Multilingual practices on Facebook: five principles of `networked

Multilingual practices on Facebook: five principles of `networked

University of Bergen, 13 Feb 2012
Multilingual practices on Facebook:
five principles of ‘networked
multilingualism’ and a case study
Jannis Androutsopoulos
University of Hamburg
[email protected]
http://jannisandroutsopoulos.wordpress.com/
Creative Commons – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
The “take home point”
»  Networked multilingualism covers multilingual practices
shaped by two constraints: being networked, i.e.
digitally connected to others, and in the network, i.e.
embedded in the global digital mediascape of the Web.
It includes everything language users do with their
entire range of linguistic resources, mediated by
keyboard-and-screen technologies, and oriented to
networked audiences.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Outline
»  Theory part
  New concepts in multilingualism research
  Multilingualism and code-switching online
  Networked multilingualism
»  Case study
  Participants
  Facebook walls
  Linguistic repertoires
  Language choices for status updates and video postings
  Interactional language choices by addressee
  Multilingual talk
»  Summary and conclusions
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Theorising multilingualism
»  Polylingualism, metrolingualism, translanguaging
  New concepts, which aim at overcoming what are
perceived as limits of established theoretical perspectives
on bi- and multilingualism (Blommaert 2010, Creese and
Blackledge 2010, Heller 2007, Jørgensen 2008, Li Wei 2011,
Otsuji and Pennycook 2010)
  shift of focus from linguistic systems to multilingual
speakers and practices;
  critical view of ‘language’ as an ideological construct;
  move towards theorising ‘fluid’ and ‘flexible’ relations
between language, ethnicity and place as well as between
linguistic practice and the ownership of language.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Metrolingualism (e.g. Otsuji & Pennycook 2010; Maher 2010)
»  Metrolingualism posits the contemporary city as a key
cite of creative and ‘fluid’ language practices, which call
“the authenticity and ownership of language” and a
“one-to-one association among language, ethnicity,
nation, and territory” into question (Otsuji and
Pennycook 2010: 241).
  shift away from asking “how distinct codes are switched
and mixed” and towards an examination of “how language
users manipulate the resources they have available to
them” (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010: 241, Maher 2010)
  focus on “creative linguistic conditions across space and
borders of culture, history and politics” (244)
  fluid and fixed understandings of language and ethnicity
coexist in people’s practice and awareness
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Translanguaging (e.g. Li Wei 2010)
»  Translanguaging originates in research on educational
settings and focuses on how multilingual speakers
transcend language boundaries in their discursive
practices.
»  A cover term for a range of phenomena such as codeswitching and mixing, translanguaging “includes the full
range of linguistic performances of multilingual
language users” (Li Wei 2011: 1223).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Polylingualism (e.g. Jørgensen 2008)
»  A type of multilingual practice and a type of normative
expectation
»  Norms of linguistic behaviour (Jørgensen 2008):
  the monolingualism norm
  the double monolingualism norm
  the integrated bilingualism (multilingualism) norm
  the poly-lingualism norm
  „language users employ whatever linguistic features are at
their disposal to achieve their communicative aims as best
they can, regardless of how well they know the involved
languages; this entails that the language users may know
- and use - the fact that some of the features are
perceived by some speakers as not belonging together.“
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Theorising multilingualism
»  These concepts challenge assumptions or restrictions in
previous theorising of multilingualism:
  the assumption that a certain level of competence is a
prerequisite for successful multilingual practice
  that using a language implies particular ties to its
(‘original’) community of speakers.
»  Similarities to language crossing (using bits of other
people’s language as a means to negotiate ethnic and
class relations) and ‘truncated repertoires’ (linguistic
resources within complex repertoires are asymmetrically
distributed and continuously evolving).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
My emphasis in this paper
»  With few exceptions, this scholarship remains focused
on spoken interaction in face-to-face settings.
»  Written language, or the various modalities of language
generally, are only partially in the picture
  Digital discourse, in particular, is conspicuous by its
absence or limited to a few examples.
