The Multilingual Internet

Two thirds of global internet users are non-English speakers. Despite this, most scholarly literature on the internet and computer-mediated-communication (CMC) focuses exclusively on English. This is the first book devoted to analyzing internet related CMC in languages other than English. The volume collects 18 new articles on facets of language and internet use, all of which revolve around several central topics: writing systems, the structure and features of local languages and how they affect internet use, code switching between multiple languages, gender issues, public policy issues, and so on.

By the co-author of Language Online, this book builds on the earlier work while focusing on multilingualism in the digital world. Drawing on a range of digital media – from email to chatrooms and social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube – Lee demonstrates how online multilingualism is closely linked to people's offline literacy practices and identities, and examines the ways in which people draw on multilingual resources in their internet participation. Bringing together central concepts in sociolinguistics and internet linguistics, the eight chapters cover key issues such as: language choice code-switching identities language ideologies minority languages online translation. Examples in the book are drawn from both all the major languages and many lesser-written ones such as Chinese dialects, Egyptian Arabic, Irish, and Welsh. A chapter on methodology provides practical information for students and researchers interested in researching online multilingualism from a mixed methods and practice-based approach. Multilingualism Online is key reading for all students and researchers in the area of multilingualism and new media, as well as those who want to know more about languages in the digital world.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!! Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and The Washington Post A Wired Must-Read Book of Summer “Gretchen McCulloch is the internet’s favorite linguist, and this book is essential reading. Reading her work is like suddenly being able to see the matrix.” —Jonny Sun, author of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

Publisher description

In this student-friendly guidebook, leading language authority Professor David Crystal follows on from his landmark bestseller, Language and the Internet and takes things one step further. This book presents the area as a new field : Internet linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism provides a comprehensive survey of the field of multilingualism for a global readership, and an overview of the research which situates multilingualism in its social, cultural and political context. The handbook includes an introduction and five sections with thirty two chapters by leading international contributors. The introduction charts the changing landscape of social and ethnographic research on multilingualism (theory, methods and research sites) and it foregrounds key contemporary debates. Chapters are structured around sub-headings such as: early developments, key issues related to theory and method, new research directions. This handbook offers an authoritative guide to shifts over time in thinking about multilingualism as well as providing an overview of the range of contemporary themes, debates and research sites. The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism is the ideal resource for postgraduate students of multilingualism, as well as those studying education and anthropology.

This timely book examines language on social media sites including Facebook and Twitter. Studies from leading language researchers, and experts on social media, explore how social media is having an impact on how we relate to each other, the communities we live in, and the way we present a sense of self in twenty-first century society.