27.2901, Review: Applied Ling; Discourse; Ling & Lit; Socioling: Georgakopoulou, Spilioti (2015)

[The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST]

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2901. Fri Jul 08 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2901, Review: Applied Ling; Discourse; Ling & Lit; Socioling: Georgakopoulou, Spilioti (2015)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté, Sara Couture)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Michael Czerniakowski <mike at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2016 13:39:40
From: Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky [zsubrinszky.zsuzsanna at uni-bge.hu]
Subject: The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36126317


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3522.html

EDITOR: Alexandra  Georgakopoulou
EDITOR: Tereza  Spilioti
TITLE: The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky, Budapest Business School

Reviews Editor: Robert A. Cote

SUMMARY

“The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication” by Alexandra
Georgakopoulou and Tereza Spilioti provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art
overview of language-focused research on digital communication, registering
the latest trends that set the agenda for future developments in this thriving
and fast-moving field. The twenty-eight contributors of the volume are all
leading figures or established authorities in their areas, covering a wide
range of topics and concerns in the following seven sections. Part I takes
stock of ‘Methods and perspectives’ that have been used for the study of
language and digital communication, while Part II, ‘Language resources, genres
and discourses’ brings together the early wave of research with the latest
insights. Part III, ‘Digital literacies’, deals with relevant research on
digital literacy in socio-culturally oriented perspectives, including
identities and meanings embedded in particular activities and contexts of use.
Part IV, ‘Digital Communication in Public’ focuses on different areas of
public or professional communication, such as workplace interaction,
advertising, and corporate blogging. All the chapters in Part V, ‘Digital
selves and online-offline lives’, present evidence for the porous boundaries
between online and offline worlds and building on this, Part VI, ‘Communities,
networks, relationships’, moves to a closer examination of how online
communities can be defined and identified. Finally, Part VII addresses ‘New
debates and further directions’ in the field. The volume is an essential
resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers within
English language and linguistics, applied linguistics, and media and
communication studies.

Part I, ‘Methods and perspectives’ clusters together methods used for studying
language in terms of linguistic forms, the relations between individuals and
of wider social structures, the specific activities and cultures of use, and
the semiotic resources for meaning making and communication. Chapter 1,
‘Approaches to language variation’ by Hinrichs,provides a critical overview of
research on language choice and variation in digital environments informed by
advances in related fields of linguistics, such as sociolinguistics and corpus
linguistics. In addition, Hinrichs critically discusses a range of
quantitative (e.g., descriptive and predictive statistics) and qualitative
(e.g., conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, interactional
sociolinguistics) methods used in previous studies. The chapter concludes with
foregrounding the advantages of a mixed-methods approach to the study of
language variation in digital environments.

In Chapter 2, ’Network analysis’, John C. Paolillo introduces and applies the
‘network’ (i.e., a web of relations) as an abstract mathematical concept to
the study of digital communication. He argues that approaches to network
analysis generally follow one of three patterns: visualization, structural
modelling (block modelling and ERG models), and modelling as complex dynamical
processes. In terms of future directions, Paolillo sets out the basis for an
ethical agenda in the network analysis of ‘big data’ that includes the issue
of consent on data collection, the identification of vulnerable subjects, and
complications arising from different perceptions.

In Chapter 3, ‘Digital ethnography’, Piia Varis sheds light on the processes
and the different layers of contextualization, which can, at times, appear
more visible to the analyst through practices of remixing, copying and
pasting, and, at times, become more opaque. Varis’s chapter also problematizes
a number of methodological issues pertaining to online ethics and the use of
‘big data’. She calls for heightened reflexivity and flexibility in designing
and undertaking fieldwork online in order to do justice to the complexities of
digital contexts and practices.

Chapter 4, ‘Multimodal analysis’ by Carey Jewitt discusses relevant approaches
for undertaking multimodal analysis in digital environments, which shifts the
attention from language as a single semiotic mode to the interdependence of a
range of modes (verbal, visual, aural, etc.) in the production of meaning.

