Language in Digital Motion: From ABCs to Intermediality and Why This Matters for Language Learning

Abstract

Linguistic communication has moved beyond simple alphabetic encoding to multimedia design, challenging the fit of structural theories of language to digital communication. This transition is barely evident in mobile language learning contexts where top-selling apps present language as a linguistic structure to be drilled, ironically bypassing the complex communicative potential of smart devices. This chapter overviews changing language norms from language as structure to language within multimodality and comparatively discusses multimodality from a social semiotics paradigm nested in linguistic theory and from Elleström’s intermediality paradigm. To illustrate how one could conceptualize multimodality from a perspective decentred from linguistics and leveraged to explain language use in multimedia contexts, the author examines two novel features of digital communication: emoji and conversational digital agents.

A Systematic Review of Technology-enhanced Assessment of Monolingual and Bilingual Written Language Comprehension

“…Given that bilingualism is one of the factors to be considered while assessing written language comprehension, the research questions are: The choice of a 15-year period was purposeful. A small study before conducting the review has shown that new theoretical developments on the topic have occurred mostly in the past 15 years and can be accounted for in this brief report (Lotherington, 2020). In addition, many previous review studies covered periods of appropriately 10 to 15 years (e.g., Hwang & Fu, 2019;Zou, Huang, & Xie, 2019).…”