Digital Textualities and Spaces in ELT: An Introduction

The digital world opens up a vast number of spaces such as immersive virtual reality, digital book corners, and discourses marked by hashtags. In this volume, we argue that digital spaces and textualities should play a more central role in English language teaching and learning (ELT), emphasising their multimodal and interactive nature as a means of engaging with different layers of meaning in the target language. Digital spaces function as contact zones where readers and writers communicate, negotiate experiences, and shape collective identities. Within these spaces, digital textualities create opportunities for competence development across various language-related domains, fostering a critical engagement with texts. Bringing together theoretical insights, conceptual developments, and case studies, this volume explores the potential of digital spaces and textualities for ELT while addressing their practical implications.