Communicative affordances and participation frameworks in mediated interaction

This contribution presents a discussion piece on the theme of this Special Issue, which itself arose from a panel organised by the editors at the 2011 International Pragmatics Association conference in Manchester, England, at which I was kindly invited to act as the discussant. My aim is not to discuss or review the content of each individual article, but rather to provide some background context against which the arguments and findings of the contributions collectively can be highlighted. I will therefore make some comments on the thematic relationship between the analysis of language use and members’ participation in technologically mediated communicative environments.