»  Turn to “the network” as space for multilingual practice
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Multilingualism and code-switching online
»  Research since the mid 1990s
  Draws on frameworks developed for the study of spoken
language
»  Multilingualism and code-switching are pervasive across
digital media (Dorleijn & Nortier 2009, Leppänen & Peuronen
2012, Androutsopoulos in press, Danet & Herring 2007).
»  Multilingualism has been considered at two levels:
  diversity of languages ‘out there’
  what particular groups of users do with the language
resources at their disposal.
»  It therefore includes more than interpersonal dialogue.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Language choices for different parts of a website
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Language choices for different parts of a website
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Language choices for different parts of a website
guardian.co.uk accessed from Germany
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Interactional and emblematic language choices
iran-now.de forum
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
User- vs. system-initiated language choices
Internet Relay Chat: system messages come by default in English
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Code-switching
»  “the use of more than one linguistic variety, by a single
speaker in the course of a single conversation” (Heller & Pfaff
1996: 594).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Code-switching in CMC
Repeatedly documented functions of code-switching in CMC:
1. formulaic discourse, e.g. greetings, farewells, good wishes;
2. culturally specific genres, e.g. poetry, joke-telling;
3. reported speech (as opposed to writer’s own speech);
4. repetition for emphatic purposes;
5. selecting one particular addressee, responding to or
challenging others’ language choices;
6. contextualizing shift of topic or perspective, distinguishing
between facts and opinion, information and affect, etc.;
7. marking a move as jocular or serious, mitigating potential
face-threatening acts (e.g. dispreferred response, request);
8. indexing consent/dissent, alignment/distancing, and so on
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Code-switching and creativity
(Fung & Carter 2007, Lexander 2010)
Fung/Carter (2007): English/Cantonese among UK university
students from Hing-Kong
„... e-discourse, a genre in a social context that is both relatively
informal and intimate, generates a high level of wordplay and creative
use of language, principally, but not exclusively, for the maintenance of
interpersonal relations and the construction of social identities.“ (346-7)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Code-switching and „localized performativities“
(Tsiplakou 2009)
Greek/English/Cypriot dialect/features of other languages
among academics in Cyprus
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
‘Networked multilingualism’
»  Resonance of the network metaphor:
  Reception of social network theory in sociolinguistics
  The ‘network society’ (Castells 2000): new, global
configurations of society and identity, for which the
information technology revolution plays a pivotal role.
  Social network sites: Environments of computer-mediated
communication which ‘allow individuals to (1) construct a
public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2)
articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of
connections and those made by others within the
system’ (boyd 2011: 43; boyd & Ellison 2007).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
‘Networked multilingualism’
»  ‘Networked multilingualism’ is a cover term for
multilingual practices shaped by two interrelated
constraints: being networked, i.e. digitally connected to
others within the boundaries of a social network site,
and being in the network, i.e. embedded in the global
digital mediascape of the World Wide Web.
»  The space of networked multilingualism is articulated
through people’s interconnected profile pages and their
on-going literacy activities.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Five principles of networked multilingualism
1.  Literacy repertoires
2.  Keyboard contextualization
3.  Language to be gazed at
4.  Network resources
5.  Performing for a networked audience
None is specific to multilingual usage, but they all
contribute to shaping networked multilingualism in ways
that make it distinct from (though not incomparable to)
other language practices.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
1. Literacy repertoires
»  Network multilingualism relies on people’s languages of
alphabetisation and the dominant conventions for
written language in their respective societies.
  Postcolonial settings: unmarked language choices in
spoken (urban) contexts are turned into marked ones in
digital writing (Hinrichs 2006, Lexandrer 2010).
  Migrant/postmigrant and transnational contexts: access
(or lack thereof) to the written representation of the
minority language becomes an issue.
