AI-as-affect: Multilingual scholars’ feelings about writing with generative AI

In English-dominant academia, multilingual scholars often contend with tensions between achieving global visibility through English-language publishing and sustaining local scholarly communities. The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) introduces new possibilities for managing these pressures while also generating complex emotional and ethical dilemmas. Drawing on poststructural theories of emotion and affect, this study conceptualizes GenAI-as-affect, framing generative AI not merely as a tool but as an affective force that produces and mediates scholars’ emotional engagements with academic writing. Based on qualitative interviews and reflexive thematic analysis with 18 multilingual Arab scholars at a research-intensive university in Qatar, the findings reveal three interrelated affective atmospheres shaped by GenAI: (1) empowerment and increased confidence through linguistic support and productivity gains, (2) anxiety, ambivalence, and ethical unease surrounding authorship, originality, and credibility, and (3) frustration over GenAI’s uneven performance across languages, alongside cautious optimism about its potential for translation and cross-linguistic connection. Together, these findings show how affect, ethics, and technology intersect in everyday scholarly writing, shaping multilingual scholars’ experiences of institutional pressure, linguistic hierarchy, and professional identity. By foregrounding affect, this study advances a holistic understanding of academic writing as a socio-emotional-technical practice in AI-mediated contexts.