This chapter focuses on learner translanguaging, analysing its characteristics, the factors that influence these characteristics, key functions of learner translanguaging and suggestions for facilitating learner translanguaging in class. Six characteristics of learner translanguaging are identified; it is agentive, purposeful, spontaneous and emergent, situated and contextual, identity-reflective and multimodal. Its manifestation is dependent on key influencing factors, including the classroom environment, aspects of learner identity, peer interaction and group dynamics, the type of activity involved, learner language proficiency and repertoire, and also the emotional and cognitive load experienced by learners at different points in the learning process. The chapter then introduces a project conducted by a Bolivian teacher to facilitate learner translanguaging, which then helps us, alongside other examples from research, to understand key functions of learner translanguaging, including when interacting with peers, interacting with the teacher and interacting with oneself. The chapter concludes by presenting a framework for facilitating learner translanguaging involving twelve recommendations.

This chapter explores multilingual communication, both in wider society and in educational contexts. It discusses the term ‘translanguaging’ in detail, providing and explaining useful definitions of the term. The chapter also identifies and unpacks key terminology that is often used within translanguaging theory and pedagogy. It then goes on to examine real examples from research on translanguaging, including in wider society, in the family and in the classroom. The chapter reveals that translanguaging is a natural part of who we are and what we do in our lives as bi/multilingual citizens. There is also time to explore the difference between translanguaging and terms such as ‘codeswitching’ and ‘using the L1’, explaining why we prefer to write and think about translanguaging. Finally, the chapter concludes with a historical discussion of how and why countries and education systems have tended to promote monolingual practices, particularly in classrooms, and the challenges that this presents for us as teachers interested in adopting more multilingual practices in our teaching.

Spoken discourse is a less commonly explored domain of corpus-based research. This chapter explores these challenges, as well as providing an overview of current corpus research on spoken discourse and emerging research areas. It concludes with a case study illustrating methods for these emerging research areas. The chapter highlights newer areas of corpus-based research such as fluency, prosody, and multimodal studies, language variation and change, and discourse-level units and includes an empirical study that illustrates two of these research areas through the use of fluency, prosody, and multimodal features across nurse–patient interactions. Rather than reporting on the interactions as a whole, the analysis also shows frequency of occurrence across discourse-level units: opening the visit, establishing the patient’s chief complaint, examination of the patient (both physical and patient history), counseling the patient (providing care options), and closing the interaction. The data comes from the US Nurse–Standardized Patient Corpus (Staples, 2015), and includes fifty interactions between nurses and standardized patients, who are actors trained to present the same case to multiple providers. The study demonstrates some of the more challenging elements of spoken discourse analysis and offers insights for the analysis of spoken discourse, particularly in these emerging research areas.

This chapter provides an overview of multimodal corpora, highlighting their significance in analyzing communication that integrates various modes such as speech, gesture, and gaze. The chapter defines both a mode and a multimodal corpus before introducing key types of multimodal corpora, including video-recorded interactions, corpora of signed languages, and datasets combining text and images. Prominent examples of multimodal corpora such as the ViMELF, FreMIC, and AMI corpora showcase the variety of multimodal corpora that exist and the various techniques employed to construct multimodal corpora. Challenges in constructing and annotating multimodal corpora are discussed, including temporal alignment, manual annotation efforts, and data-sharing limitations due to privacy concerns. The chapter emphasizes the importance of tailoring multimodal corpora to specific research questions while acknowledging the trade-offs of specialization. Advancements in technology, such as automated tagging and collaborative tools, are proposed as potential solutions to enhance accessibility and interoperability. A case study on turn management in virtual meetings illustrates the application of multimodal analysis, offering insights into how participants request and allocate turns in mediated contexts. The chapter serves as a guide for researchers navigating the methodological complexities of multimodal corpus-based studies.

This chapter contains an overview of William Burroughs’ collaborative work over the course of a half-decade career, including literary collaborations (with Kells Elvins, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, and James Grauerholz) and interactions with filmmakers, musicians, and artists. The discussion is situated within the context of other literary collaborations, considerations of geography (who meets whom and where), mutual affinities that inspire and sustain joint projects, and contemporary theoretical work on authorship (e.g., Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari). In so doing, the chapter invites a reconsideration of notions of single authorship, and a fresh, expanded perspective on Burroughs’ oeuvre. Ultimately, the chapter reflects on the essential ingredients for successful collaborations, as well as various perils and challenges that accompany any collaborative endeavor.

