Cover not available
Part of
New Englishes, New Methods
Edited by Guyanne Wilson and Michael Westphal
[Varieties of English Around the World G68] 2023
► pp. 243–262

Complicating the field

World Englishes and digital ethnography

| University of Greifswald

In this contribution, I explore the growing role of digital communication for the study of World Englishes and specifically the potential of digital ethnography as a methodological framework. I outline basic principles and traditions of digital ethnography and point out continuities between the importance of traditional, on-the-ground fieldwork for World Englishes, and consequences of more complex and fuzzy notions of the digital field. I give a closer examination of applications of digital ethnography by pointing to three case studies in different global settings. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the research ethics gap in digital ethnography and initial suggestions for ethical grounding of digital ethnography approaches in World Englishes.

Keywords: digital ethnography, fieldwork, computer-mediated communication, research ethics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Complicating the field
    • 2.1Space/place concepts in World Englishes
    • 2.2Digital ethnography for World Englishes
  • 3.Case studies: Digital ethnography and World Englishes research
    • 3.1Current trends in digital World Englishes
    • 3.2Case studies: Digital World Englishes studies across the globe
  • 4.Outlook: Bridging the ethics gap
  • References
Published online: 14 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g68.12hey
References (42)
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
2008 “Potentials and Limitations of Discourse-Centred Online Ethnography.” Language@ internet 5 (8).Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis, & Andreas Staehr
2018 “Moving Methods Online.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity, eds. by Angela Creese, & Adiran Blackledge, 118–132. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter, & Jürgen E. Schmidt
(eds) 2010 Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
2020 “Political Discourse in Post-digital Societies.” Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada 59 (1): 390–403. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolander, Brook, & Miriam A. Locher
2020 “Beyond the Online Offline Distinction: Entry Points to Digital Discourse.” Discourse, Context & Media 35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Jack, & Peter Trudgill
1980 Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Deuber, Dagmar
2009 “Caribbean ICE corpora: Some Issues for Fieldwork and Analysis.” In Corpora: Pragmatics and Discourse, eds. by Andreas Jucker, Daniel Schreier, & Marianne Hundt, 423–450. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Deumert, Ana
2014 Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dovchin, Sender
2020 Translingual English, Facebook, and Gay Identities. World Englishes 39 (1): 54–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019 Language, Social Media and Ideologies: Translingual Englishes, Facebook and Authenticities. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Dovchin, Sender, & Rhonda Oliver
2021 “English and Social Media: Translingual Englishes, Identities and Linguascapes.” In Bloomsbury World Englishes: Paradigms, eds. by Britta Schneider, & Theresa Heyd, 128–141. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra
2004 “To Tell or Not to Tell?.” Language@ Internet 1 (1).Google Scholar
Gonzales, Wilkinson D. W., Mie Hiramoto, Jakob Leimgruber, & Jun Jie Lim
2021 “The Corpus of Singapore English Messages (CoSEM).” World Englishes. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heyd, Theresa
2015 “The Metacommunicative Lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin.” World Englishes 34 (4): 669–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Narratives of Belonging in the Digital Diaspora: Corpus Approaches to a Cultural Concept.” Open Linguistics 2 (1): 287–299. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heyd, Theresa, & Mirka Honkanen
2015 “From Naija to Chitown: The New African Diaspora and Digital Representations of Place.” Discourse, Context & Media 9: 14–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heyd, Theresa, & Christian Mair
2014 “From Vernacular to Digital Ethnolinguistic Repertoire: The Case of Nigerian Pidgin.” In Indexing Authenticity: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, eds. by Véronique Lacoste, Jakob Leimgruber, & Thiemo Breyer, 244–268. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Honkanen, Mirka
2020 World Englishes on the Web: The Nigerian Diaspora in the USA. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Jennifer
2014 Global Englishes: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara
2011 “Language and Place.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Rajend Mesthrie, 203–217 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rodney H., Alice Chik, & Christoph A. Hafner
2015 Discourse and Digital Practices. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kachru, Braj
1985 “Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle.” In English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures, eds. by Randolph Quirk, & H. G. Widdowson, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kubanyiova, Magdalena
2008 “Rethinking Research Ethics in Contemporary Applied Linguistics: The Tension between Macroethical and Microethical Perspectives in Situated Research.” Modern Language Journal 92 (4): 503–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leuckert, Sven, & Sofia Rüdiger
2021 “Discourse Markers and World Englishes.” World Englishes 40 (4): 482–487. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian
2021 “World Englishes: From Methodological Nationalism to a Global Perspective.” In World Englishes: Paradigms, eds. by Britta Schneider, & Theresa Heyd, 27–45. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Mair, Christian, & Stefan Pfänder
2013 “Vernacular and Multilingual Writing in Mediated Spaces.” In Space in Language and Linguistics, eds. by Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, 529–556. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nunes, Mark
1997 “What Space is Cyberspace? The Internet and Virtuality.” In Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace, ed. by David Holmes, 163–178. Los Angeles: Sage.Google Scholar
Page, Ruth, David Barton, Johann W. Unger, & Michele Zappavigna
2014 Researching Language and Social Media: A Student Guide. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Park, Joseph S.-Y., & Lionel Wee
2009 “The Three Circles Redux: A Market–Theoretic Perspective on World Englishes.” Applied Linguistics 30 (3): 389–406. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piller, Ingrid
(ed) 2016 Language and Migration. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schneider, Britta
2020 Liquid Languages: Polymorphous Acts of Identity and the Fluidity of Language Categories in Linguistically Complex Belize. Habilitation thesis, European University Viadrina.
Schneider, Edgar
2016 “World Englishes on YouTube.” In World Englishes: New Theoretical and Methodological Considerations, eds. by Elena Seoane, & Cristina Suárez-Gómez, 253–282. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Britta, Theresa Heyd, & Mario Saraceni, M.
(eds) 2021 Bloomsbury World Englishes Volume 1: Paradigms. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scollon, Ron, & Suzie W. Scollon
2003 Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shohamy, Elana, & Durk Gorter
(eds) 2008 Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagg, Caroline, Agnieszka Lyons, Rachel Hu, & Frances Rock
2017 “The Ethics of Digital Ethnography in a Team Project.” Applied Linguistics Review 8 (2–3): 271–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Varis, Piia
2016 Digital ethnography. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication, eds. Alexandra Georgakopoulou, & Tereza Spilioti, 55–68. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Varis, Piia, & Jan Blommaert
2015 “Conviviality and Collectives on Social Media: Virality, Memes, and New Social Structures.” Multilingual Margins: A Journal of Multilingualism from the Periphery 2 (1): 31–31.Google Scholar
Varis, Piia, & Mingyi Hou
2019 “Digital Approaches in Linguistic Ethnography.” In The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography, ed. by Karin Tustin, 229–240. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by 1 other publications

Callies, Marcus
2024. Cultural conceptualisations in Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs. World Englishes DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.