berry and Dieter2015) can encourage specific, cultural-normative performances. A case in point is Friz and Gehl’s (Reference Friz and Gehl2016) study of Pinterest’s sign-up interface: discussing the sign-up process as a ‘gender script’, the authors show how it is not an individual screen that makes Pinterest feminine-coded; rather, it is through the way that Pinterest guides new users through their first steps on the platform that feminine-coded gender performances are encouraged (such as the act of curating – rather than creating – content). The interface, through its suggested and oftentimes required processes and actions, thus shapes both the embodied and discursive actions of users. Ultimately, approaches that attend to the dynamic, situated, and embodied aspects of digital media interfaces encourage researchers to address interfaces not just as texts but also as lived experience (cf. Jones, Reference Jones, Demata, Zorzi and Zottola2022a). In the end, users literally move parts of their body (if only their fingers) to manipulate the interface; interface design choices also pre-scribe the embodied actions of users. For sociocultural linguists, this likely means developing a less representational approach to language in digital media interfaces that conceptualizes how users engage with interfaces as an embodied practice – similar to the way UX writers conceive of it.
Transmodality and embodiment are connected insofar as they both decentre the linguistic and the textual. It is not surprising that UX writers are particularly good at this: owing both to the distributed nature of their work (cf. Chapter 2) and their relative position as (language) workers vis-à-vis their colleagues (cf. Chapters 3 and 5), UX writers always need to understand not just language but also what is going on beside language. This includes also an understanding of interface practices as embodied, and of texts and bodies as inherently connected. Ultimately, then, as I have teased out in this book, UX writers work in a posthumanist way. Their practice might be seen as sitting at the cutting edge of sociolinguistic theory; it is in this way that taking UX writers’ work and expertise seriously offers an opportunity for expanding current posthumanist approaches in sociocultural linguistics. Specifically, I propose that the work of UX writers shows that the study of interfaces demands a posthumanist lens, indicating that scholars ought to engage more with the more-than-representational, unstable, and dynamic nature of the software interface in order to address its normative potential. In the last part of this conclusion, I offer a preliminary outline of what such a posthumanist approach to digital media might look like.
7.4 Towards a Posthumanist Sociolinguistics of Digital Media
Posthumanism is a broad term that is used to describe a range of allied but also divergent contemporary movements in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. My own use of the term, as I have outlined in previous areas of this book (see, especially, Chapter 1), orients primarily to questioning the notion of the (rational) ‘human’ as the sole arbiter of legitimate action (e.g. Herbrechter et al., Reference Herbrechter, Callus, de Bruin-Molé, Grech, Müller, Rossini, Herbrechter, Callus, Rossini, Grech, de Bruin-Molé and John Müller2020). Posthumanist thinking is certainly not new; however, it is only very recently that it has been taken up in language and discourse studies; in this case, scholars have begun to consider how non-human and non-linguistic aspects shape discursive practices (e.g. Pennycook, Reference Pennycook2018a; Lamb & Higgins, Reference Lamb, Higgins, De Fina and Georgakopoulou2020; O’Halloran, Reference O’Halloran, O’Keeffe and McCarthy2022). This posthumanist turn in language scholarship has been explored most prominently by Pennycook (Reference Pennycook2018a), who posits that ‘there is no longer a world “out there” separate from humans and represented in language but rather a dynamic interrelationship between different materialities’ (p. 449). In this regard, Pennycook understands meaning making as taking place not just through language and discourse but also through people’s being-in-the-world. This, of course, aligns nicely with non-representational theory (cf. Thrift, Reference Thrift2007). Pennycook discusses a variety of discursive phenomena from this perspective, perhaps most notable is his revision of the linguistic notion of repertoire, which he conceptualizes as ‘an emergent property deriving from the interactions between people, artefacts, and space’ (Pennycook, Reference Pennycook2018b, p. 10). The particular, material context in which communication happens is thus not ‘just’ context but rather part of an interactive whole. This in turn illustrates how meaning is made not just in people’s heads but also through their bodies; not just through language but also through the more-than-representational; not just by humans but also by the relations of objects, animals, and other non-human things.
