Localizing the Global on the Participatory Web

Given the importance of digital communications technologies as backbone of the network society (Castells 2000), the WorldWideWeb no doubt constitutes one of the “key social domains for language use in a globalizing world” (Coupland 2003: 466). Yet research on language and globalization has not systematically addressed the web, just as the emerging scholarship on computer-mediated discourse has paid little attention to the relationship of globalization and language online. Situating itself at the interface of these two fields, the present chapter draws attention to some linguistic practices that can be observed on the contemporary spaces of computer-mediated discourse that are commonly labelled ‘web 2.0.’ The main objects of analysis are ‘vernacular spectacles’ – that is, multimedia content that is produced outside media institutions and uploaded, displayed, and discussed on media-sharing websites such as YouTube. Focusing on spectacles that rely on, and modify, textual material from popular culture, I argue that spectacles provide new opportunities to engage with global media flows from a local perspective. This engagement is both receptive and productive, in other words it is not limited to viewing and commenting online but extends to producing spectacles and displaying them to web audiences. I shall argue that spectacles create novel opportunities for the public staging of vernacular speech in the digital age. Yet vernacular spectacles are not made of language alone. Their meaning emerges through language and other semiotic modes, in a tension between appropriated material and its local recontextualization. The framework and findings presented in this chapter are part of a broader engagement with the study of computer-mediated discourse (CMD). My approach advocates a combination of sociolinguistic and discourse analysis with ethnographic procedures, and it encompasses both screen and user-based data – that is, systematic observation of online discourse activities as well as direct contact with internet users (Androutsopoulos 2008). Empirically, the first part of this chapter draws on extended observation of web 2 environments, and the second