Part II, ‘Language resources, genres, and discourses’ is preoccupied with a
longstanding question of what constitutes a genre and in particular a novel
genre in digital communication. In the next two chapters a shift away from
text-based analyses implies a gradual turn to identities, to an exploration of
the ways in which communication choices and devices serve as resources for
self-representation. In Chapter 5, ‘Digital genres and processes of
remediation’, Theresa Heyd identifies three phases of technological
development that have fed into the transition of research from an emphasis on
the formal to the functional properties of genres. Her overview shows how
genre analysis takes into account contextual parameters that have been attuned
to the sociotechnical aspects of digital communication. Remediation, deeply
ingrained in CMC, is aimed at capturing the historicity and
inter-relationships of new media genres. Heyd argues that the latest
technological developments have been instrumental in directing analysts’
attention to genre overlaps, networks and co-existence.

Chapter 6, ‘Style, creativity and play’ by Yukiko Nishimura also tackles a
longstanding issue, namely how CMC relates to face-to-face interactions.
Nishimura provides historical perspectives on style, creativity, and play and
how these can characterize entertainment-oriented, private realms of digital
communication such as bulletin board interaction and text messaging. She
illustrates how the same linguistic resources can be variously recognized as
creative or not, depending on who the ‘adjudicators’ are.

In Chapter 7, ‘Multilingual resources and practices in digital communication’,
Carmen Lee shows the gradual transition of language choice from the early days
of the dominance on the uses of English to multilingual practices in a broad
sense within a range of platforms from older media such as email and IRC to
newer social media such as Facebook and Flickr. By emphasizing the importance
of code-switching as a resource for self-positioning and identity performance,
Lee highlights the importance of visibility and audibility of minority or
non-standard languages (e.g., Cantonese, colloquial Arabic) in many social
media platforms (e.g., YouTube).

The last chapter in this section, Chapter 8, ‘Digital discourses: a critical
perspective’ by Tereza Spilioti turns attention to the ideologies and
discourses surrounding the uses of and communication new media. Spilioti
discusses four dominant discourses of digital media: (1) sociality, (2)
equality and diversity, (3) young people and digital media, and (4) the
so-called ‘digital language’. She shows how these discourses are densely
contextualized and historicized, and are connected with neo-liberal
ideologies.

The chapters in Part III, ‘Digital literacies’, firmly root relevant research
in socio-culturally oriented perspectives, a nexus of social practices,
identities and meanings embedded and situated in particular activities and
contexts of use. In Chapter 9, ‘Digital media and literacy development’,
Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear examine literacy development in terms of
‘personal literacy development’ and of ‘development in the cultural stock of
literacies’ in primarily out-of-school contexts. The shift of attention to
young media producers and consumers of digital artefacts and the prevalence of
‘affinity space’ for understanding social learning environments are among the
key tenets of their research. Knobel and Lankshear also reveal a ‘new ethos’
emerging in digital literacies (e.g., interactivity, feedback, sharing of
expertise, collaboration). By foregrounding multiple literacies in action, the
authors critique the dominant school-centric perceptions of literacy

The distinction between institutional (e.g., school) and vernacular literacies
is taken up in Chapter 10, ‘Vernacular literacy: orthography and literacy
practices’ by Josh Iorio. He argues that the study of vernacular literacy is
concerned with: (1) the identification of digital contexts, (2) the
orthographic form and linguistic structures, and (3) the relationship between
form, structure, context, and social meaning. Iorio shows how the different
literacy practices co-exist in digital environments, blurring the boundaries
between the personal and the professional and between the local and the global

A particular type of orthographic innovation (‘textism’) and its relation with
language learning are discussed in Chapter 11, ‘Texting and language learning’
by Sam Waldron, Nenagh Kemp, and Clare Wood. Their chapter provides evidence
in support of the idea that there are positive links between children’s use of
textism and their literacy abilities; however, the picture is less clear in
adults. The authors claim that as text messaging continues to evolve,
investigators should continue to develop ways of collecting and studying
message data because mobile technology has the potential to act as a versatile
tool for learning. 

