Digital media has transformed communicative practices both in online and offline spaces, blurring boundaries between written and spoken, private and public, fictional and factual. Not only language and communication have been massively influenced by digital media but also the study of language. This conference seeks to explore how contemporary language use is shaped by the affordances of digital spaces and how digital tools and data have revolutionized the fields of linguistics and language learning.

Digital linguistics has developed into a thriving interdisciplinary field at the intersection of pragmatics, media linguistics, and applied language studies. Initially focused on structural aspects of computer-mediated communication, the field has expanded to include different topics, spanning from studies on multimodality (Bateman & Wildfeuer 2014), contextualization strategies (Androutsopoulos 2023), stance taking (Du Bois 2007; Merten 2025; Spitzmüller 2013), internet-memes (Zappavigna 2012), digital identity (Zhao 2005), to the pragmatics of platform affordances (Bucher & Helmond 2018). Recent work in multimodal pragmatics (Bülow et al. 2024; Mondada 2016; Bateman et al. 2017) and digital method studies (Tagg et al. 2017) underscores the need for analytical frameworks that can account for the complex interplay of linguistic, visual, acoustic, and interactional resources in digital settings.

Moreover, new communication formats such as livestreams, voice notes, short videos, and reaction content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Discord collapse traditional genre distinctions and challenge the divide between factual and fictional discourse (e.g., Burger & Luginbühl 2014; Tschannen & Meier-Vieracker 2024). Here, pragmatic strategies are used for authenticity performance, affective alignment, and community engagement (Aleksic 2025). Furthermore, these formats do not only pave ways for language to evolve but have also been effectively used to give insights into linguistics as a science and thus play a crucial role in sparking the layperson’s interest (Aleksic 2025; Meier-Vieracker 2024; McCulloch 2019).

However, the linguistic conception of utterances is also changing with regard to digital communication. e.g. in chat messages and online communication, where the boundaries between written and spoken language are increasingly blurring and written language can certainly assume patterns of oral communication (Crystal 2001; Koch & Oesterreicher 2011; McCulloch 2019). At the same time, digital linguistics offers new ways to both collect and engage with language data. The collection and analysis of data across digital and hybrid contexts can offer flexible, reflexive approaches to fieldwork, transcription, and corpus building. There is growing interest in how digital technologies themselves – whether used as research tools or objects of analysis – shape the research process, including ethical concerns about visibility, consent, and algorithmic mediation, especially in the age of large language models (Markham 2013; Caliandro & Gandini 2016).

These aspects also influence modern language teaching practices. The integration of digital literacy, genre awareness, and platform-specific discourse strategies in teaching opens up new questions about linguistic competence and communicative competence in technologically mediated settings. Moreover, digital tools can be used to facilitate language learning (Rosell-Aguilar 2018) in traditional offline learning spaces and online education platforms like Babbel or Duolingo.

Nowadays, the world wide web is one of the most essential tools for speakers of minority languages to maintain their language skills or pass them on to new generations of speakers and L2 learners. Platforms like Youtube, Reddit and Discord have become valuable places for language cultivation and many speakers seek to reinforce online presence for their respective language, as has been done for Occitan (Steinicke & Schlaak 2011).

The conference Digital Linguistics On- and Offline provides an interdisciplinary platform for researchers working on different aspects of digital linguistics and communication. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that explore these dynamics of language and communication in on- and offline contexts. The contributions can focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Language practices and social interaction: Digital pragmatics and communication; Stance-taking in digital spaces; Identity construction through linguistic means in online spaces
• Linguistic forms and media environments: Multimodality in digital contexts; Linguistic variation and change online; Platform-specific language use (e.g., TikTok, Twitter, Reddit)
• Methods and tools of digital linguistics: Digital fieldwork methods on- and offline; Analysis tools and AI-based approaches; Digital data repositories and corpora
• Applications: Digital teaching, didactics, pedagogy; Digital outreach and science communication

If you wish to give a talk or present a poster, please send your anonymized abstract (max. 500 words, excl. references) to symposium@lipp.uni-muenchen.de by April 1st, 2026 with the following information in the e-mail: name, affiliation, preference for talk or poster. Presentations on any language or variety are welcome. While the main language of the conference will be English, abstracts may be submitted in English or German.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by mid-May.

References:

Aleksic, A. (2025). Algospeak. Random House.

