Digitalization has profoundly transformed our communicative and linguistic environment, and the language used most in digital media around the globe is English. The articles in this book present new research focusing on the ways in which the English language and its speakers are influenced by digital modes of communication. Traditional notions of language contact and change are being redefined, and data obtained from digital platforms offer new answers to old questions. In addition to descriptions of linguistic development, the book illuminates sociolinguistically motivated perceptions and performativity regarding English language use in diverse digital media environments.
Heli Paulasto is Senior Lecturer in English linguistics at the University of Eastern Finland. She specializes in English language contacts, variation and change in multilingual contexts. Her publications include Welsh English (de Gruyter, 2021) and English and Celtic in Contact (Routledge, 2008) as well as other publications in the fields of contact linguistics, sociolinguistics and English as a lingua franca. Her current projects involve multilingual workplace interaction.
Lea Meriläinen is Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research interests cover second language acquisition, English language learning and teaching, learner corpora, and the interface between learner English and world Englishes from the perspective of language contact and acquisition phenomena. She has published in several peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.
Samuli Kaislaniemi is a university researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. He works on Early Modern English letters and letter-writing, combining historical sociolinguistics with manuscript studies. He is a compiler of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, and a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Southeast Asian Englishes and the New Cambridge History of the English Language.
Mikko Laitinen is Professor of English at the University of Eastern Finland. His research focuses on digital social networks and World Englishes. He is currently leading a project on the weak-tie hypothesis in complex digital social networks, funded by the Research Council of Finland, and recently completed a project for the Prime Ministers Office on the role of English in Finland.