Part IV, ‘Digital communication in public’ addresses the issue of boundaries
between the public and the private, the collective and the personal by
focusing on workplace interaction, advertising, corporate blogging, and
Twitter.  In Chapter 12, ‘Digital media in workplace interactions’, Erika
Darics advocates the development of an interdisciplinary approach (i.e.,
business communication research, business discourse studies, and
computer-mediated discourse studies) to the communicative complexity (e.g.,
timing issues, persistence of the transcript) of workplace environments.
Darics highlights the communicative norms, practices and conventions, as well
as the appropriate style and medium-specific features used in spoken and
written genres. She points out that digital discourse research should embrace
mainstream topics of sociolinguistic research on workplace interaction such as
power relations and contribute to their further theorising. 

Kelly-Holmes in Chapter 13, ‘Digital advertising’, examines how digital
advertising has been shaped by the recent developments of increased
interactivity and participation in web 2.0 environments. She addresses two
issues relevant to the inter-relationship between marketing and digital
communication: first, the loss of control on the part of the marketer; and
second, the rise of individualised web marketing in the forms of mass
personalisation and mass customisation. The chapter concludes with a critical
discussion of methodological approaches (such as ethnography) that can address
such complex processes.

Chapter 14, ‘Corporate blogging and corporate social media’ by Cornelius
Puschmann and Rebecca Hagelmoser, traces the evolution of blogging from
personal blogs to employee blogs. The authors contextualize this evolution
within broader social changes, such as a general loss of trust in
public-facing corporate discourse and a shift towards personalization of
relationships between institutions and individuals. Finally, they discuss
genre analysis and narrative analysis as important methodological instruments
for the study of corporate social media (e.g., the Whole Foods Blog).

Lauren Squires concludes Part IV with a compelling chapter on ‘Twitter:
design, discourse, and the implications of public text’. The first half of the
chapter discusses the communicative affordances of Twitter, the distinctive
practices that have emerged as part of discourse on the site, and the
linguistic character of tweets. The second half of the chapter focuses on the
consequences of the high degree of publicization given to text on Twitter,
which sets it apart from other (older) forms of social media. 

Part V, ‘Digital selves and online-offline lives’ moves to what can be seen as
focal concerns within the second wave of language and digital communication
research, namely the ways in which participants position, manage, present, and
perform aspects of themselves in various capacities in (relation to) online
environments. In Chapter 16, ‘The role of the body and space in digital
multimodality’, Elizabeth Keating explores the influences of digital
environments on multimodality by using three particular settings: online
gaming, sign language in technologically mediated space, and engineers located
across continents working together through digitally mediated communication
settings. She claims that multimodality helps understand how culture and
social life are maintained and how work and play are achieved, as well as the
flexibility of humans in new interactive settings.

Ashraf R. Abdullah’s Chapter 17, ‘Second Life: language and virtual identity’
tackles a similar issue of how individuals construct a sense of place/space
and embodiment as part of their online identity and community building within
the environment of Second Life. The author uses Slexipedia, a neologism
combining Second Life (SL) and Crystal’s (2004) term lexipedia, to describe
the particular forms of SL vocabulary, which display characteristic word
formation processes, creativity and playfulness. Abdullah advocates the
synergy of ethnographic, discourse and corpus linguistic analyses for tapping
into community (re)formation and their relations with multimodal choices.

In Chapter 18, ‘Online multiplayer games’ by Lisa Newon, the different
approaches to online gaming are shown; how heterogeneous styles of play,
practices, and activities of online players interact with multisemiotic
communicative ways of negotiating disputes and disagreement, socializing
players into the game and displaying distinctiveness’ and ‘authenticity’. The
author argues that we need to move beyond the conceptualization of
online-offline to more practice-based views of relations, such as in-game and
out-of-game. The refocusing leads us to the relations between gamers and
designers beyond the game platforms

In Chapter 19, ‘Relationality, friendship, and identity in digital
communication’, Sage Lambert Graham examines the ways that identity,
alignment, and relationality are connected. Next, she provides historical
perspectives in identity research and raises critical issues in creating
relationships in online environments. , Finally, she shifts our attention to
the investigation of how one individual gains entry into a discussion forum
“in-group”, thereby achieving greater power through an enhanced relationship
with the e-community. 

