| SUMMARY: |
The preamble to the present endeavour has been our participation in the 2016
First International Conference on Sociolinguistics in Budapest, Hungary, followed
by a scientific event entitled Digital and Multimodal Self- and Other-Representations
organised at Centrul de Pragmatici ale Comunicării (The Center of Communication
Pragmatics) at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, in 2017. Eventually, our
undertaking developed into a three-stage scientific project by structuring the convenors’
contributions as a volume encapsulating a mutual research interest. At inception, an
applied Internet (Socio)Linguistics and Computer Mediated Communication approach
was the niche from within which we instrumented the project. On reflection, however,
we determined that our epistemic intentions should also accommodate such topical
paralanguage phenomena as superdiversity and de- and re-territorialisation and
their seminal intercultural and multicultural consequences on the ‘real’ and the
‘virtual’ worlds now interconnected under the additional impact of communication
technology especially where emerging adults are concerned. Archetypal trendsetters
even in matters of language action and interaction, we considered that Generation
C (The Connected Generation) – the actors whose socio-lingua-culture attitudes and
performances are under scrutiny in the present volume – and their verbal plays and
displays would be more pertinently approached by adding a theoretical survey of
the recent turns in Sociolinguistics and identity construction, as reflecting our own
inclinations. Consequently, we decided to supplement the proceedings of the 2017
event with an adequate introductory section that would expand the ground covered
by the case studies debated, as well as providing a larger aperture for the volume title:
Online and Offline Discourses. New Worlds, New Sociolinguistic Perspectives. We
hope that, indeed, by broadening our scope, albeit the key approach remains Sociolinguistics,
rather than informing a niche scientific community only, we will manage
to stir some multi-disciplinary interest. |
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