While posthumanism as a term has only recently surfaced in sociocultural linguistics, posthumanist perspectives have permeated the field much longer than that (Lamb & Higgins, Reference Lamb, Higgins, De Fina and Georgakopoulou2020; see also Bucholtz & Hall, Reference Bucholtz, Hall and Coupland2016, pp. 187–189). For Lamb and Higgins (Reference Lamb, Higgins, De Fina and Georgakopoulou2020), this is most evident in Scollon and Scollon’s (Reference Scollon and Scollon2004) nexus analysis, especially with regards to their work on the emerging internet in Alaska in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where Scollon and Scollon examine the connections between social practices, Alaskan peoples, and technologies. Relatedly, some scholars researching digitally mediated interaction have provided rich analyses of the relationship between language, technology, and the human body (Keating, Reference Keating2005; Jones, Reference Jones2009, Reference Jones, Thurlow and Mroczek2011; Keating & Sunakawa, Reference Keating and Sunakawa2010; Licoppe & Morel, Reference Licoppe and Morel2012). Elsewhere, scholars in digital discourse studies have also been exploring the role of non-human actors (Eisenlauer, Reference Eisenlauer2014; Procházka, Reference Procházka2019; O’Halloran, Reference O’Halloran, O’Keeffe and McCarthy2022; see, especially, also Jones, Reference Jones, Tagg and Evans2020b, Reference Jones2021, on ‘algorithmic pragmatics’). More broadly, sociocultural linguists have paid increasing attention to matters such as human–animal communication (e.g. Lamb, Reference Lamb2020; Cornips & van den Hengel, Reference Cornips, van den Hengel, Bovenkerk and Keulartz2021); human–machine interactions in non-digital contexts (e.g. Hovens, Reference Hovens2022 on machine-actants in a metal foundry); and sensory, non-material aspects of communication (e.g. Thurlow, Reference Thurlow2016; see also Pennycook & Otsuji, Reference Pennycook and Otsuji2015, on smell). All in all, posthumanism productively challenges established sociolinguistic understandings of language, agency, materiality, and practice.
Against this theoretical backdrop, I see a posthumanist sociolinguistics of digital media entailing at least three interconnected dimensions or interventions:
1. First, a posthumanist sociolinguistics of digital media centres the dynamic and emergent nature of the interface, foregrounding embodied experience and usage instead of (only) linguistic and/or textual aspects.
2. Second, and in line with the recent emergence of postdigital perspectives (e.g. Jandric et al., Reference Jandrić, Knox, Besley, Ryberg, Suoranta and Hayes2018), it interrogates these experience(s) by resurfacing and denaturalizing the digital.
3. Third, and overall, it addresses how the notion of ‘human’ – and who is considered human – surfaces in people’s interactions with digital media as well as how ‘human’ is purposefully constructed in the production of digital media.
These aspects are necessarily interconnected; I therefore discuss them not separately but as an overall posthumanist approach, which starts with acknowledging that digital media are ubiquitous in most people’s lives today: they surface in even the most banal, everyday encounters. It is because of this that I propose a critical re-engagement with the digital, one that focuses less on the uses of digital media (such as how people’s communicative behaviour ‘online’ might differ from what they do ‘offline’) and instead engages the production of digital media and the way digital media are central to shaping the kinds of interactions that (can) take place. As said, this aligns nicely with the recent turn to the postdigital in much of the humanities (e.g. Jandrić & Knox, Reference Jandrić and Knox2021; Tagg & Lyons, Reference Tagg and Lyons2022; cf. also Mathier, Reference Mathier2024); here, scholars note how digital media are no longer ‘new’ and that they can no longer be seen as separate from ordinary human experience (cf. Jandrić et al., Reference Jandrić, Knox, Besley, Ryberg, Suoranta and Hayes2018) – that, perhaps, the digital and the human have never been separate.
Like posthumanism, the term postdigital is an umbrella term that has been applied to a variety of phenomena across a variety of disciplines (Taffel, Reference Taffel2016). Much of this scholarship is inspired by Negroponte’s 1998 article in the technology and business magazine Wired titled ‘Beyond Digital’, in which he declares: ‘Face it – the digital revolution is over’ (cf. Jandrić et al., Reference Jandrić, MacKenzie and Knox2022). In this way, the prefix ‘post’ signals both a rupture and a continuation; it is understood as signalling not only a move beyond the digital as new and novel but also as a way of rejecting a dualistic logic of ‘on/off’ that understands the digital as discrete and in opposition to the continuous nature of human biological existence (Jandrić et al., Reference Jandrić, Knox, Besley, Ryberg, Suoranta and Hayes2018; cf. also Pepperell & Punt, Reference Pepperell and Punt2000). As such, the postdigital also draws attention to sociomaterial aspects of digital media, such as the increasingly corporatized and platformized nature of their production (e.g. Knox, Reference Knox2019; Mathier, Reference Mathier2024), recognizing, as I have in this book, that the production of digital media is neither neutral nor apolitical. Here, too, the digital is understood as something that is omnipresent but which still (or all the more) needs to be interrogated.
