In the age of generative AI, writing classrooms and online platforms are facing a subtle but powerful phenomenon: linguistic flattening. I have been noticing it more and more. The way writers, consciously or unconsciously, start to lean on the same phrases, sentence structures, and tonal conventions is concerning. Undergraduate students, especially those for whom English is an additional language, are particularly vulnerable. AI offers quick fixes to grammar correction, stylistic polish, surface-level coherence, but it cannot replace the kind of cognitive work that essentially develops writing skills. As Lynda Gratton (2024) points out, AI may accelerate learning, but it cannot…
Author: Jainab Tabassum Banu
Jainab Tabassum Banu
Jainab Tabassum Banu has recently completed her PhD in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture at North Dakota State University. She is a feminist rhetorician and AI-informed composition scholar whose work examines how writing technologies shape voice, identity, and embodiment.