Commentary: Mediatized spaces for minoritized lanuages. Challenges and opportunities.

The mediatized spaces that have opened up as a result of the contemporary era of globalized digital media are evident in all three contributions to this section: Máiréad Moriarty highlights how Irish can become a resource in the repertoire of a comedian, who learned it as an adult, as well as a ‘rehabilitated’ identity resource for those who learned the language in school to various degrees of fluency; Ana Deumart’s case shows how the technoscape (Appadurai 1996) provides the tools for individuals to localize resources for themselves away from the restrictions of normative institutions; and Sari Pietikäinen’s rhizomatic analysis of spaces, both fixed and fluid, for mediatizing the Sámi languages, provides us with a way to analyse the complexities of new mediatized spaces for minority languages. All three contributions highlight the interdependencies between technology, agency, language practices and wider ideologies that are involved in the creation, maintenance and usage of mediatized spaces for minority languages. Performance is a keyword that permeates all of the contributions, and perhaps best illustrates the particular constellations of technology, agency, practice and ideology that we are currently experiencing.