Online Media: New Dimensions for Language Awareness

摘要

The focus of this special issue of Language Awareness is the use of online media in developing language awareness. The term 'online media' for the purposes of this special issue includes email and 'virtual environments' such as chatrooms, as well as media such as video or audio which are distributed using information and communication technology (ICT). The term 'online media' has been chosen (rather than 'the Internet', for example), in order to emphasise that this issue looks at language awareness work which takes advantage of the potentials of new ways of communicating: thus technology forms the infrastructure but not the essence of the approaches outlined here. The papers in this issue illustrate a range of online media, and a range of types of language awareness, from speech act awareness in Japanese as a foreign language to awareness of metaphor in Shakespeare's sonnets. In order to provide some background for the papers, I will first outline the technologies and media which are referred to in them, highlighting the features of such technologies which are particularly relevant to the development of language awareness; I will then briefly summarise some relevant research and practice before introducing the contributions in this issue.