  When two or more scripts or orthographies are available,
the choice among them can be exploited to create
linguistic messages that blur and cross boundaries of
scripts and orthographies.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
“mixing of alphabetic conventions”
among Turkish-German chatters (Hinnenkamp 2008)
seid
dumm
deutsch
“German words and even phrases get a kind of
Turkish wrapping”, which consists of Turkish
orthography (Hinnenkamp 2008: 262, 266)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
2. Keyboard contextualization
»  Refers to the material conditions for networked
language production and to writers’ resources for
contextualization, i.e. the placement of a contribution in
interactional context and the provision of hints to its
interpretation (Gumperz 1992)
  In the absence of visual and paralinguistic channels,
contextualization processes in digital writing are codecentered (Georgakopoulou 2003)
  „stylistic shifts must be made clearly recognisable with the
limited resources provided by the keyboard and rapid
writing.“ (Hinnenkamp 2008, 260)
  Networked writers exploit whatever semiotic resources are
locally meaningful in order to do contextualization work
(visual prosody, unconventional spelling)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
3. Language to be gazed at
»  Refers to the visual mode of reception as much as the
specific visual aesthetics of the written.
  Some multilingual practices online are not produced as
though they were spoken. Their gist is precisely their
difference to what participants usually do in speech. This
results in part from the opportunities for multilingual
performance offered by virtual environments, in part from
a heightened orientation to visual aspects of language.
  Bilingual puns that rely on spelling
  Trans-scripting, i.e. writing one language in the script of
another
  Design of emblematic bits of text.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
iran.-now.de discussion board, 2005
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
4. Network resources
»  Using language in the global network means having
access to the semiotic resources of the network.
  The open-ended character of ‘small’, contingent language
choices that is highlighted by the concepts of
metrolingualism, polylanguaging and translanguaging
meets here an ‘endless’ flow of ‘other-language’ material,
which networked actors can explore.
  Embedded voices (in videos)
  Copy-and-paste, e.g. of song lyrics
  Google (and other) translation machines
»  Network resources increase the potential for linguistic
heterogeneity in networked language practices.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
5. Performing for networked audiences
»  Being networked implies communicating in a semipublic domain, ‘in front of’ an audience of networked
‘friends’ who can participate productively and/or
receptively in discourse.
  All contributions addressed to specific addressees are
therefore in principle overheard.
  Participants perform their social ties to and for others who
are part of their network (boyd 2011; Lee 2011).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
5. Performing for networked audiences
»  Being networked implies communicating in a semipublic domain
»  On social network sites, the space for communication
consists of (limited numbers of) ‘friends’ who have been
personally selected or ratified and are in principle all
known to ego (i.e. profile owner), albeit not equally well
(Papacharissi 2009, boyd & Ellison 2007),
  Communication unfolds ‘in front of’ an audience of
networked ‘friends’ who can participate productively or
receptively in discourse.
  Contributions to specific addressees are overheard.
  Participants perform their social ties to, and for, others
(boyd 2011; Lee 2011).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
5. Performing for networked audiences
Three implications for multilingual practices:
1.  ‘Semi-public’ audiences include people with shared
histories, experiences, inclinations, and linguistic
repertoires.
2.  ‘context collapse’, i.e. the coexistence in the virtual
space of social networks with different relations to ego
complicates language choices, potentially leading both
to ‘common-denominator’ solutions and to on-going
negotiations.
3.  Semi-publicness may increase the performance quality
of networked language practices, including playful and
poetic uses of language.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Case study
»  Pilot project on ‘Vernacular digital literacies
as sites of multilingual practice’
»  Carried out in the frame of LiMA, the research network
on ‘Linguistic diversity management in urban areas’ at
the University of Hamburg (lima.uni-hamburg.de)
»  Fieldwork carried out by Joanna Kouzina (MA Media
Studies, Hamburg University)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Participants
Luc
Agi
Vee
Dee
Sue
Gee
»  Students of a Greek
Lyceum in a Northern
German city.
