Message and Medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media: 105 (Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL], 105) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3110777150 ISBN 13: 9783110777154

Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton, 2021

Synopsis

Studies of digital communication technologies often focus on the apparently unique set of multimodal resources afforded to users and the development of innovative linguistic strategies for performing mediatised identities and maintaining online social networks.
This edited volume interrogates the novelty of such practices by establishing a transhistorical approach to the study of digital communication. The transhistorical approach explores language practices as lived experiences grounded in historical contexts, and aims to identify those elements of human behaviour that transcend historical boundaries, looking beyond specific developments in communication technologies to understand the enduring motivations and social concerns that drive human communication.
The volume reveals long-term patterns in the indexical functions of seemingly innovative written and multimodal resources and the ideologies that underpin them, and shows that methods are not necessarily contingent on their datasets: historical analytic frameworks can be applied to digital data and newer approaches used to understand historical data. These insights present exciting opportunities for English language researchers, both historical and modern.

About this title

About the Author

Caroline Tagg, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK; Mel Evans, University of Leicester, UK

Edition details

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3110777150
• ISBN 13: 9783110777154
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Evans