Opening New Lines of Communication in Applied Linguistics

Over the last few decades, research in the area of applied linguistics has been transformed by an increasing focus on the social, cultural and linguistic changes brought about by globalisation, increased mobility and transnational flows, new technologies and a changing political and economic landscape. These changes have had major implications for the ways in which we conceptualise the relationship between language and society in the twentyfirst century. A new communicative order has emerged in which we find new types of speakers, new forms of language and new modes of communication. The 2013 conference theme ‘Opening New Lines of Communication in Applied Linguistics’ addressed the challenges and opportunities that this new communicative order presents in the field of applied linguistics. This publication brings together a selection of those papers and examines the complexity and different facets of this new (socio)linguistic reality. The papers cover a broad range of topics including intercultural interaction, globalization and global English, the dynamics and challenges of contemporary academia, identity construction, language in new forms of social media, language and the economy and new technologies in language teaching. The authors provide interesting and innovative perspectives on emerging trends in applied linguistics and open new lines of communication in our understanding of language in the twenty first century