‘What’s past is prologue’. Continuity and change in theories and methodologies on discourse in multimodal digital texts and practices

The special issue ‘‘What’s past is prologue’. Continuity and change in theories and methodologies on discourse in multimodal digital texts and practices” edited by Maria Grazia Sindoni and Ilaria Moschini intends to question and problematise the state of the art on discourse, context and media. The focal point of the special issue is how the advent of the digital has affected discourse studies with a view to unearthing emergent discourse practices and reconfigurations of interactional dynamics. We are interested in recognising points of contact with the past without invoking newness and uniqueness of the current digital scenarios and discourse practices at any cost. While some scenarios are certainly new, reflections on if and how this newness should be epistemologically tackled appear urgent and undelayable, especially when media and their affordances rapidly change and prompt the emergence of fluctuating communities, discourse/s and contexts. The special issue features contributions by: John Bateman, Emilia Djonov, Chiao-I Tseng, Victor Lim Fei, Kay O'Halloran et al., Carey Jewitt et al., Per Ledin and David Machin, Morten Boeriis, Ilaria Moschini and Maria Grazia Sindoni.