Not unlike the notion of posthumanism itself, the term postdigital, as it has been used by scholars in the humanities, is thus particularly useful for highlighting the ‘subtle cultural shifts’ (Cramer, Reference Cramer, Berry and Dieter2015, p. 15) in how the digital is perceived today: as something that is no longer extraordinary, but simply part of everyday life. This is certainly not news to scholars in digital discourse studies, who have long recognized that online and offline practices are always inherently connected (e.g. Jones, Reference Jones, LeVine and Scollon2004; Georgakopoulou, Reference Georgakopoulou2006; for a recent discussion, see Bolander & Locher, Reference Bolander and Locher2020). My point, however, is that now that the digital is often taken for granted (by scholars and users alike), it is necessary to resurface and denaturalize digital media, acknowledging that they are never just ‘there’, but rather purposefully designed. For example, it may be banal and unspectacular that I can read and reply to my work emails from my phone, but I can only do so because someone decided that this is what I should be able to do. In talking about the postdigital, I am therefore less interested in aspects of corporatization or platformization (though this certainly matters as well) and more so in a critical reengagement of digital media as something that is actively constructed by particular people and corporations with particular, often self-interested goals.
An approach that centres the constructedness of digital media inevitably needs to investigate the design choices of producers and their implications for users. This, I suggest, is most fruitfully done by focusing not on textual representation but on interaction and embodied experience. In this regard, scholars in media and communication studies (e.g. Light et al., Reference Light, Burgess and Duguay2018; Dieter & Tkacz, Reference Dieter and Tkacz2020) have proposed walkthrough methods as a way of studying software, an approach which invites researchers to centre the medium and its design by employing a step-by-step walkthrough technique during which researchers systematically click through software interfaces and record interface actions order to understand how the software guides users. Approaches like this also lend themselves well to decentring linguistic-representational aspects (see Ash et al., Reference Ash, Anderson, Gordon and Langley2017). Centrally, walkthrough methods allow for a meticulous surfacing of the software interface, whereby its affordances and constraints are systematically examined. This, in turn, can reveal what kinds of ideal (or idealized) users are embedded in the software (cf. Chapter 6), all of which is connected to how the category of ‘human’ is conceptualized and designed in digital media. Just as the humanism of the Enlightenment grants the status of ‘human’ only to some people, idealized users, too, can reveal something about who is considered more and who is considered less human.
More generally, looking for the non- or posthuman in digital media may seem obvious. Especially in times of artificial intelligence and virtual agents, it is certainly tempting to search for the posthuman in interactions people might have with smart assistants like Siri or Alexa. While encounters with virtual agents like these are interesting to consider, my primary concern is, once again, not the use of digital media but their production, and, specifically, their production by people like UX writers. In this regard, the posthuman aspects of digital media that UX writers surface are not human–machine interactions but rather the more subtle ways in which questions of the human, and of who is considered ‘more’ or ‘less’ human, surface in the production of digital media. In fact, one need not look far for this. With regards to virtual agents, Sweeney (Reference Sweeney, Noble and Tynes2016) shows that anthropomorphized software interfaces are frequently riddled with stereotypical and problematic assumptions about gender and race; this, in turn is connected to how the base category of ‘human’ is considered in the design of these virtual agents. These issues have long been a concern for race and media scholars like Kolko and Nakamura (e.g. Kolko et al., Reference Kolko, Nakamura and Rodman2000; Nakamura, Reference Nakamura2008; Nakamura & Chow-White, Reference Nakamura and Chow-White2012). The problem, suggests Sweeney (Reference Sweeney, Noble and Tynes2016), is that designers tend to treat believability and humanness as natural categories without questioning their history and social construction. Designing a white virtual agent can then be framed merely as a matter of choosing a face that is – supposedly – more ‘believable’, ‘trustworthy’, and ‘human’. As a result, racism and sexism too often remain unacknowledged, simply being dismissed as part of (a particular) human nature.
With Siri, Cortana, and Alexa, virtual agents have become almost omnipresent. As such, the feminization of virtual agents and the ensuing feminization of communicative labour (cf. Cameron, Reference Cameron2000b) has received not only scholarly but also public attention. To give but two examples, in May 2019, the New York Times reported that ‘Siri and Alexa reinforce gender bias’; around the same time, the American business magazine Fast Company published an article titled ‘Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and others are setting women back in the workplace’, which reported on the problematic ways in which voice assistants reinforce the ideological belief that women are supposed to listen and serve.Footnote 5 Not surprisingly, the question of race or the fact that these virtual agents tend to have a supposedly ‘neutral’ accent have received less public attention. Again, this is often simply accepted – also by users – as natural and/or normal.
