Multilingualism online, written by Lee, C., (2017)

2000

The Internet as a worldwide literacy practice environment has created a new situation in communication, providing a new dynamic field for research. On the basis of the two articles under discussion, this commentary develops three main aspects of the Internet: as an informal learning environment for English as a second/foreign language; as a discursive space where identities are formed and

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2009

The linguistic landscape (LL) is a sociolinguistic concept that captures power relations and identity marking in the linguistic rendering of urban space: the city read as text. As such, LL is embedded in the physical geography of the cityscape. However, with the increasing scope of multilingual capabilities in digital communications, multilingual options and choices are becoming more prevalent in virtual space.These virtual linguistic voices are important forces in global language ecology. In this paper, the concepts of virtual linguistic landscape and linguistic cyberecology are delineated and exemplified in a variety of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications and environments. It is argued that the LL of virtual space, though grounded in the concept of multilingual interactions within a physically defined world, has distinct characteristics to the digital world that continue to evolve conterminous with the complex relationship of the real to the digital.

Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, 2016

This paper focuses on ELF use in computer-mediated-communication, and specifically on language choice and on the exploitation of the users’ plurilingual repertoires as a communicative strategy in Web 2.0 social spaces. Through data drawn from personal blogs and fan fiction texts, it will be exemplified how adapting English to ELF contexts and engaging in language alternation practices such as code-switching and polylingual languaging or heteroglossia may relate to audience design strategies in these online spaces.

2018

This chapter focuses on the transglossic practices of young adults and their involvement with various cyber-culture-associated resources, including the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities, social media, texting, chatting and emailing. Cyber speaking is not restricted only to online contexts but can also be stretched to offline contexts, as young people’s Facebooked, Twittered and hashtagged lives cross easily between different modes. This chapter includes a discussion of the notions of flows and locality, dealing in particular with the different conditions that afford or preclude forms of online engagement. Cyber-centric transglossia presents us with data which show inconsistency, disparity and uneven distribution of resources amongst young speakers. Not all speakers have control over or access to certain resources, since the uneven localizing processes of certain linguistic resources are tied to the uneven distribution of other resources.

Pragmatics, 2009

The purpose of this paper is to examine practices of language alternation in email communication among native speakers of Greek and to argue that such practices are a facet of the performative construction of an 'online' communicative identity. In the slowly-growing body of literature on linguistic practices in computer-mediated communication (CMC) or computer-mediated discourse (CMD) it is emerging that concomitant aspects of linguistic performance relate to the construction of particular sociolinguistic identities relevant to the medium, or, to adopt a less radical perspective, that sociolinguistic identities typical of face-to-face or written interaction are mediated by the social/communicative practices and norms relevant to, or accruing to, types of CMD. Language alternation features prominently among the mechanisms used in constructing such novel linguistic/social-performative identities. In this context, the research presented in this paper examines the performance of a group of six native speakers of Greek, who are also part of a relatively closely-knit social network. The analysis reveals extensive codeswitching between Greek and English, both inter-and intra-sentential, with English covering around 20% of the total of words used. The qualitative analysis shows that expressions of affect and evaluative comments are mostly in English, while Greek is reserved for the transmission of factual/referential information. The data further reveal that extensive style-or register-shifting and mixing is a favored strategy among members of the group; such mixing includes shifting among dialects or sociolects of Greek, the use of other languages, and, notably, the use of constructed words and structures with humorous overtones. This complex type of language play is an overarching feature of the group's (socio)linguistic performance in asynchronous electronic communication, which may single them out as a localized community of practice. The data highlight the theoretical and methodological necessity for finegrained accounts of specific types of CMD, which can be tackled not in terms of overarching macrocontextual linguistic and extralinguistic variables, but as dynamic reflexes both of specific participant constellations and of the negotiation of emerging generic norms within localized communities of practice. The paper also presents and discusses a quantitative study of views and attitudes on language alternation expressed by subjects who code-switch systematically on email, in an attempt to gauge the types of metalinguistic awareness involved. It emerges from the quantitative study that users abstract away from 'phobic' attitudes towards the use of English and that they treat language alternation as a manifestation of balanced or functional bilingualism, which is furthermore situation-specific and 'genre'-appropriate.