»  Aged 16-18, three
different classes
»  Some transmigration
paths
»  Lower middle class
backgrounds (generally)
»  Contact and consent
facilitated by Joanna‘s
background as ‚3rd
generation‘ Hamburg
Greek
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Table 1 (handout)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Data set
»  Seven facebook logfiles from 1-27 December,
ca. 90 printed pages
»  Media diaries (with separate tables for media
consumption and digital writing) for one week
(29/11 – 5/12), ca. 73 printed pages
»  One group interview with six students, ca. 90 mins.
»  Individual contacts by email or facebook private
messages
»  Logfiles of synchronous exchanges on MSN
(not analysed yet)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Dedicated researcher facebook profile...
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
… logging all public activities by the seven students
Vee‘s diary table for consumption, 29 Nov 10
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Vee‘s diary table for digital writing, 29 Nov 10
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Guidelines / question blocks for group interview
»  Social media
»  Media use at school
»  Media use at home
»  Social orientations
»  Language orientations
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Excerpt from group interview (original Greek in italics)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Facebook discourse practices
»  The schoolmates use their walls as an extended site of
school chitchat, recycling the day’s events or poking fun
at school and teachers.
  announce and review joint undertakings
  use applications and have their content posted on their
own walls or those of ‘friends’
  love to post photos and music videos and have them
commented and celebrated by ‘friends’
  use various opportunities to exchange comments, which
are often framed as jocular
  some transnational talk to and from Greece, with the
classmates expressing nostalgia, commenting past
vacation photos, and anticipating their next travel
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Facebook walls and ‘wall events’ (handout, Figure 1)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Self-presentation and digitally-mediated interaction
status updates
embedded media
applications
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Excerpts 2 (handout): status updates samples
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Linguistic repertoires
»  Language labels like ‘Greek’ or ‘German’ are understood
as proxies to a finer description of the participants’
stylistic choices, their commonalities and differences.
  5 Germany-raised kids: German, Greek and English
  2 Greek-raised kids: Greek and English
»  Greek: vernacular Romanization, features that index
digital culture (abbreviations, shortenings)
»  German: colloquial with youth and urban slang items,
non-standard spellings
»  English: intertextual and formulaic
»  Additional languages show up sporadically in the data
»  Features associated with the expression of affect
abound across languages
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Additional languages
»  cok cok tam cok guzel abi – a Turkish phrase Luc uses to
comment a photo posted by a Greek ‘friend’ on his wall (13
December 2010);
»  vamos a disfrutar la vida, let's have a good time!!!!!!!! – a
Spanish/English phrase posted on Dee’s wall by a female
‘friend’ (November 2010);
»  one post by an app in Romanian language (Adevar sau
Provocare) and one by a Dutch app (Waarheidsspel) – posted
on Lou’s wall by female friends (January and April 2011);
»  Mami, el negro esta rabioso el quiere tu azucar tu lo no se lo
da :D :D Pitbull ♥ ♥ – a Spanish phrase used by Vee as tagline
of a Latino hip-hop video (by artist Pitbull) she posted on her
wall (January 2011).
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Table 2 (handout)
»  Order of languages is remarkable for the frequency of
English, which is instructed as a school language and
encountered in media and popular culture on a daily
basis, but much less relevant in their spoken
interaction.
»  Language choices for status updates and video postings
differ throughout.
»  Video taglines often quote lyrics from the song in the
posted video
»  Language choices for video postings often align to the
type of audio-visual content they post, and are
therefore not predictable from their language
preferences for status updates
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Video postings by Agi
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Video posting and status updates on Agi‘s page
Agi uses Greek
(Latinised spelling)
to present this Greek
Christmas video
She then quotes
English pop lyrics in
two subsequent
status updates
Video posting and subsequent dialogue on Agi‘s page
» Agi presents posted
videoclip by quoting
its lyrics [English]
In the dialogue that
starts 4 mins after the
video posting, Vee and
Agi relate the music to
a party they’ll attend
the next day [Greek]
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
bricolage
»  As Facebook wall activities unfold over time, the linear
sequence of wall events, posted media, and dialogic
exchanges involving various participant roles and
various types of multimodal content results in an everchanging patchwork of multi-authored networked
discourse.
