Adaptability in new media

This introduction to the special issue on “Adaptability in New Media” defines the pragmatic concept of adaptability, relates it to affordances of various kinds, and touches upon the notion of new media. Adaptability is constitutive of Jef Verschueren's theory of pragmatics as a perspective. The concern of the special issue is with language as an adaptable phenomenon in new media environments and beyond. Starting with micro-adaptation or macro-adaptation, the contributions highlight different aspects of pragmatic adaptability and identify metapragmatic traces of adaptation processes. They deal with a range of new media modes and several languages. The studies included are exploratory in nature and methodological decisions are therefore considered in some detail.