The Language of Social Media ― Identity and Community on the Internet

The internet has revolutionised the way we live our lives in untold ways, but the most far-reaching is the impact it is having on the way we communicate. Social media sites in particular allow us to maintain friendships beyond geographical barriers, to build up and exploit networked contacts, and to cultivate a public image. And how we communicate online has a profound and lasting impact on language and society.

This very timely book brings together a broad selection of the exciting and diverse research that is currently being conducted into language on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and TripAdvisor. Studies from leading language researchers, and those at the cutting edge of analysis into social media, explore the impact of social media on how we relate to each other, the communities we live in, and the way we manage and present a sense of self in twenty-first century society.

Philip Seargeant is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics in the Centre for Language and Communication, The Open University, UK. He is author of The Idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language (2009) and Exploring World Englishes: Language in a Global Context (2012), and editor of English in Japan in the Era of Globalization (2011) and English in the world today: history, diversity, change(with Joan Swann, 2011). He has also published several articles in journals such as World Englishes, the International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language Policy, Language Sciences, and Language & Communication.

Caroline Tagg is Lecturer in English Language and Applied Linguistics in the Centre for English Language Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests are in language and new media, and in the application of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to the investigation of electronic interaction. She is author of The Discourse of Text Messaging (2012, Continuum), co-editor (with Ann Hewings) of The Politics of English: Conflict, Competition, Co-existence (2012, Routledge), and has published articles in journals such as World Englishes and Writing Systems Research.