Sociolinguistics of Digital Affect

This book provides an accessible and lively account of current approaches to affect and how we can apply them to the language of digital communication. It offers an historical overview of how affect talk emerged online, from early forms of digital communication to ongoing practices on social media, and includes analyses on current developments of increasingly automated and algorithmic discourse online, and how users navigate affect in these contexts. The author examines the role of affect in digital linguistic practice: how people organize their social media discourse around emotion, how affect discourse becomes part of our digital linguistic repertoires, and how digital affective practice feeds into the larger organization of social meaning online. Digital linguistic practice is intensely linked to affect talk, through the platform logics of liking, affiliating and networking, and through our digital needs and wants of performing stylistic moves and personas online. However, these manifold digital linguistic practices are only beginning to be understood through the lens of affective theory. This is the first book-length study on the sociolinguistics of digital affect, developing a theoretical and historical framework for understanding digital affective practice. It provides a broad range of analytical and descriptive case studies, from affective genres such as rants and reaction videos to the linguistic construction of the digital body in selfies and ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) videos. It opens up this productive analytical lens to consider the linguistics of digital affect, and to instigate further research in the lively field of digital sociolinguistics.