SocMedia: Multilingual Use

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course will examine the cross-cultural implications of social media use by multilingual users. An important focus of the class will be to understand the social roles of popular social media exploring social networking sites, image-based sites, streaming platforms, discussion forums, and community platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat. We will view these international community spaces as they overlap onto English language spaces. Through weekly review of research studies, we will shed light on engagement practices, looking at the motivational forces that drive multilingual daily social media engagement with mainstream culture. We will also discuss the challenges for multilinguals in online social networks as a result of a different Internet depending on the language used which ultimately hinders capability for sharing and learning. Finally, we will look at language practices of these multilingual users such as the mixing phenomena in written online text such as “code-switching”, the practice of alternating between two or more language or varieties of language in conversation, and “translanguaging”, when a multilingual person’s full linguistic repertoire is used instead of trying to keep narrowly focused on a single language. As observers and learners, we will expand our understanding of heritage, second and third language speakers’ language practices as they negotiate their experiences with their social networks. Course objectives will be to become knowledgeable about key research on this topic, including relevant theories and methods through the research we review, develop skills in analyzing and interpreting language use on social media from the optic of a multilingual user, gain experience in collecting and analyzing examples from social media where cultures and languages intersect, improve skills of engagement in academic dialogue both written (reflection papers) and spoken (small group work and presentations).