Part VI, ‘Communities, networks, relationships’, builds on the previous part
and then moves to a closer examination of how online communities can be
defined and identified. The section begins with Chapter 20, ‘Online
communities and communities of practice’ by Jo Angouri, who provides an
overview of the definition and conceptual development of online communities
paying special attention to the community of practice (CofP) framework. The
author addresses different research approaches and ethical issues surrounding
the study of online groups drawing on her own current research (an online
health forum) as well as representative studies from the sociolinguistic
field. She closes the chapter with a discussion of the issues future research
might address.

In Chapter 21, ‘Facebook and the discursive construction of the social
network’, Caroline Tagg and Philip Seargeant discuss how making and enhancing
social connections is managed on Facebook, namely, how users perform their
identity through individual choices on their profile, and how they interact
with friends. The authors pinpoint three issues that are central to the site:
identity, community, and audience design. In their observations, Tagg and
Seargeant focus predominantly on the use of the status update and subsequent
comments, as these arguably have the greatest implications for social life

In Chapter 22, ‘YouTube: language and discourse practices in participatory
culture’, Jannis Androutsopoulos and Jana Tereick outline the development and
growth of YouTube in the past few years arguing that language is a key
resource in its semiotic landscape. The authors examine YouTube as a complex
discourse environment at three levels: the ‘big picture’ of discourse
structure and participation framework; the range of multimodal digital
recontextualization practices, called remix; and audience comments and
interaction. They advocate multi-layered analyses and mixed methods research
design to capture the interplay of these levels. The chapter illustrates this
rich analysis in two case studies; one from a sociolinguistic, and the other
from a corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis perspective

A similar case for mixed methods and a multi-layered discourse and
sociolinguistic analysis is made by Samu Kytölä in Chapter 23,
‘Translocality’. Kytölä reviews the key contributions to the development of
translocality, covering the notion of connectivity and transcultural(ity), as
well as the related concepts of globalization and cosmopolitanism. He suggests
that future studies should link translocality with the growing importance of
superdiversity, multi-semioticity and resemiotization, which are the hallmarks
of communication on many social media platforms, e.g., YouTube. 

Part VII, ‘New debates and further directions’, explores how people’s embodied
engagements with digital media and digital environments are interwoven into
daily life. In Chapter 24, ‘Social reading in a digital world’, Naomi S. Baron
reveals how technology shifts the balance between solitude and social in the
world of reading. She touches upon issues like the relationship between the
author and reader, the social reading of the markings we leave in the book
margins, or the display of our bookshelves and goodreads, the role of literary
gatherings and coffee houses or book clubs and other social reading options.
She argues that talking about books with other readers (even virtually) can
enrich both our intellectual and interpersonal lives.

Chapter 25, ‘New frontiers in interactive multimodal communication’ by Susan
C. Herring, describes two emergent phenomena related to multimodality in
digital communications: interactive modal platforms (Web 2.0 platforms) and
robot-mediated communication (in which at least one party is telepresent
through voice, video, and motion via a remotely controlled robot). Although
both phenomena seem to be unrelated, these technologies mediate human-to-human
communication, support social, as well as task-related interaction, and
involve multiple modes or channels.

In Chapter 26, ‘Moving between the big and the small: identity and interaction
in digital contexts’, Ruth Page highlights two aspects of complexity which
raise questions about the methods we might use to analyse the online
production of identity. First, the identities constructed online make use of
semiotic resources that are recombined and transposed from one mode to
another. Second, the digital medium means that the contexts of interaction
also include additional information in the form of meta-data appended to the
content published online. Knowing how to access, analyse and interpret this
metadata requires specific tools and skills.

