Media linguistics in the post-digital era and the Global English paradigm—an interview

Abstract

In the inaugural article of the Journal for Media Linguistics, Ulrich Schmitz (2018) posited that all linguistics should be media linguistics since all language is mediated. It appears that the time is ripe to revisit Schmitz’s claim, as this special issue does by asking: in the ‘post-digital condition’, where digital mediation is unremarkable rather than exceptional, does media linguistics still need a separate label, or has it quietly become ‘linguistics’? The present article sets out to explore whether digital English research over the past decades has effectively been English as Lingua Franca (ELF) research all along, and whether the ELF paradigm is indispensable, or indeed the only viable framework, for the study of digital English going forward.