Algorithmic Multilingualism and Institutional Discourse Transformation: A Comparative Corpus-Based Analysis of AI-Mediated Academic Communication on ChatGPT and DeepL

Abstract

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence into academic communication has transformed multilingual discourse production, institutional literacy practices, and epistemic authority within higher education environments. This study investigates how AI-mediated language technologies reshape academic discourse structures through a comparative corpus-based analysis of ChatGPT and DeepL Write as two distinct communicative systems operating within global academic multilingualism. Drawing upon critical discourse analysis, computational linguistics, and sociolinguistic theory, the article examines 1.8 million words of AI-assisted academic writing generated across multilingual university contexts involving English-dominant and multilingual users from European and East Asian institutions. The study compares lexical density, hedging strategies, interactional metadiscourse, semantic simplification, and discourse alignment across the two platforms. The findings demonstrate that ChatGPT facilitates discursive expansion and rhetorical adaptation through dialogic interaction, whereas DeepL Write prioritizes grammatical optimization and linguistic standardization. These divergent communicative architectures generate distinct socio-linguistic consequences for multilingual academic identity construction, institutional legitimacy, and language policy adaptation. The evidence further indicates that AI-mediated discourse systems increasingly function as institutional gatekeeping mechanisms that influence epistemic participation and linguistic inclusion within global higher education. This article contributes to contemporary linguistics scholarship by proposing a model of algorithmic multilingualism in which AI platforms operate not merely as technological tools but as discourse-regulating infrastructures shaping linguistic norms, communicative authority, and educational transformation across transnational academic environments.