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Presentism as a digital language ideology in generative AI discourse

 | Heidelberg University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the author.

Published online: 7 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00132.hey
Abstract
This paper gives a critical discourse-analytical account of presentism as a digital language ideology. It outlines how this ahistorical understanding of sociotechnical change centering the here-and-now as a site of disruption toward progress connects to enregistered forms of technological determinism. This becomes particularly relevant around digital language technologies including automation, algorithmic discourse and generative AI. This case study uses corpus-linguistic discourse analysis based on the NOW Corpus, as well as digital ethnography in the techno-optimist X community. By analyzing the syntactic constructions here to stay and will replace as discourse-syntactic indexicals of digital presentism, the study retraces how they contribute to larger ongoing discourses framing generative AI as inevitable and culturally progressive, both through the characterological figure of digital tech bros and their community of practice, and in digital journalistic discourse. The paper connects these findings to current critical linguistic concerns with generative AI and the emerging field of critical AI studies.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Presentism
    • 2.2Ideologies of digital linguistic practice
    • 2.3AI and techno-optimist narratives
  • 3.Identifying digital presentism: Communities and actors, data and methods
    • 3.1Communities and actors
    • 3.2Data and methods
  • 4.Analytical perspectives
    • 4.1Digital presentism in the NOW corpus
    • 4.2Digital presentism on social media
  • 5.Discussion and outlook
  • Disclosure statement
  • Notes
  • References
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