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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 753

Part of Session 185: Superdiversity and digital literacy practices (Other abstracts in this session)

“Jalla ronaldo eat them ! ♥”: Indexing superdiversity through polylingual digital literary practices on Facebook

Authors: Jonsson, Carla; Muhonen, Anu
Submitted by: Muhonen, Anu (University of Stockholm, Sweden)

In our paper we will describe and analyze polylingual literacy practices carried out by multilingual and multicultural adolescents living in Sweden. The aim of the paper is to show how Late Modern and urban adolescents creatively make use of a varied linguistic repertoire in the innovative digital social network space that Facebook offers. Using excerpts from linguistic practices on Facebook we will show how the fluid use of Swedish, English, Finnish/Spanish and urban youth varieties indexes identities that exhibit majority, global, heritage and glocal (i.e. linking both the local and the global; Lee and Barton, 2011) literacies, respectively. The language practices highlight the complexity of the adolescents’ identity construction in a modern, superdiverse society (see Vertovec 2007) where multicultural and social phenomena  online exhibit multiple forms of identity performance(s) such as, for example, real and faked role(s) and identitie(s), adaptations of different forms of global popular culture(s) and the formation of glocal (social) on and off-line communities.

Our sociolinguistic and ethnographic approach to language practices on Facebook aims to contribute to the methodological and analytical development of the research field of multilingualism in social media.

This study is part of the transnational research project “Investigating Discourses of Inheritance and Identity in four Multilingual European Settings” (IDII4MES) funded by the European Science Foundation via HERA - Humanities in the European Research Area. The project consists of case studies in four European settings; Birmingham, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Tilburg.

References:

Jørgensen, J. N. (2008): Polylingal languaging around and among children and adolescents. International Journal of Multilingualism, 5(3), p. 161-176.

Lee, C.K.M. & D. Barton (2011): Constructing glocal identities through multilingual writing practices on Flickr.com. International Multilingual Research Journal 5/1, p. 39–59.

Vertovec, S. (2007): Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, p. 1024-1054.