Abstract
Ever since the advent of sociolinguistics as a new research field in the late 1960s, the relationship between language and different aspects of society has been the central point of sociolinguistic research. Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication finds its author attempting to provide a snapshot of the current diversity and multiplicity of the field of sociolinguistics and the intersection between sociolinguistics and other related disciplines dealing with the role of language in digital media society. Specifically, it demonstrates a rich and exciting combination of sociolinguistics, anthropology, ethnography, and mobile communication and focuses mainly on using sociolinguistic methods to elaborate on the mobility, creativity, and inequality of digital media. The widely ranging chapters of the book deal with issues of interaction order, language variation, linguistic multilingualism and diversity, multimodality, and social engagement across a range of digital media, including mobile phone, YouTube, Facebook, and Webpages.
The book consists of nine chapters, including seven main chapters and an introduction and a conclusion. The introductory chapter informs readers of the main ideas of this book with a brief discussion of the relevance of sociolinguistics in the study of digital media such as mobile phones and computers and elaborates on three topics concerning media sociolinguistics, namely, mobility, creativity, and inequality. Chapter 2 presents the key features of the mediated interaction order. It not only analyzes how mediated interaction differs from face-to-face communication but also explicates two themes in the study of mobile communication: mobility promoted by contemporary media, and creativity theoretically underpinned by “the work of Wihelm von Humboldt and Edward Sapir” (p. 10).
Chapter 3 deals with the political economy of mobile communication by focusing on the global distribution of digital technologies and “how people use technological objects both in the highly industrialized and affluent nations of the global north and the economically marginalized and dependent, postcolonial nations of the global south” (p. 40). Taking Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, as an example, Chapter 4 examines the digital media from the perspective of linguistic landscaping. It demonstrates that although digital media provides available access to the marginalized languages, they can also perpetuate their marginalized state.
Based on the central theoretical concept of intertextuality and digital media including You Tube, Chapter 5 focuses on multimodality of digital communication. Chapter 6 elaborates on three concepts approaching the language as artful from a sociolinguistic perspective, that is, heteroglossia, performance, and stylization. Deumert particularly emphasizes the role of “heteroglossia in showing stances, identifications, and social personae” (p. 121) and also distinguishes heteroglossia from intertextuality as well as the similarities and differences between performance and performativity. By inspection of orthography and typography, Chapter 7 moves onto the visual aspect of digital writing language, which is both conventional and artful. Based on two types of social enjoyment, which are defined as plaisir and jouissance, Chapter 8 shifts the focus to digital engagement people do online. Chapter 9 revisits the three main themes of the book: mobility, creativity, and inequality, which are proposed by the author.
Sociolinguistics and mobile communication presents an engaging and unique perspective to contemporary mobile communication, in general, and offers a valuable contribution to the study of digital media in particular. Due to its exemplary nature in its compiling and structure, the book could be easily understood and grasped by advanced students and established scholars in the fields of communication studies and sociolinguistics. The Chapters 1 and 2 conduct a comprehensive and fine-grained survey of conceptual and methodological issues of media sociolinguistics. Researchers new to media sociolinguistics will find the two chapters to be extremely informative and useful because they offer a snapshot of the conceptual and theoretical bases of the field. Rich in detail and practical in orientation, Chapters 4–9 offer fine exemplars of how sociolinguistic theories can be used to analyze digital media. Hence, it could engage readership whose research interests lie in media, sociolinguistics, or the overlapping points between media and sociolinguistics and will motivate readers to think about how sociolinguistics can be applied to contemporary digital media.
However, there are several points that we would like to raise. The author did not take multiculturalism into account when conducting research on mobile communication. Shi-xu (2009) believes that we should go beyond traditional discourses and communication studies and should engage in a culturally conscious and critical approach to human interaction. Thus, I want to suggest that media sociolinguistic scholars should take the multiculturalism into account in the course of examining and analyzing the digital media and be critical of the conventional sociolinguistic concepts and rules.
Also, the author pays little attention to comparative and contrastive analysis across languages in terms of data analysis. Furthermore, as a growing interdisciplinary field of research exploring the relationship between language, society, and media, media sociolinguistics is increasingly attracting attention from scholars in other disciplines, such as communication, sociology, linguistics, and ethnography; thus, one might enquire what can be done and how should be done to make media sociolinguistics as a new research field appreciated within the social sciences as a whole.
Despite the above quibbles, Deumert should be praised for providing valuable insights into the theory and practice of sociolinguistics and communication studies. What attracts our attention most is that the book highlights the cross-disciplinary nature of media sociolinguistics which involves a variety of fields. Studies conducted in this tradition can, hopefully, greatly advance the development of cross-disciplinary research, which is a heated topic in the modern social science research. As a whole, this book is a highly integrated and coherent volume that provides a good resource to seasoned researchers, advanced students, and also those who are new to media sociolinguistics.