Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Popescu, T., Avram, D. 
Date of Publication: June 2025
Publisher: Aeternitas Publishing House
ISSN: 2668 - 4381, ISSN-L: 2668 – 4381

Digital Education and Skills: Integrating Research, Learning, Teaching, and Communication

Digital education and skills have rapidly emerged as critical components of modern life, reshaping how individuals learn, teach, and interact in educational and professional environments. While the digital landscape offers unparalleled opportunities for accessibility and innovation, it also introduces complex challenges that redefine traditional approaches to education and skill development.

    Integrating digital tools into learning environments has transformed educational practices, enabling personalized learning experiences, fostering collaboration across borders, and equipping learners with skills for the digital economy. However, this shift comes with its own set of challenges. On the one hand, digital platforms streamline administrative tasks and provide instant access to knowledge, enhancing efficiency and inclusivity. On the other hand, they can inadvertently diminish critical thinking and problem-solving skills if learners become overly reliant on pre-designed algorithms or static information resources.

    These challenges are particularly pronounced in fields such as language, translation studies and pedagogical studies, where the formation of future teachers, language specialists, translators, interpreters, and researchers is at stake. In these areas, digital education must balance leveraging technological advancements and fostering critical human skills. For example, while translation tools and language learning applications provide learners with powerful resources, they can also risk oversimplifying complex cognitive processes like creative problem-solving, cultural sensitivity, and nuanced language understanding. Similarly, the preparation of future educators and researchers requires digital proficiency and the ability to adapt and apply traditional pedagogical and linguistic theories in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. The overreliance on digital solutions risks undermining the development of reflective practices, collaborative skills, and a deep understanding of language systems, all essential for these professions.

    One of the more significant impacts of digital education is the redefinition of teacher and learner roles. Though digital tools empower educators with innovative teaching methods and offer learners diverse resources, reliance on technology can dilute the interpersonal aspects of education. The absence of face-to-face interaction often challenges developing soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence, essential in navigating complex social and professional contexts.

    Similarly, expanding digital skills training raises questions about equity and accessibility. While digital literacy is increasingly recognized as a foundational skill, disparities in access to technology and the Internet remain significant barriers, particularly in underserved regions. This digital divide creates an uneven playing field, leaving many without the opportunity to participate fully in the evolving digital economy.

    Ethical concerns also arise as digital tools and platforms collect vast amounts of data. Questions about privacy, consent, and the ethical use of data become more pressing as digital education platforms expand. How can these systems ensure inclusivity and fairness while respecting individual privacy and cultural diversity? Furthermore, as artificial intelligence increasingly supports digital education, concerns about algorithmic bias and its impact on learners’ experiences must be carefully addressed.

    As digital education evolves, the field faces pressing questions about the balance between human and technological elements. To what extent should digital tools augment traditional teaching methods? How can educators and institutions ensure that digital skills training supports lifelong learning while maintaining education’s creative and interpersonal aspects? The aforementioned questions highlight the need for a nuanced, interdisciplinary approach to research and innovation in digital education, ensuring that its development genuinely enhances learning and skill-building equitably and sustainably.

Book of Abstracts CLIE-2024

Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Popescu, T., Avram, D. 
Date of Publication: June 2024
Publisher: Aeternitas Publishing House
ISSN: 2668 - 4381, ISSN-L: 2668 – 4381

Language and Artificial Intelligence. Perspectives and Challenges on Research, Learning, Teaching, Translation, and Communication

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had a booming entrance into our daily landscape, affecting most areas of people’s lives, both in a positive and negative manner. Language, as the most basic tool for communication, is being inevitably reshaped as AI resets the ways in which information is perceived and conveyed, also challenging language users and analysts at the level of creativity and motivation. On the one hand, AI can automate repetitive and mundane tasks and save time for users, but on the other, it can also impact the level of human creativity. Over-reliance on AI for ⁠more innovative tasks may lead to a decline in human creativity and innovation. If individuals become accustomed to AI-generated ideas or solutions, they may rely less on their own creative instincts and problem-solving skills, resulting in a stagnation of human creativity over time.

Likewise, problematic issues may arise in connection with emotional intelligence. AI is beginning to simulate emotions or generate emotionally expressive responses. Due to this tendency to develop the emotional intelligence of AI’s applications by replicating more and more imitative reactions of humans, the improvement of AI is perceived as a possibility to enhance human-computer interactions, making AI more relatable and empathetic. While this seems very useful in some contexts, it often has drawbacks because it cannot yet provide personalized emotional support by analysing an individual’s emotional state and offering appropriate interventions or suggestions in all contexts. ⁠Artificial Intelligence inevitably causes growing apprehensions about bias, ethical considerations or cultural sensitivity.

