This project aims to define the fundamental theoretical principles of digital communication and to identify the qualitative differences between traditional, unmediated communication and the technologically mediated forms that are now widely used. A central focus of the project is written digital communication and its comparison with diverse writing systems. We use the term digital writing to refer to multimodal forms of digitally mediated communication, encompassing text, visual elements, and other symbolic resources. By combining approaches from evolutionary linguistics, cognitive semiotics, and eye-tracking research, the project investigates how digital texts are visually processed and how digital communication functions within the broader evolution of symbolic systems.
People
Publications
Marklová, Anna, Milička, Jiří, Ryvkin, Leonid, Lacková Bennet, Ľudmila, Kormaníková, Libuše (2025). Iconicity in Large Language Models, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaf095
Lacková Bennett, Ľudmila, Harišová, Kristína, Popelka, Stanislav (2025): Visual Reading of Digital Texts: A Semiotic Perspective, under review (preprint and data on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/17690515 )
Lacková Bennett, Ľudmila, Harišová, Kristína, Formánková, Anežka, Joukl, Zdeněk (2025): From Hieroglyphs to Emoji: A Spiral Model for Writing Systems Evolution, Semiotica, De Groyuter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2024-0130
Ľudmila Lacková Bennett (2025) “Inteligencia artificial: lenguaje, iconicidad y limitaciones corporales para la creatividad”, in Semiosis as Creation: Between Nature, Body, and Art (Semiosis como creación: entre la naturaleza, el cuerpo y el arte) Edited by Jorge Eduardo Uruena Lopez, Jamin Pelkey, Ľudmila Lacková Bennett.
Lacková Bennett, Ľudmila (2024): Artificial Intelligence: Medium or Subject? On the 10th Anniversary of the Publication of the Article “Theory of New Media and the Transformation of a Medium into a Subject?”, Linguistic Frontiers 7 (2), Sciendo, pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.2478/lf-2024-0013
Lacková, Ľudmila (2023): Digital Writing and the new primitive mind, Culturologica Slovaca 2, pp. 88 – 100. https://www.culturologicaslovaca.ff.ukf.sk/images/No9_2_2023/Lackova_DigitalWriting.pdf
Romanini, Anderson Vinicius, Lacková, Ľudmila (2023): Morphoesthetics in artificial intelligence: proteins versus machines, Semeiosis: Semiótica e Transdisciplinaridade em Revista 11 (1).
FORMÁNKOVÁ, Anežka. Cognitive pragmatics of emotional expression in digital texts. Olomouc, 2025. bakalářská práce (Bc.). UNIVERZITA PALACKÉHO V OLOMOUCI. Filozofická fakulta
O’NEILL, Conor Brendon (2025): TikTok Talk: A Corpus Investigation of Medical Speech Acts on TikTok, Palacký University in Olomouc.