Next to the obvious example of virtual agents, the question of who is considered ‘more’ or ‘less’ human – who is supposed to command and who is supposed to serve – also surfaces in more banal and less obvious ways. A case in point is the automatic spellchecking most people rely on nowadays. Such software automatically corrects misspellings, capitalizes words, or even points out grammar mistakes. Again, from a posthumanist viewpoint, it is certainly interesting to consider where agency lies in this instance: here, humans and machines do not just interact but co-act. But more interesting to me are the issues that surface when one turns to the production of this software and how the decisions of UX writers, designers, or engineers are reflected in what users can in fact do with the software (or not). Once again, this is a place where the political nature of software and algorithms surfaces.
Deciding what is considered ‘correct’ spelling is, as language scholars know only too well, an ideological matter of prescription; decisions on linguistic correctness are often connected to social stigmatization and discrimination (e.g. Milroy & Milroy, Reference Milroy and Milroy1999; Sebba, Reference Sebba2007; Cameron, Reference Cameron2012). Effectively, then, spellcheck algorithms are a digital form of what Cameron (Reference Cameron2012) calls ‘verbal hygiene’, an intentional attempt to correct and control language in order to make it conform to a particular norm. Importantly, this happens less through direct representation and more so through people’s interactions with the software, and it is again entangled with specific understandings of who is considered (more) human.
As science and technology scholar Benjamin (Reference Benjamin2019) points out, autocorrections can indicate which phenomena are deemed legitimate and which are considered a mistake or a myth. Spellcheck algorithms, Benjamin observes, used to readily accept the word ‘underserved’ as correct but mark the word ‘overserved’ as something that is made up. As she points out, a word signalling undue privilege thus becomes illegible through the software’s algorithm and interface. Similarly, non-Western names are still frequently underlined in red, whereas Western names are usually accepted as ‘correct’ by spellcheck algorithms. Even if banal, these small moments can add up as technological microaggressions that tell people that they don’t belong. Built by humans but scaled through technology, interfaces can thus relentlessly re-establish existing inequalities. Importantly, this occurs not so much through the individual interface text but through the repetitive and cumulative usage and embodied experience of these texts.
Ultimately, interfaces exert their power not just through representation but also – or perhaps especially – through non- or more-than-representational aspects. As a result, fully understanding the cultural-political impact of software interfaces necessarily demands a posthumanist approach. I have suggested that denaturalizing these everyday interface practices requires attending also to the production of digital media and to how particular interface practices may be deliberately designed. This in turn can reveal who is considered ‘more’ human – or the right kind of human – in particular software interfaces. It is in this way that the (post)human is a central component of every software interface.
7.5 Concluding Remarks: Language and the Politics of the Interface
Throughout this book, I have argued that interface designs and interface texts significantly shape what people can do and who they can be when using digital media. Interfaces encourage specific performances and therefore constitute a kind of ‘action before action’ (Friz & Gehl, Reference Friz and Gehl2016; cf. also Latour, Reference Latour2005) that pre-scribes and thus co-constitutes the action of users. The interfaces of digital media may compel users to accept and validate hegemonic discourses through their own actions with and through them – or, to put it more bluntly, interfaces may position everyday users as ‘a mechanistic “thing” with faux agency’ (Retzepi, Reference Retzepi2019, p. 86) rather than as an agent with actual power. I may not want to reinforce gendered views of beauty, but if I want to share with my Facebook friends that I am ‘feeling beautiful’, I might, for the sake of convenience, do so anyway. I may not want to perform a gendered identity on Pinterest, but Pinterest’s tutorials may entice me to do so anyway. I may not want to subscribe to the Western and white views perpetuated through so many contemporary interfaces, but by using digital media, I may end up accepting them as ‘normal’ anyway.
It is by centring the dynamic nature of interfaces and users’ lived, embodied experiences of them that scholars can more fully grasp these cultural politics of software interfaces. This is not to suggest that language does not matter, but it has to be understood as always also connected to the equally important and equally consequential non-representational and embodied aspects of software interfaces. It is through the fleeting, banal, and everyday moments that interfaces most covertly – and maybe most consequentially – exert their power.
In the end, digital media interfaces are perhaps best understood as sites of power, where meaning and culture are negotiated. Addressing this necessarily entails focusing not just on the users of digital media but also on their producers and on resurfacing the user interface as something that is banal and ubiquitous, but also purposefully designed. The way in which these interfaces are written and designed is an inherently normative process by which people like UX writers – consciously or not – project their worldviews onto others, and these worldviews in turn get amplified through people’s everyday use of digital media. Here lie the politics and the power of interfaces: they congeal the normative beliefs of those who create and control them. They act as ‘entities that don’t sleep’, ultimately constituting ‘associations that don’t break down [and] that allow power to last longer and expand further’ (Latour, Reference Latour2005, p. 70). Every time the interface is used, normative beliefs are (re)activated, and it is in this way that the interface is ultimately not just a text but also lived experience by which producers, users, and technology together assert and reproduce normative discourses.
