Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Page 175

This can, but it does not have to, lead to misunderstandings and challenges.
But my data shows several examples of these challenges, for example when
a user talks about an event in one language and is then asked to translate it
into another language. This is for example seen with the users Hafbjörg,
Sonja and Valdís that I talked about before. Therefore, I argue that it still
makes sense to talk about context collapse even though the users show great
awareness of the collapsed contexts in their audiences.

3.4 Overall contributions to the field of sociolinguistics (of social media)
In this section, I inquire into how the dissertation contributes to the field of soci-
olinguistics, because this is not made explicit in the thesis. The dissertation
undoubtedly contributes to this field of research in several ways and against this
background I ask the following question:

What is your dissertation’s main theoretical contribution to the field of soci-
olinguistics of social media?

Vanessa Isenmann:
I think my dissertation shows that the notion of polylanguaging can be a
starting point to approach digital language data. Its pros and cons can be dis-
cussed, of course, but overall I think my dissertation offers a fairly new per-
spective on how to approach linguistic practices in social media. Beyond
that, I think my dissertation contributes to research on informal styles of
communication that is still scarce in Iceland. We find hardly any research on
digital discourse data in Iceland yet, so my research is an important contri-
bution to that field as well. Digital social media are very important in
Iceland, but linguists in Iceland have hardly looked at the linguistic practices
involved in them.Therefore, I think my research is an important contribu-
tion to a better understanding of Icelandic linguistic practices in digital envi-
ronments.

Furthermore, Vanessa’s dissertation is characterized by a high degree of method-
ological diversity (and complexity), but the dissertation seems to lack specific
reflections of how it contributes new methodological insights. Based on this I ask
the following questions:

What are the main strengths (and possible challenges) of bridging qualitative
and quantitative methodologies?

Could the findings from the quantitative analysis and the language attitude
study have been more integrated in the interaction analysis of audience design
and identity work?
Comments and discussion points from the second opponent 175