Postdigital possibilities in applied linguistics

When it comes to our digitalised language practices, we often remember ‘firsts’: our first email, learning to type in a foreign language, or the first conversation we had with a fridge. While these seminal events serve as neat bookmarks in our lives, the truly important moment occurs when these things cease to be novelties. It is the when they become so interwoven into our everyday linguistic activity that we come to depend on them and cannot fathom a world without their presence. Perhaps the postdigital condition, at its most basic level, arrives when these seminal events transcend being mere milestones and become integrated facets of our existence. However, that integration—when something ceases to be a novelty—is very tricky to define and describe. This complexity is particularly evident when trying to theorise about and understand our overwhelmingly digitalised language practices, an important focus of much research in the field of applied linguistics. From here, however, things get a bit complex.