Introduction

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.