Abstract
This contribution presents a discussion piece on the theme of this Special Issue, which itself arose from a panel organised by the editors at the 2011 International Pragmatics Association conference in Manchester, England, at which I was kindly invited to act as the discussant. My aim is not to discuss or review the content of each individual article, but rather to provide some background context against which the arguments and findings of the contributions collectively can be highlighted. I will therefore make some comments on the thematic relationship between the analysis of language use and members’ participation in technologically mediated communicative environments.
Highlights
Communication and interpersonal relations today are mediated by technologies in an ever growing and diversifying set of ways
Two key concepts being brought into play here, are 'affordances' and 'participation', or to use Goffman's (1981) terminology, 'participation frameworks'
The term participation framework refers to the range of ways that persons within perceptual range of an utterance are able to position themselves in relation to it; for example as addressed or not addressed, ratified or not ratified participant, and so on
Summary
Communication and interpersonal relations today are mediated by technologies in an ever growing and diversifying set of ways. In all of these arenas, technologies of mediation, their communicative affordances and the multiple modalities and participation frameworks they bring into play have affected the styles and structures of language-in-interaction.
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