Androutsopoulos, J. (2023). Kontextualisierung digital: Repertoires und Affordanzen in der schriftbasierten Interaktion. In S. Meier-Vieracker, L. Bülow, K. Marx, & R. Mroczynski (Eds.), Digitale Pragmatik (pp. 13–38). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65373-9_2

Bateman, J. A., & Wildfeuer, J. (2014). A multimodal discourse theory of visual narrative. Journal of Pragmatics, 74, 180–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.10.001

Bateman, J. A., Wildfeuer, J., & Hiippala, T. (2017). Multimodality: Foundations, research and analysis – A problem-oriented introduction. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110479898

Bucher, T., & Helmond, A. (2018). The affordances of social media platforms. In Burger, H. & M. Luginbühl (Eds.). Mediensprache. Eine Einführung in Sprache und Kommunikationsformen der Massenmedien. 4th ed. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110285925.

Burger, M., & Luginbühl, M. (2014). Mediensprache: Eine Einführung in Sprache und Kommunikation in den Medien. 2nd ed. Narr Francke Attempto.

Caliandro, A., & Gandini, A. (2016). Qualitative research in digital environments: A research toolkit. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315642161

Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the internet. Cambridge University Press.

Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The Stance Triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction (pp. 139-182). John Benjamins Publishing Company. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.07du

Kabatnik, S., Bülow, L., Merten, M.-L. & Mroczynski, R. (2024). Pragmatik multimodal. Narr. https://www.narr.de/pragmatik-multimodal-18582-1/

Koch, P. & Oesterreicher, W. (2011). Gesprochene Sprache in der Romania. Französisch, Italienisch, Spanisch. 2nd ed. De Gruyter.

Markham, A. (2013). Remix culture, remix methods: Reframing qualitative inquiry for social media contexts. In Denzin, N., & Giardina, M. (Eds.), Global dimensions of qualitative inquiry (pp. 63-81). Left Coast Press. http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=424

McCulloch, G. (2019). Because internet – Understanding the new rules of language. Riverhead Books.

Meier-Vieracker, S. (2024). Sprache ist das, was du draus machst: Sprachgebrauch in sozialen Medien. Reclam.

Merten, M.-L. (in print, 2025). Stancetaking as an object of analysis and research perspective in German linguistics. Insights into a grammar of social positioning. In Bubenhofer, N.M. Habermann, H. Hausendorf, B.-M. Schuster (Eds.). 50 Years of RGL: German linguistics – Past, present, and future. (pp. 135-162). De Gruyter.

Mondada, L. (2016). Challenges of multimodality: Language and the body in social interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics_, 20(3), 336–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.112177

Rosell-Aguilar, F. (2018). Twitter as a formal and informal language learning tool: from potential to evidence. In F. Rosell-Aguilar, T. Beaven, & M. Fuertes Gutiérrez (Eds.), Innovative language teaching and learning at university: integrating informal learning into formal language education (pp. 99-106). https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2018.22.780

Spitzmüller, J. (2013). Metapragmatik, Indexikalität, soziale Registrierung. Zur diskursiven Konstruktion sprachideologischer Positionen. Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung, 1(3), 263-287. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-97551

Steinicke, L. & Schlaak, C. (2011): „Das Okzitanische: Zur Selbstdarstellung französischer Minderheiten im Internet.”, In Schlaak, C., Busse, L. (Eds.): Sprachkontakte, Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel: Festschrift für Thomas Stehl zum 60. Geburtstag (pp. 129–144). Narr.

Tagg, C., Seargeant, P., & Brown, B. (2017). Taking offence on social media: Conviviality and communication on Facebook. Convergence, 23(1), 84–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856516641626

Tschannen, J. & Meier-Vieracker, S. (2024). Performing Science. Multimodale Analysen zu Wissenschaftskommunikation auf TikTok. In Jaki, S., Meiler, M., Pflaeging, J., & Wildfeuer, J. (Eds.), Multimodalität in Wissensformaten (pp. 285–322). Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b22228.012

Zappavigna, M. (2012). Discourse of Twitter and social media: How we use language to create affiliation on the web. London: Bloomsbury. In Romero-Trillo, J. (Eds.) Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2015. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol 3. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17948-3_13

Zhao, S. (2005). The digital self: through the looking glass of telecopresent others. Symbolic Interaction, 28 (3), 387–405. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2005.28.3.387