From Language Vitality to Service Access : A Critical Analysis of the KSL-AI Trajectory

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines whether artificial intelligence (AI) interventions in South Korea's Korean Sign Language (KSL) ecosystem will support language vitality or inadvertently accelerate endangerment. Through qualitative analysis of eight major government and private-sector AI projects (2024-2026), the study reveals a paradox: while technical capacity is rapidly maturing through national-scale datasets, commercial translation platforms, and institutional deployments, the dominant logic positions KSL primarily as a conversion layer for navigating Korean-dominant institutions rather than as an autonomous language requiring domain expansion. Drawing on theories of language endangerment, linguistic racism, and sociotechnical systems, the analysis demonstrates that current AI development optimizes institutional efficiency over linguistic vitality, risks imposing standardization through avatar rendering and constrained datasets, and lacks robust deaf community governance over objectives and evaluation criteria. These patterns are particularly consequential given KSL's structural vulnerabilities: disrupted intergenerational transmission, demographic collapse, and medicalized ideologies privileging cochlear implantation and speech outcomes. The findings suggest that without fundamental reorientation toward vitality-centered evaluation, deaf-led governance, and expansion of KSL-first domains, AI infrastructure may become another mechanism of technologically sophisticated assimilation rather than revitalization, making institutional navigation more efficient while KSL's own communicative life contracts.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Research Background
• 2.1 Sign Languages as Endangered Languages
• 2.2 Linguistic Racism and AI as Sociotechnical Infrastructure
• 3. Method
• 4. Findings
• 4.1 Technological Advances
• 4.2 Critical Shortcomings
• 5. Discussion
• References