ABSTRACT
Ever since the emergence of writing, the use of media of one kind or another has shaped the way humans communicate. The development of media has always been connected to technological innovation such as, for example, the printing press in the fifteenth century, allowing for greater access to books and pamphlets. This chapter focuses on the impact of the new forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC), the term most frequently used in sociolinguistics to describe and analyse forms of interaction via networked digital devices such as computers, on contemporary patterns of language use. CMC has clearly changed the way people interact with each other. A specific linguistic practice that is emerging in German-speaking online contexts is the use of regional varieties and dialects. Research into linguistic biographies has shown that the majority of speakers even in predominantly 'monolingual' societies have access to a multilingual repertoire, although they may only draw on some languages and varieties sporadically.
