Ricerc@Sapienza

In 2016, the concept of "post-truth" - indicating any linguistic regime of discourse in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotions and personal beliefs - gained significant attention in academia, although now its very pervasiveness risks oversimplifications. This research tackles the multifaceted phenomenon of post-truth as a complex network where a whole set of communicative, literary, and technological issues converge and interact with each other. The recent appearance of ChatGPT and other Large Language Model (LLM) AI platforms generating "post-truth" narratives in competition with other discourses raises a number of philosophical, linguistic, and literary questions. Our research group intends to investigate the impact and effects of post-truth on literature, linguistics, and audiovisual studies across different geographical areas, to understand if and how these textuality-related disciplines can devise epistemic tools and hermeneutic categories allowing for the creation/negotiation of strategies to understand and resist post-truth divisive tendencies. The research will proceed along two directions: 1) a synchronic exploration of a number of 21st-century relevant literary, political, audiovisual, and AI-generated narratives employed in the US, Canada, and the UK, with France as a continental counterpoint to the foundational (and, in fact, dominant) Anglo-Saxon attitude and language; 2) a diachronic analysis of the evolution, strategies, and reception of post-truth practices and linguistic strategies across a broader historical and geographical perspective. We will adopt an interdisciplinary approach that conceives post-truth not as a phenomenon that appeared in the new millennium, but as situated on a trajectory proceeding from a traceable past and directed towards a much unforeseen future - the development of an epistemological paradigm in Western history and culture that is currently being challenged.