Polymedia repertoires of networked individuals

This article introduces the concept of the polymedia repertoire to explore how social meaning is indexed through the interplay of communicative resources at different levels of expression (from choice of media to individual signs) in digitally mediated interactions. The multi-layered polymedia repertoire highlights how people move fluidly between media platforms, semiotic modes and linguistic resources in the course of their everyday interactions, and enables us to locate digital communications within individuals’ wider practices. The potential of our theoretical contribution is illustrated through analysis of mobile phone messaging between participants in a large multi-sited ethnography of the communicative practices of multilingual migrants working in linguistically diverse UK city neighbourhoods. Our analysis of mobile messaging exchanges in a day-in-the-life of these networked individuals reveals the importance of device attention in shaping interpersonal interactions, as well as the complex ways in which choices at different levels of a polymedia repertoire are structured by social relationships, communicative purpose and (dis)identification processes.

‘I’m not a tech person’

This study contributes to existing research on polymedia by probing into what we call academic polymedia, investigating the constant availability of interpersonal, professional, and social media for constructing scholarly personas. Drawing on the technobiographical narratives of a group of Hong Kong bilingual academics, we analyze academics’ perceptions of their media choices as situated in their professional polymedia environments. In particular, we examine how choices between public and private media shape academic persona development, and the way polymedia engagement impacts the participants’ language choice for academic purposes. This study sheds light on existing research on workplace discourse and identity in sociolinguistics by offering a polymedia dimension that draws on people’s media ideology in developing their professional identities.

Polymedia in interaction

This Special Issue on “Polymedia in interaction” theorizes and empirically investigates practices and ideologies of digitally mediated interaction under conditions of polymedia. We argue that the proliferation of mobile interpersonal communication in the 2010s calls for, and is reflected in, conceptual and methodological shifts in empirical research on digital language and communication in pragmatics and sociocultural linguistics. In this introduction, these shifts are crystallized in five interrelated themes: (1) a turn from ‘computer-mediated communication’ to ‘digitally mediated interaction’ as a bracket category; (2) a move beyond the on/offline divide and focus on the integration of mediated interaction in everyday communication on micro-units of social structure (e.g. transnational families, business or academic communication); (3) an empirical downscaling towards private and small-scale public data; publicness; (4) a shift from the study of single modes of digital communication to polymedia; and (5) a focus on semiotic repertoires and registers of digital mediation. Research that orients to (some or all of) these focal points is compared with other trends in digital language research, including computational methods. The papers in this issue flesh out these five dimensions with findings from qualitative research, based on multi-sited linguistic and digital ethnographies in various sociolinguistic settings.

Idioms of polymediated practices and the techno-social accomplishment of co-presence in transnational families

Drawing on data from a comparative ethnographic study on media usage in transnational families this paper contributes to a reappraisal of polymedia theory. Two main theoretical assumptions are reconsidered. First, it is demonstrated why the equal availability assumption has to be revised in light of the complex interactions between the corporeal, communicative and social mobilities which together constitute transnational migration. Second, it is argued that the techno-socially accomplished co-presence in transnational families depends more on the creative appropriation and combination of different media channels and communication forms than on the choice between them. In order to empirically investigate the specific needs for, and forms of co-presence in families, the concept of ‘registers of presence’ is proposed. It allows us to understand in detail in what ways and in which constellations transnational families create togetherness with the help of communication technologies.

The metapragmatics of mode choice

In this article, we investigate the use of social media in contemporary family interaction from a linguistic ethnographic perspective. Inspired by Auer’s (1998) work on code-switching in conversation, we study how family members choose and sometimes alternate between digitally mediated and face-to-face modes of communication in various family settings. Based on ethnographic observations, the participants’ metapragmatic reflections, and their interactional orientations to mode choices, we show how such choices serve social and metapragmatic functions in the interaction between family members who are present in the same house or even in the same room. Accordingly, we argue in favor of situating peoples’ polymedia repertoires in a broader framework of communicative repertoires.

Polymedia and family multilingualism

This paper investigates family multilingualism in a polymedia perspective, presenting results from a study of transnational communication among four families with Senegalese background, living in Norway. Ethnographic interview data collected in 2017 and 2018, including mediagrams, are analysed to get insight into the families’ uses of media and language. Furthermore, the moment-by-moment language practices through which family relationships are managed and sustained are examined through fine-grained analysis of interpersonal interaction. The paper thus both draws on and goes beyond polymedia to investigate how linguistic repertoires are developed in digital communication. The aim is to explore ways in which this theory may help us rethink family multilingualism as digital language practices become increasingly significant.