This chapter reflects on the changes in written communication associated with digital technology using some of the perspectives developed in earlier chapters. In particular, it focuses on differences in materiality and changes in display and design. When considering digital communication, there is plenty of evidence that writing is in ascendency, and that there is increased diversification in what we write and how we write it. New questions about who finds a voice and how we evaluate what is written have arisen. In times of post-truth, populism, political and religious extremism, writing can still be dangerous but it can also work to unite and consolidate, as it has done in the recent pandemic. If writing plays such a significant role in our social and cultural life, using it wisely is crucially important.

This chapter focuses on the shapes and forms that constitute writing, how it occupies graphic space and how it defines itself in relation to blank space and to other visual elements such as pictures, drawing and symbols. I consider how emphasis and authority are communicated and the ways in which distinctive layouts have become associated with different types of texts. Visual appearance is important when writing is used for decoration and embellishment, and in some cases, it becomes an art form in its own right. The chapter distinguishes between the display principle and the design principle.

The chapter ’Multimeowdality’ looks at the interplay of textual and visual elements in social media and approaches multimodality in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computer-mediated discourse (CMD). Digital discourse has evolved from text-only discourse to multimodal interactions involving text, audio, video, and graphics. The chapter shows the CMC modes and semiotic modes used in multimodal interaction. Based on examples from cat-related digital spaces, it applies the faceted classification tool and the CMDA tool to describe communication on the interactive multimodal platforms. The chapter describes the various visual elements, such as photos, videos, memes, meme-like photos, GIFs, emoticons, emoji, and stickers, and discusses their functions in discourse.

Focusing on supermarkets in a Swiss Italian city, this chapter explores the interactional work that couples shopping together do before finally arriving at the counter to make a request. While some requests arise from a need that was stated at the very beginning of the shopping expedition (e.g., ‘I need cheese’) and which then guide the pair to a specific counter at the store, other requests arise from something said or seen in the course of traversing the store. It is shown that even needs or wishes that were expressed at the beginning of the interaction can undergo transformation. Potential purchasable items proffered by one member of the pair may be modified or rejected by the other, and in this process the pair enacts a particular kind of relationship, being a committed couple, in which both parties have a say in food that is to be purchased and prepared for specific meals. The study shows that requests emerge incrementally over the course of interactions, and are situated in particular interactional, material, and economy-oriented environments

The chapter sketches the panorama of research that has characterized shop encounters in order to situate the contributions of the book. It first adopts a broader multidisciplinary perspective on studies of language and talk in shop encounters, reviewing research conducted from a diversity of perspectives in linguistics, sociolinguistics, micro-sociology, linguistic anthropology, ethnography of communication, and discourse analysis. It then turns to introduce a more focused approach centered in ethnomethodological and conversation analytic (EMCA) studies of shop interactions, discussing studies on recurrent actions and sequences of actions in shop encounters, the centrality of the material ecology of shop encounters and embodied conduct, as well as orientation to the commercial core and economic consequences in the organization of shop encounters.

The chapter examines the transfer of the item(s) from the customer’s hands into the hands of the seller. This transfer is a crucial part of many commercial transactions, as the seller must enter the item number into the shop’s inventory system, both to learn the price and to subtract the item from inventory. Exploring data from ‘kiosks’ or convenience stores across Europe, the precise details of this manual transfer of items are examined There are two general methods by which the transfer is enacted: in the first, the customer gives the item directly into the hand(s) of the seller; in the second, the customer places the item on the counter and the seller picks it up. Which method unfolds depends on a variety of factors, including the seller’s physical availability at the moment the customer approaches the counter, the kinds of items purchased, and whether the seller has anticipated the transfer by reaching out their hand, in a shape recognizable as ready to ‘take’. These two methods are seen to reveal the moral and commercial nature of the manipulation of objects, and ultimately of the transaction.

Statham analyses dialogue in a sequence from the TV series The Sopranos. He illustrates the complexity of communication by analysing how textual features work together with camera perspective, shot, gaze and action to orchestrate a character’s realisation of betrayal.

Media and communication influence, shape, and change our societies. Therefore, this first chapter aims to explain the implications of digital communication for our societies and the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter introduces the concept of society from a sociological perspective and explains how societies change because of the effects technological developments have on them, and vice versa. It illustrates this interplay with the example of digital divides.

In order to explain the significance and changes of public communication in a digital society, the chapters zooms in on the media landscape and explicates the difference between new media and old (or traditional) media. It pays particular attention to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, as his work remains a cornerstone when studying the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter then outlines the discipline of media linguistics and explains how media linguistics can help to make digital media and digital communication more tangible. It focuses on three key terms crucial for understanding public digital communication: multimodality, media convergence, and mediatization.

Successful communication – whether relayed verbally, visually, or in any other mode or mode-combination – crucially depends on cooperation between sender and recipient. Relevance Theory assumes that, ceteris paribus, humans are naturally inclined to help each other and therefore attempt to optimize the chance that their fellow creatures understand them. Given the folk wisdom that “a picture tells more than a thousand words,” we may be forgiven for thinking that visual communication, when possible, is always preferable to its verbal variety. We should not underestimate, however, how much background knowledge is presupposed in communication via pictures or other visuals. A visual message may thus misfire because its sender misjudges the background knowledge and values of the envisaged audience. A further complicating factor is that visual (and all other) messages come with varying degrees of commitment to the meaning conveyed, this meaning ranging from being fully explicit, via being strongly or weakly suggested, to being unintentionally transmitted. Unsurprisingly, visual communication is even more challenging when it straddles different cultures. After presenting a bare-bones introduction to Relevance Theory, I discuss a number of exclusively or partially visual messages that involve, in one way or another, intercultural communication.

The linguistic landscape (LL) is powerful for young children. They react react to the LL and benefit from (attractive) signs for early literacy or language learning. They create signs and bring their out-of-(pre-)school experiences into the educational space. Finally, they actively engage with the LL and discover the symbolic function of signage and ideologies of language and language use. This chapter on LL in school starts with an overview of the development of linguistic landscape research in general. This is followed by a presentation of studies on landscapes inside and outside schools and on pedagogical and didactic activities that draw on the potentialities of signage. With this, the chapter showcases major results of linguistic landscape research in the field of early schooling and draws on a variety of theoretical and methodological groundings of this research.

Much of the scholarly literature in second language acquisition relates language development with different cognitive, sociocultural, and linguistic factors, but little research relates second language acquisition to affect. This paucity of research is especially relevant in the case of immigrant populations, for whom there is a possibility of discontinuity of affective ties referent to their extended families left in the native land. In this chapter we aim to understand interconnections between the development of multilingualism and biliteracy for young children who are first-generation Americans, and the composition of digital picture books to evoke affective experiences relative to remote eco-social environments.