Style, Mediation, and Change: Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Talking Media

Technologically mediated talk is organized around familiar styles-styles of person, relationship and genre. But media also consistently remake and re-style these familiar patterns. This book brings together original research on media styling in different national contexts and languages, written by authors at the forefront of sociolinguistic research on mediated talk. It highlights and theorizes how creative acts of mediated styling can promote social and sociolinguistic change. The globalized world is already massively mediatized-what we know about language, people and society is necessarily shaped through our engagement with media. But talking media are caught up in wider currents of rapid change too. Creative innovations in media styling can heighten reflexive awareness, but they can also unsettle existing understandings of language-society relations. In reporting new investigations by expert researchers this book gives an original and timely account of how style, media and change need to be integrated further to advance the discipline of sociolinguistics.

Janus Mortensen is Associate Professor at the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Nikolas Coupland is Emeritus Professor, Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, Wales and Honorary Professor, Department of Nordic Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is an elected Fellow of both the UK Academy of Social Sciences and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Jacob Thøgersen is Associate Professor at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.