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Sociolinguistics Symposium 19: Language and the City

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012

Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 419

Part of Session 156: Mobile Literacies in Late-modern Cape Town (Other abstracts in this session)

Im n0t a gAngsTeR I jUst sImpLy LoVe British: adolescents’ self-presentation strategies in informal digital literacies.

Authors: Coetzee, Frieda
Submitted by: Coetzee, Frieda (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Im n0t a gAngsTeR I jUst sImpLy LoVe British: adolescents’ self-presentation strategies in informal digital literacies.

Goffman’s (1959) ‘dramaturgical’ approach interprets presentations of the self as acts of performance. Ling (2002) has used Goffman's idiom to discuss the self-presentation of teenagers via their mobile phones. This paper examines how Cape Town adolescents' acts of self-presentation, are performed in their informal digital literacy practices. The construction of ‘profiles’ on a mobile instant messaging service (called MXit) is examined as examples of such ‘performances’ of self-presentation and compared to the decoration of bedroom walls with handwritten slogans. Of particular interest are the adolescents’ expression of loyalty to local criminal gangs. Although the participants in the study are not gang members, they live and move between areas were gang-culture is powerful. The paper examines how participants draw on their multilingual habitus, and adopt a personal ‘performance’ style in their on-line conversations (that correspond to ‘locally meaningful’ gang culture as acts of toughness and authenticity. Nicknames, slogans, colours, hand gestures, and lexical items of ‘gang language’ are used to index a particular gang identity.

 

The paper forms part of a one-year ethnographic study of family literacy practices in a multilingual, Afrikaans-dominant urban Coloured neighbourhood in Cape Town. Data are drawn from a case study of a teenage girl’s (Kay, 14) mobile phone practices. In addition, examples are drawn from focus group sessions conducted with learners in a local high school. The results indicate that Kay constructs different and often conflicting identities on MXit. Blommaert and Varis (2011:4) describe ‘identity practices as discursive orientations towards sets of emblemic resources’. ‘Emblems’ of gangsterism are easily worn and discarded on-line, where ‘judgment calls’ of her authenticity are made by contacts (including people that participants have not physically met). Ethnographic research sheds light on how and why the participant’s on-line expressions of her gang-identity, may differ from that what she chooses to express in face-to-face interaction.

Furthermore, on-line social networking offers opportunities and limitations for self-presentation (Van Cleemput 2008). The results show that although the participants have low-end mobile phones, and the interface of MXit is restrictive (compared to other on-line social networks), the participants stage-manage these limitations. For example, they construct identities by giving self-descriptions in spaces where they are simply required to supply their names and surnames.

 

References

Blommaert, J. & Varis, P ‘Enough is enough: The heuristics of authenticity in superdiversity’. Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies. Paper 2: September 2011.

Coupland, N. 2007. Style: language variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday.

Van Cleemput, K. 2008. Authenticity and subcultural style in adolescents’ self-presentation’. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communications Associations. Chicago.

 

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