What should a nurse do when non-speakers of the local language come to the ward seeking information about a loved one? What should a receptionist do when they need to book an appointment and a language barrier takes them by surprise? How can an emergency call handler let a caller know that a human interpreter is being contacted? Chapter 3 examines circumstances in which the risks of multilingual AI are ostensibly low. It proposes a distinction between ancillary and core communication but argues that communicative settings are fluid. What starts as ancillary communication can easily turn into core care, so risk is not associated with specific roles or with levels of professional seniority. The chapter argues that, in the sectors under analysis, communication is rarely risk-free. Even where machine translation may not directly lead to harm or loss of life, it may be a feature of complex communicative environments which pose significant systemic risks.

Our focus on digital interaction in the history of English foregrounds the mutually transformative relationship between language and society, with technological affordances enabling (new) forms of social interaction, whilst impeding or remediating (older) communication practices. Early internet forum users maximised meaning-making with available linguistic resources, including pre-digital typographical and respelling practices. Today, within the diversity of digital Englishes, strategies typical of early digital interaction remain, reconfigured for users’ local language ideologies and community norms and expanded to incorporate multilingual practices and new semiotic modes. This chapter explores the sociopragmatic practices of identity and belonging across the digital age, from Usenet in the 1980s and SMS in the 2000s to Twitter in the 2020s, detailing a complex interplay between new communicative opportunities and long-established sociopragmatic practices originating offline. Our analysis points to a diversification of English-using internet users and an expansion of multilingual, multimodal repertoires which prompt a revisiting of traditional sociolinguistic conceptions of English.

This chapter first considers some correlations between memetic constructions and select figurative meanings, showing how our approach differs from existing multimodal metaphor approaches. As a case in point, the chapter presents an analysis of when-memes as relying on similative patterns of meaning, and also extends this discussion to include the family of If 2020 Was X memes.

This chapter outlines the reasons why a linguistically oriented book-length analysis of memes is a necessary step. It also previews the main theoretical tools to be used and highlights the ways in which this book differs from other books on memes. It includes a preview of the remaining chapters of the book.

Blended, or hybrid, approaches to language learning continue to gain prominence. Resonant with established definitions of CALL, such approaches seek to promote ecological perspectives and embrace the ubiquity of technology. Questions of effectiveness and the justification of resources may result in a greater need for argument-based evaluation. Future research in blended language learning must take into account concepts inherent in multimodality, social semiotics, and computer mediated communication. Rather than revisit blended learning, however, porosity of environments may forge new metaphors of understanding and research.

Opening with an analysis of Instagram, Chapter 2 is concerned with how to think about postdigitality. Touching on multimodality, time-space-place, and responsive loops, this chapter highlights the contrast between digital life and postdigital life, unravelling the many dimensions of postdigitality. It concludes that postdigitality represents a world of symbiosis, whether that be of body and mind, physical life and screen life, representation and non-representation, immersion and connectivity, or interaction and convergence. These combinations are what lends digital media its unique power to move across time, space, and place. To explore these ideas, Chapter 2 analyses data which has been processed through ATLAS.ti to produce a list of postdigital keywords used by crescent voices.

After exploring the multimodal effects of BeReal, and the way in which it foregrounds place and event, this chapter explores the work of Hayles, Barad, and Braidotti, before utilizing New Literacy Studies to explore contrastive socio-cultural and social practices. The chief focus is on teasing out a theory of digital-materiality: not only what materialities and modes are present on screens, but also what inferences, values, and agendas these materialities carry. Postdigital lives entail entirely new relationships with materialities, though this does not mean a break with the physical and embodied, since postdigital life also contains many embodied ways of engaging with screens, ones which work across both the physical and the digital. This chapter attempts to conceptualize the distinct logic that people use to understand screens, while striking at more lived understandings of literacy. Consulting crescent voices on where they find comfort in their screen lives, this chapter reconciles people’s conflicting desires to pursue a flesh-and-blood life away from screens, as well as to use their screens to manifest and actualize the real aspects of their lives.