Multilingual Youth Practices in Computer Mediated Communication

Explores how global youth push the boundaries of standard language and exploit the potential of their multilingual repertoires online.

Cecelia Cutler (Edited by), Unn Røyneland (Edited by)

9781107091733, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 September 2018

272 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.51 kg

'Multilingual Youth Practices in Computer Mediated Communication is unique in that it takes established linguistic methods from various domains like dialectology, conversation analysis or sociology and applies it to this newer communication style. In that, it offers an insight into the multilingual mind and is thus a valuable contribution to the field and useful for readers with many different backgrounds and knowledge levels.' Kathrin Feindt, Journal of Language Contact

With an eye to the playful, reflexive, self-conscious ways in which global youth engage with each other online, this volume analyzes user-generated data from these interactions to show how communication technologies and multilingual resources are deployed to project local as well as trans-local orientations. With examples from a range of multilingual settings, each author explores how youth exploit the creative, heteroglossic potential of their linguistic repertoires, from rudimentary attempts to engage with others in a second language to hybrid multilingual practices. Often, their linguistic, orthographic, and stylistic choices challenge linguistic purity and prescriptive correctness, yet, in other cases, their utterances constitute language policing, linking 'standardness' or 'correctness' to piety, trans-local affiliation, or national belonging. Written for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in linguistics, applied linguistics, education and media and communication studies, this volume is a timely and readymade resource for researching online multilingualism with a range of methodologies and perspectives.

1. Multilingualism in the digital sphere: the diverse practices of youth online Cecelia Cutler and Unn Røyneland
2. Alienated at home: the role of online media as young Orthodox Muslim women beat a retreat from Marseille Cécile Evers
3. Cool mobilities: youth style and mobile telephony in contemporary South Africa Zannie Bock, Nausheena Dalwai and Christopher Stroud
4. Nuancing the jaxase: young and urban texting in Senegal Kristin Vold Lexander
5. Peaze up! Adaptation, innovation, and variation in German hip hop discourse Matt Garley
6. Tsotsitaal online: the creativity of tradition Ana Deumert
7. 'Pink chess gring gous': discursive and orthographic resistance among Mexican-American rap fans on YouTube Cecelia Cutler
8. Virtually Norwegian: negotiating language and identity on YouTube Unn Røyneland
9. Footing and role alignment online: mediatized indigeneity and Andean hip hop Karl Swinehart
10. The language of diasporic blogs: a framework for the study of rhetoricity in written online code-switching Lars Hinrichs
11. The Korean wave, K-pop fandom, and multilingual microblogging Jamie Shinhee Lee.

Subject Areas: Social interaction [JFFP], Media studies [JFD], Sociolinguistics [CFB]