     As legal frameworks and guidelines are still being developed, AI applications seem to be successfully replacing most professional activities pertaining to language and intercultural communication, we are inevitably faced with a series of legitimate concerns about the directions and evolution of this research field: to what extent are the traditional approaches to translation, interpretation, teaching, learning, and research still needed and how should these be reshaped in order to genuinely benefit daily life experience.

Book of Abstracts CLIE-2023

Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Popescu, T., Avram, D. 
Date of Publication: June 2023
Publisher: Aeternitas Publishing House
ISSN: 2668 - 4381, ISSN-L: 2668 – 4381

From political correctness to cancel culture. Linguistic reflections

CLIE-2023 aims to unveil the extent to which two pervasive concepts—political correctness and cancel culture—may influence linguistic manifestations in public discourse, political decisions, and everyday life. Political correctness, a concept that emerged in the US most probably in the 1960s within liberal discourses against government propaganda, gained momentum in the 1990s when it began to be used by conservatives against liberal legislation. It is grounded on the axiom that any form of speech or behaviour considered offensive by different groups’ sensitivities should be eradicated, by whatever means necessary. At the other end of the continuum, cancel culture refers to the removal of support for public figures in response to their objectionable behaviour or opinions, through practices such as boycotts or refusal to promote their work. By examining these dynamics, CLIE-2023 explores how language becomes a site of ideological conflict, regulation, and social sanction.

Book of Abstracts CLIE-2020

Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Popescu, T.
Date of Publication: October 2020
Publisher: Aeternitas Publishing House
ISSN: 2668 - 4381, ISSN-L: 2668 - 4381

Metaphors in the time of Coronavirus

CLIE-2020 aims at investigating the potential manipulative force of figurative language, especially metaphors, used in the public sphere and media in particular, especially in a time of pandemic. The metaphor of war was widely exploited for the covid-19 epidemic by state leaders, government officials or prominent politicians (e.g. Romanian President Iohannis: “we are in the middle of a war; our heroes in the frontline are the doctors and the healthcare professionals”; President Trump called himself a “war-time president”, fighting against an “invisible enemy”; Queen Elizabeth II said “we will meet again”, reverberating a Second World War song, etc.) in order to legitimise the national imposition of the state of emergency. It is nonetheless important to beware the hazards of such powerful framings, as the reality of a war turns people into warriors, calls to obedience, propagates panic and instigates to hatred or racist action against the culprits (see President Trump referring to it as the “China virus”). Ideological manipulation through figurative language (metaphors, as well as hyperbole or irony) is a consequential phenomenon that needs to be further explored as it critically impacts not only national and international decisions and courses of action, but also our daily life, interactions and behaviours (the encroachment of social-distancing rules turned those of us who did not follow them and/or scorned the severity of the pandemic into ‘traitors’ and ‘deserters’).

Book of Abstracts CLIE-2019

 

Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Popescu, T.
Date of Publication: July 2019
Publisher: Aeternitas Publishing House
ISSN: 2668 - 4381, ISSN-L: 2668 - 4381

Indigenous languages matter for development, peace building and reconciliation

The aim of CLIE-2019 is to raise people’s awareness of indigenous languages, not only to the advantage of the people who speak them, but also of others to appreciate the crucial contribution they make to our planet’s cultural diversity. Languages play a vital part in people’s daily lives, not only as a means of communication, education, social integration and development, but as a receptacle for each person"s distinctive identity, cultural history, traditions, and memory. However, despite their incommensurable value, languages around the world continue to fade away at a disturbing rate. Language is critical in the areas such as human rights protection, good governance, sustainable development, peace building and reconciliation.

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Book of Abstracts CLIE-2018

Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Herteg, C.
Date of Publication: June 2018

In varietate Concordia – A hundred years of Romania

The aim of CLIE-2018 is to celebrate the Reunification of the Romanian national state, to promote the Romanian heritage and cultural identity as world values. This year"s conference motto is IN VARIETY CONCORDIA - A HUNDRED YEARS OF ROMANIA, in effect a tribute to this privileged multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural space - the city of the Union, Alba Iulia, the symbol of the national unity of Romanians everywhere. The conference also aims at integrating the Romanian academic community of linguists and intercultural specialist in the international arena of similar scientific pursuits.

Book of Abstracts CLIE-2017

Book of Abstracts. Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Education

Editor: Herteg, C.
Date of Publication: June 2017

Linguistic creativity in intercultural pragmatics

CLIE-2017 aims at investigating the intrinsic relationship between language and culture and the multifariousness of their interrelatedness, in particular from a pragma-semantic approach. The two-way interdependence and synergies between language and culture are determinants of the extent to which culture is included in meaning creation, influencing the speakers’ perceptions of culture as reflected in our exchanges about the world surrounding us. By delving into the semantics of a language we may reach an understanding of cultural meanings. Along the same lines, this could reveal the implicit suppositions which are connected to them and which are implicitly understood and shared by the community members, but not accessible to outsiders.