Trans-National English in Social Media Communities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

   Pages 1-22

3. Language Ideologies, Multilingualism, and Social Media

   • Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

   Pages 23-60

4. The Who and the What: Amounts and Types of English

   • Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

   Pages 61-88

5. The How: Interactional Functions of English

   • Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

   Pages 89-133

6. The Why: Ideology, Positioning, and Attitudes toward English

   • Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

   Pages 135-278

7. English as a Trans-National Language

   • Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

   Pages 279-290

8. Back Matter

   Pages 291-315

   PDF

This book explores the use of English within otherwise local-language conversations by two continental European social media communities. The analysis of these communities serves not only as a comparison of online language practices, but also as a close look at how globalization phenomena and ‘international English’ play out in the practices of everyday life in different non-English-speaking countries. The author concludes that the root of the distinctive practices in the two communities studied is the disparity between their language ideologies. She argues that community participants draw on their respective national language ideologies, which have developed over centuries, but also reach beyond any static forms of those ideologies to negotiate, contest, and re-evaluate them. This book will be of interest to linguists and other social scientists interested in social media, youth language and the real-world linguistic consequences of globalization.

• communities
• computer-mediated spaces
• social media language
• multilingualism
• language ideologies
• English

“Grounded in discourse-centred online ethnography, this study offers a fresh look at uses of and attitudes towards English in a Dutch and a German online community. Three features make it stand out from other recent publications on transnational English: its comparative approach, extensive interviews with members of both communities, and the combination of sociolinguistic and conversation-analytic methods. The study reveals how differing ideologies of English in these two communities relate to how they mobilise English in terms of feature selection, frequency of use, and discursive functions. Written in an accessible style and full of illustrative examples, Trans-National English in Social Media Communities demonstrates how nation-specific language-ideological histories shape present-day orientations to global English in digital discourse.” (Jannis Androutsopoulos, Universität Hamburg, Germany)

“While studies of transidiomatic practices involving English in social media communities abound, Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain’s book takes a unique and refreshing perspective of understanding them within the context of historical traditions of national language ideologies, offering new insights for investigating the indexical meaning of English as a global language in online interaction and beyond.” (Joseph Sung-Yul Park, National University of Singapore, Singapore)

• Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

  Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain is Professor of German and Applied Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research includes work in language, migration, and identity, code-switching both in communities and in the language classroom, and language attitudes. 

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