ABSTRACT
A search for endorsement of views sponsored within those groups has created political, cultural, and linguistic divides that go beyond the divides people found before their lives went digital. In many contexts, it has become hard to distinguish between fact and opinion, informed expert testimony and confabulation. Education runs the risk of serving only to support particular views, and newer findings, especially those which might contradict long-held or now-cherished beliefs, are in greater danger of being ignored or chastised. Digital communications have direct impact on our language use but also many indirect ramifications. For example, forensic linguistics as a science has accelerated greatly with the study of digital texts, Internet searches, and the incorporation of large data sets that make corpus studies possible. Simpson defines applied linguistics as “the academic field which connects knowledge about language to decision-making in the real world.”.