Chapter 27, ‘Surveillance’ by Rodney H. Jones, represents a further challenge,
one in which we must adjust the way we conceive of “Texts”. In the past, texts
were primarily regarded as information delivery devices, focusing on how they
communicate meaning, while nowadays they are more like information gathering
devices (e.g, pretexts). The biggest challenge for understanding surveillance
is a larger socio-economic context in which the value of texts is ultimately
reduced to their commercial value.

In the final chapter, Chapter 28, ‘Choose now! Media literacies, identities,
politics’, Charles M. Ess emphasizes that future work should be mindful of
what kinds of scenarios of self and what kinds of literacies are promoted or,
equally, undervalued and discouraged in digital communication and what the
ethical consequences of any gains and losses are.

EVALUATION
 
“The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication” showcases
critical syntheses of the established literature on key topics and issues,
including discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, linguistic
anthropology, and literary studies. At the same time, it reflects upon and
engages with cutting edge research and new directions for study (as emerging
within social media). One of the major strengths of the volume is that a wide
range of languages are represented, from Japanese, Greek, German and
Scandinavian languages, to computer-mediated Arabic, Chinese and African
languages.

Another laudable feature of the handbook is the contributors’ approach to show
how the specificity of focal concerns in the study of language and digital
media has necessitated the process of revisiting, extending, fine-tuning, and,
where appropriate, moving away from established concepts and methodologies.
The volume does not only attest to the consolidation of a move from
medium-related to user-related perspectives, but it also reveals a consistent
approach to digital environments as multi-layered spaces, mutually
constitutive of the language and communication practices that occur in them.

The chapters are self-contained and long enough to offer good breadth and
depth, and there are references the readers may consult for further
information. However, there is one thing that strikes me as a major weakness
of the volume; namely, there are surprisingly few Internet sources mentioned
although the main focus of the handbook is on digital communication. On a
positive note, there are quite a few screenshot figures (e.g., in Chapter 10,
15, 17 and 23) which contribute to a better understanding of the issues under
scrutiny. 

One challenge with edited collections is that the focus and coverage of
individual chapters vary, with some being more relevant to readers newer to
the field and others being especially useful to those who already have some
familiarity with the topic at hand. This situation exists with this handbook
as well, e.g., in Chapter 2, where Paolillo introduces and applies the
‘network’ (i.e., a web of relations) as an abstract mathematical concept and
suggests that people wishing to do network analysis need a background in the
appropriate mathematics and statistics.

In sum, the handbook is a substantial contribution to the burgeoning field of
digital communication, which can intrigue and inspire further fruitful
research. Readers can surely benefit greatly  from this comprehensive
collection of research; therefore, I highly recommend it for anyone aiming to
understand digital cultures and computer-mediated communication.

REFERENCES

Crystal, D. (2004). A glossary of Netspeak and Textspeak. Edinburgh University
Press: Edinburgh.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky is Associate Professor in the English Department at
Budapest Business School, College of International Management and Business.
Her research interests include discourse analysis, intercultural communication
and English for Specific Purposes. She has published on business
communication, intercultural communication and politeness issues in business
emails.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

This year the LINGUIST List hopes to raise $79,000. This money 
will go to help keep the List running by supporting all of our 
Student Editors for the coming year.

Don't forget to check out Fund Drive 2016 site!

http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/

For all information on donating, including information on how to 
donate by check, money order, PayPal or wire transfer, please visit:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Indiana University and
as such can receive donations through Indiana University Foundation. We
also collect donations via eLinguistics Foundation, a registered 501(c)
Non Profit organization with the federal tax number 45-4211155. Either
way, the donations can be offset against your federal and sometimes your
state tax return (U.S. tax payers only). For more information visit the
IRS Web-Site, or contact your financial advisor.

Many companies also offer a gift matching program, such that
they will match any gift you make to a non-profit organization.
Normally this entails your contacting your human resources department
and sending us a form that the Indiana University Foundation fills in
and returns to your employer. This is generally a simple administrative
procedure that doubles the value of your gift to LINGUIST, without
costing you an extra penny. Please take a moment to check if
your company operates such a program.


Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2901	
----------------------------------------------------------