Abstract
Digital discourse analysis has become a productive area of research, by focusing on current issues and contemporary topics involving language use in various digital platforms and networks (Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2019). Analyzing Digital Discourses Between Convergence and controversy, edited by Marjut Johansson, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, and Jan Chovanec aims to illuminate contemporary sociocultural communication practices and discourses in digital contexts, including social and online public media as well as other types of what the editors refer to as digital discourse and technology-mediated communication. This book comprises a collection of chapters that focus on the diverse communicative practices organized as convergences and controversies that users engage in while interacting in these digital contexts. These encompass a broad range of theoretical approaches using various terms and concepts (e.g. bonding, phaticity, verbal aggression, (dis)alignment, (im)politeness, etc.). In this sense, scholars and students working in the areas of digital discourse analysis (especially in linguistic domains such as pragmatics, sociolinguistics), social media and communication, and media and cultural studies will find this book of particular interest.
The book consists of three sections, and each section comprises four chapters. The first section focuses on the practices of convergence in which users strive to establish interpersonal relationships and create positive attitudes towards others. The chapters analyze discourses in which users’ co-participants are either present in the interactional settings (Chapter 1, 2, and 3), or imagined (Chapter 4). For platforms’ users, sharing stories, confidences, and troubles, is one way in which the authors attempt to contact with audience through the self-presentation of their ‘virtual performative’ (Chapter 1 by Virtanen). The formation of relationships can also take place through various linguistic and discursive means even with non-human co-participants, that is, a chatbot (Chapter 4 by Johansson). For celebrities, as in the case of Beyoncé (Chapter 2 by China), convergence takes place through promoting their representation as performers through constructing identities that serve in promoting ideological agenda. Convergence can also mean that users establish in-groups to display resistance towards out-groups using evaluative language (Chapter 3 by Badan and Cenni).
The second section of the book deals with the practices of metapragmatic negotiation of convergence and controversy. Analyses of Wikipedia entries (Chapter 5 by Kleinke and Landmann), Twitter and Jodel messages (Chapter 6 by Heuman), online commentary on a sports controversy (Chapter 7 by Bou-Franch), and online discussion forum contributions (Chapter 8 by Tanskanen) show how users negotiate the norms of their online interaction particularly in conflictual situations.
The third section of the book comprises four chapters that deal with the practices of controversy handling the direct and indirect manifestations of various politeness phenomena in digital discourse. The papers in this section shed the light on the negative aspects of online communication such as controversy, disagreement, and conflict. The chapters are arranged according to a cline ranging from an extreme form of verbal aggression in online shaming (Chapter 9 by Blitvich) and in impolite messages, hate speech, and cyberviolence (Chapter 10 by Gauducheau and Marcoccia) to the opposite of aggression, namely, the expression of complete harmony in non-conflictual interaction between participants in an online discussion forum (Chapter 11 By Melander) and in situations of mutual support of the same opinions (echo chambers) (Chapter 12 by Cozma and Lehti).
As a whole book, the merit of this volume relates to the wide range of the forms of communicative convergence and controversy that are analyzed on various social media platforms (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia etc.). The collections of studies in this volume provide various linguistic approaches as the data come from several languages such as English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, and Swedish. Johansson, Tanskanen, and Chovanec seek to contribute to the scholarly debate on the forms and patterns of interaction in modern digital communication by providing this collection of chapters that focus on those linguistic features and patterns of interaction and discourses that deal with identity-related and discursive practices. As mentioned by the editors, these discursive practices serve to enhance one’s social presence and negotiate one’s distinct place within the online community. One special interest to the readers is the broad range of such typical linguistic and discursive features on social media platforms – hashtags, storytelling, retweet commenting, and meme creation.
In sum, Analyzing Digital Discourses: Between Convergence and Controversy is a valuable addition to the exciting literature on digital discourse analysis as it shows contributions that put the discussion of the use of language as the central point of analysis. It covers a wide range of topics that are primarily of interest to readers such as scholars and students working in the areas of digital discourse analysis. Digital discourse analysis also calls for interdisciplinary perspectives, as the editors mentioned, that serve as the point of departure that leads to more elaboration on the current issues in digital discourse from a more linguistic perspective.