Abstract ID: 1140
Part of Session 131: Latino Social networks and the city (Other abstracts in this session)
Authors: Kluge, Bettina
Submitted by: Kluge, Bettina (Universität Bielefeld, Germany)
In an ongoing project on blogs about migration to Québec, written by francophone, anglophone, lusophone and hispanophone migrants and / or migrants-to-be, we observe the interaction between bloggers and their readers (Kluge 2011, Frank-Job / Kluge in press). Especially among Latin American bloggers, new members to the emerging community of practice (Wenger 1998) are welcomed enthusiastically by older members and are helped along in the immigration process, receiving crucial emotional support during this difficult, life-changing transition period.
Blogs have been portrayed as an ideal medium to stay in contact with friends and family (McNeill 2005, Stefanone / Jang 2008). While this would also be possible via social networks such as Facebook, many bloggers also express their desire to give public testimony of their personal migration experience, thereby returning a favor previously given to them by strangers (i.e., receiving information about life in Quebec). Finally, the Latin American blogging community in Canada has also used this medium to raise attention to the topic of allophone immigration to Quebec. An example of the latter is the Jornada de bloggeros latino-canadienses (August 2008), where thirty bloggers based in Canada or still ‘on their way’ simultaneously published their personal immigration experiences on each other’s blogs. The ensuing discussion among bloggers and readers on different blogs reveals a very close-knit, supportive community (also in comparison to anglophone and francophone blogs). Some Montreal-based bloggers also have met ‘offline’.
My present talk will focus on the linguistic means used by bloggers and readers to interactively construct themselves as (legitimate) members of the community, and on the joint construction of a supra-national identity as a Latin American (instead of Argentine, Paraguayan, Mexican, Colombian, …) immigrant. The analytic framework chosen for this analysis is inspired by conversation analysis as well as Androutsopoulos’ (2008) proposal of discourse-centred online ethnography.
Literature:
Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2008): “Potentials and limitations of discourse-centred online ethnography”, in: Language@internet 5, http://www.languageatinternet.de/articles/2008 (9.12.2010).
Frank-Job, Barbara / Kluge, Bettina (in press): "Die kooperative Konstruktion von Identitäten im virtuellen Kommunikationsraum des Web 2.0: Blogs zum Thema Migration nach Québec ", in: Gerstenberg, Annette, Dietmar Osthus and Claudia Polzin-Haumann (Hg.): Langage et sphère publique dans des espaces réels et virtuels. Actes du VII Congrès des Francoromanistes en 2010, Université Duisburg-Essen. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag
Kluge, Bettina (2011): "Mi vida en otro lado – Identitätskonstitution in den Blogs lateinamerikanischer Migranten in Québec", in: Gugenberger, Eva, and Kathrin Sartingen (Hg.): Hybridität, Transkulturalität und Kreolisierung: Innovation und Wandel in Kultur, Sprache und Literatur Lateinamerikas. Wien: LIT-Verlag, 193-219.
McNeill, Laurie (2005): "Genre under construction: the diary on the internet", in: Language@internet 1/2005, http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2005/120 (22.12.2011).
Stefanone, Michael / Jang, Chyng-Yang (2008): "Writing for friends and family: the interpersonal nature of blogs", in: Journal of computer-mediated communication 13: 123-140.
Wenger, Etienne (1998): Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity, Cambridge.