»  A useful notion to describe this is bricolage, which has
been used by Chandler (1998) to describe adolescent’s
practices in the production of their homepages
»  Multilingualism both contributes to and is framed by the
bricolage character of Facebook walls.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Luc’s wall during one afternoon (handout)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Luc‘s wall- detail (handout)
» 
» 
» 
bro -- common in this group, hiphop-derived
hammer foto -- colloquial intensifier,
vernacular spelling
xtreme -- promotional language practices
(xtreme sports, xtreme games)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Luc’s wall / continued
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Figure 2 (handout): Language choices by addressee
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Figure 2 (handout)
»  Graph shows the uneven distribution of dialogic
exchanges among the students.
  far more contributions by girls than boys, far more
dialogue between girls than boys.
  Vee is the central node in this network. Her dialogues with
Sue are the most frequent dyadic pattern in the data.
»  Large parts of the students’ dialogues are monolingual,
in Greek or German, though hardly ever in English.
»  Multilingual posts are limited to two dyads, especially
Vee and Sue.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Creative code-switching (handout, Figure 1)
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Wall conversations between Vee and Sue
» 
‘best friends’ during fieldwork
» 
highest amount of wall dialogues
» 
often carried out late at night
» 
few or no contributions by other
„friends“
» 
often making fun of school and
teachers
» 
multilingual style
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Excerpt 3 (handout)
»  motif: recycling of school events and joint school
experience.
»  marked as jocular by various contextualization cues
»  close association of Greek to the school frame, as
opposed to their own choice of German
»  voice their teachers and their own reactions to what the
teachers are voiced as saying or doing
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Summary of findings/1
»  These multilingual practices are individualised, genreshaped, and based on a large, stratified repertoire.
  An instantiation of the interplay of fluidity and fixity in
metrolingualism (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010):
  Participants maintain asymmetrical preferences for some
resources over others with regard to particular activities,
and at the same time smoothly shift from language to
language in their moment-to-moment orientations to
networked publics and network resources.
  Multilingual practice entails a lot of monolingual moments
which result out of participants’ situated orientation to
particular language choices.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Summary of findings/2
»  Language preferences organised by textual routines and
genres in networked literacies.
»  Status updates maintain an orientation to the group’s
dialogical language choices, but video taglines tally with
the language of the embedded media’.
»  Video postings and applications allow space to English
and occasional additional languages.
»  Fit of languages between posted content and its
announcement in the poster’s own tagline: a dialogue
between networked actors and global network
resources.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Summary of findings/3
»  Language practices highly individualised: each
participant has distinct traits with regard to their entire
style of network participation, including language.
  Switching and mixing were found to characterise some
dyads more than others, and are fairly ‘localised’ and
limited within the group as a whole
  “code-switching was not only unequally distributed among
speakers, but was also differentially distributed in the
speech activities of those speakers” (Heller & Pfaff 1996: 597)
»  Individuation is an outcome of network architectures
(boyd 2011), but also a product of the interaction
between self-presentation, networked audience, and
network material
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
Conclusion
»  This research suggests:
  that networked language practices instantiate processes
theorised under poly- and metrolingualism as well as
translanguaging;
  that networked multilingualism is distinct by virtue of its
the techno-social conditions and non-reducible to a
representation of spoken discourse
  that a conception of digital multilingualism as a
transposition of oral-to-written practices is problematic in
that it ‘erases’ what is distinct to interactive written
discourse: the mediation of language production through
keyboards and screens, its orientation to networks of other
users, its embeddedness in the global digital network.
Jannis Androutsopoulos, University of Hamburg, 2012
University of Bergen, 13 Feb 2012
Multilingual practices on Facebook:
five principles of ‘networked
multilingualism’ and a case study
Jannis Androutsopoulos
University of Hamburg
[email protected]
http://jannisandroutsopoulos.wordpress.com/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/