Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems, specifically large language models (LLMs), are trained on massive textual corpora and able to generate text that appears to have been written by a human. Though impressive, many believe that the capacity to generate text that is similar to what we ordinarily interact with every day in modern society is actually evidence that these systems are sentient or becoming sentient. AI sentience has therefore become an important topic of discourse and inquiry in light of the remarkable progress and capabilities of LLMs. While others have considered this issue from more philosophical and metaphysical perspectives, we present an alternative set of considerations grounded in sociocultural theory and analysis. We do this by focusing our analysis on interpersonal relationships, sociolinguistics, and culture to consider whether LLMs are sentient and worthy of sociolinguistic inquiry. Using examples grounded in quotidian aspects of what it means to be sentient along with examples of AI in science fiction, we present a sociocultural theoretical framework to consider sentience in current and future LLMs. We present this as a framework to reimagine future AI not as impending sentience but rather as the networked social construction of linguistic artifacts, primarily written text (though audio and video data will be increasingly digitized as well). Consequently, this topic will only grow in importance as hegemonic definitions of what type of language represents sentience. We organize our paper around answering the following questions: Are traditional forms of writing at odds with the future? How do these tools change notions of authorship? What can we learn from past advancements in writing technology? Because these notions lead to themes of power, individualism, hegemony, and self-expression, we make the case for why sociolinguists should care about LLMs and their place in society.