in texting.This might have been true for a short while in the 1990s but now
the internet and its users are becoming increasingly multilingual to the extent
that people who used to be labelled as monolinguals now inevitably engage
in certain kinds of translingual practices.These public discourses, or moral panics, that are largely rein-
forced by mass media are centred on how the language adopted by young
people in their online communication may negatively affect their literacy
skills.It
examines  in  detail  people's  broader  social  practices,  noting  that  many  of
these involve texts of some sort, and that we live in a textually mediated
social world (see Chapter 3), where texts are part of the fabric of social life.The social practices which language is embedded in are
particularly salient when examining language online not least because of the
constant change, the constant learning and the fluidity of texts.A crucial part
of the context of texts online is locating them in the practices of their creation
and use.We move on to an overview of the approach of literacy studies as a
way into examining texts and practices online.Indeed, such
techno-panics have existed for a long time throughout history when earlier
technologies such as radio, TV, and telegram writing style were invented, as
Crystal (2011) has pointed out.LANGUAGE IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
11 In  this  socio-cultural  approach  to  written  language,  literacy  is  a  social
activity  and  can  best  be  described  in  terms  of  people's  literacy  practices.The notion of literacy event and
the methodologies of literacy studies have their roots in the sociolinguisticClaims are made about how people are reading fewer books or have
lower reading abilities and concentration skills because of increasing use of
new media (e.g. Carr 2010).