Language, Society, and New Media

Book excerpt: Language, Society, and New Media uses an interdisciplinary approach, integrating frameworks from sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology and emerging strands of research on language and new media, to demonstrate the relationship between language, society, thought, and culture to students with little to no background in linguistics. Couched in this integrative "e-sociolinguistic" approach, each chapter covers the significant topics in this area, including language structures, language and cognition, and language variation and change, to elucidate this relationship, while also extending the purview of the field to encompass forms of new media, including Facebook and Twitter. Discussions are supported by a wealth of pedagogical features, including sidebars, activities and assignments, and a comprehensive glossary. In Language, Society, and New Media, Marcel Danesi explores the dynamic connections between language, society, thought, and culture and how they continue to evolve in today’s rapidly changing digital world, ideal for students in introductory courses in sociolinguistics, language and culture, and linguistic anthropology.