Review of Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts and Practices

Abstract

Reviews the book, Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts and Practices by David Barton and Carmen Lee (2013). Characterized by constant technological change and rapidly evolving social practices, online landscapes pose unique challenges to researchers. In Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts and Practices, David Barton and Carmen Lee explore how online interaction links local and global social practices through the lens of literacy studies. The web offers easy access to large amounts of free, rich textual data produced by numerous and diverse participants, allowing for both corpus-based and more traditional forms of discourse analysis. Focusing on four main 'writing spaces' brought about by the Internet - Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and instant messaging - the authors seek to explain what people do with written language in their online lives. The book is an excellent introduction to online literacy studies, and of clear use for those wanting to conduct online field research. It provides a succinct summary of key concepts in literacy studies, as well as extensive explorations of stance-taking, identity representation, multilingual interactions, and metalanguage, all well-supported by empirical data. Despite occasional excursions into an academic register that might daunt newcomers, it will doubtlessly be a useful book for scholars of online language, communication and learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)