The Routledge Handbook of Language and Social Media around the World

by Caroline Tagg (Editor), Korina Giaxoglou (Editor), Kristin Vold Lexander (Editor)

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Social Media around the World offers a comprehensive overview of this growing area of research through a global lens, aiming to decentre existing epistemologies and produce new lines of inquiry through a wider diversity of perspectives.

With its aim of complicating and diversifying understandings of language and social media through approaches and frameworks developed both within and outside dominant North American and European traditions, the volume is organized around seven sections, each focused on a particular geocultural context. Theoretical and methodological innovations as well as case studies of language practices across Africa, the Americas, East Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania, and South Asia, which explore issues of diversities inequalities, mobilities, creativities, and social justice are featured. Each section includes a brief section introduction, written by a local editor with expertise in the region who brings together contributions in each section. The sections are conceived to be in dialogue with one another, reinforcing the book’s aims of generating new conversations around the decolonisation of applied linguistics.

This volume is key reading for students and scholars interested in the study of language and social media in sociolinguistics, digital communication, applied linguistics, and anthropology.

648 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication January 30, 2026