This special issue will bring together selected papers presented at the CLAVIER Study Day of the same title, held at Sapienza University of Rome in May 2026. The contributions will explore the current and future role of research in specialised communication in examining how pressing contemporary concerns like social equity, sustainability, risk, resilience, and environmental justice are constructed, reinforced, or challenged, in a variety of specialised texts. In particular, the Special Issue seeks to assess the impact and potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in shaping both the production and analysis of specialised discourses.

The articles focus on the role played by AI-generated content in mediating present-day societal and environmental challenges, while they also investigate opportunities for integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) as a methodological tool into linguistic research on specialised texts.

The contributions address a wide range of domains and issues related to the influence of language on the construction of personal, cultural, and ecological identity.

• Stereotypes and gender bias in professional communication across science, politics, and economic leadership.
• Indigenous metaphors in the representation of regenerative tourism as opposed to consumerist practices.
• Processes of authorisation and legitimisation in cultured meat discourse.
• Transparency and dimensions of clarity and disclosure in the transport sector and related institutional communication.
• The reshaping of sensory experience and cultural heritage in AI-authored culinary texts.
• Framings of climate crisis and climate action in popular forms of digital environmental discourse.
• Pedagogical reconfigurations of teacher-student interaction in classrooms of English as a Foreign Language.
• The exploitation of regional accents in television advertising.
• Transnational evolutions of slow tourism discourse as driver of sustainability.
• LLMs as political actors in the mediation of climate justice discourse between environmental governance and public opinion.
• Representations of extreme heat and the heat-health nexus in media discourse.

Together, the studies collected in the Special Issue provide an updated and critical look at specialised discourse as a set of communicative practices that do not simply transmit information, but shape individual identities and public understanding, construct forms of expertise, frame uncertainty, and influence collective action and decision-making.

In addition, as they acknowledge the role of automated systems in creating new forms of linguistic and semiotic visibility, the contributions argue that the production, study, teaching, and interpretation of specialised discourse is increasingly affected by the interaction between human and AI-mediated communicative practices, making AI not merely an object of investigation but also an emerging methodological resource for discourse analysis.