Recontextualizing semiotic material is a discursive practice through which intertextual (and interdiscursive) relations between two utterances produced at different historical moments are established. Since its introduction in Bernstein’s writings on pedagogical discourse in the late 1980s, the concept has gained increasing attention in discourse studies (see e.g. van Leeuwen 2008). It involves formal (modes of discourse representation), as well as socio-pragmatic aspects (positioning of message producers towards, as well as transcontextual audience effects of, recontextualized material; changes in illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects; possible loss of original meaning aspects and addition of new meaning aspects of recontextualized items).

In the field of pragmatics and discourse studies, recontextualization practices have been studied in the context of traditional mass media, investigating their use of different forms of quotations and their discursive effects. Since the advent of computer mediated communication and social media, with their technically afforded ease of reusing others’ messages, practices of 'linguistic recycling' have become ubiquitous in everyday communication as well. The technical affordances of these electronic media have also broadened the semiotic and contextual effects that recontextualization practices may have.

This Research Topic aims to bring together contributions which deal with both traditional and 'new' practices of recontextualization, while specifically encouraging scholars who are dealing with so far under-researched aspects of recontextualization practices (e.g. cross-modal, cross-media recontextualization, genre-oriented recontextualization), and who are investigating communication on different social media platforms.

Contributions which deal with the following aspects of recontextualization practices are particularly welcome:

• semiotic modes of recontextualized material (monomodal vs. crossmodal recontextualization)
• formal modes of recontextualization (direct, indirect, content-oriented, form-oriented recontextualizations)
• media of recontextualization (same medium vs. cross medial recontextualization)
• participation formats/contexts of recontexualization – different media may have different participation formats (e.g. one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many etc.), and recontextualization practices may occur within or across these formats
• effects of recontexualization (semantic and/or pragmatic changes).

Contributions should be based on the analysis of empirical data and combine empirical rigor with theoretical and analytic strength. They may deal with their research question from a synchronic or diachronic perspective.

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Frontiers in Communication

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