Artificial Intelligence and Emotional Language: A Discourse Study of Her Movie in the Context of Linguistics and Translation Studies

Abstract

      This paper analyses the contradiction between AI and human emotional language by employing a discoursal approach to Her (2013), directed by Spike Jonze. The article situates the film within broader anxieties about the changing influence of artificial intelligence on human communication, identity, and empathy, and, in doing so, centres language as a mediator between human and machine. Drawing on linguistic theories of discourse analysis, rhetoric, pragmatics, and post-humanist translation theory, the article investigates the (elusive) parameters of language as explored by an AI system that simulates an understanding of emotional belonging and self-reflection. The study addresses the question: How does Her depict language in response to its use to establish attachment between the human (here, Theodore) and the operating system? How does an AI system mimic, or come to overshadow, human language? Finally, how does the translation model help us understand this relationship between humans and AI at the levels of meaning/symbolism and self-interaction? It situates itself within the theoretical framework of narrative and discourse analysis (Labov & Waletzky, 1967) and is critically underpinned by a qualitative language study of speech between the protagonist and AI “Samantha” to focus on the material. It studies spoken language and its linguistic and paralinguistic (nonverbal) properties, arguing that they imply a level of lifelikeness in dialogue. The research also compares these results with current work in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine translation to assess the feasibility, implications, and ethical considerations of such high-level communication with AI. The film indicates that Her’s vision of an AI future is not limited to talking well; we will need a machine capable of emotional language just as much as it creates and understands dialogue. The AI’s sentient words evoke the kind of human bonding, haggling, and leaving behind that make it a manufactured but deeply moving version of human emotion. It raises questions of authorship and affects in effective communication—not only in linguistics, but also in translation studies.