Learning English Through Social Interaction: The Case ofBig Brother 2006,Finland

In line with recent Conversation Analytic work on language learning as situated practice, this article investigates how interactants can create language learning opportunities for themselves and others in and through social interaction. The study shows how the participants of BigBrother Finland, a reality TV show, whose main communication is in Finnish, take up resources provided by English and use them for learning in their interaction. This interaction is characterized by an orientation to both the local context and the television audience, a mixture of activity types and translanguaging. It focuses on one of the participants who explicitly evaluates his own proficiency in English as limi…

Heteroglossia as a resource for reflexive participation in a community of Christian snowboarders in Finland

This paper addresses the ways in which linguistic heteroglossia is mobilized to construct participation in a youth cultural community of practice. The analysis focuses on spoken interaction among Christian snowboarders in Finland, and specifically on how the community members create social meanings by using their shared linguistic resources (e.g. religious register or snowboarding terminology). These socially indexical resources gain new meanings when the snowboarders engage in debates concerning gender, expertise and literal versus non-literal interpretations of the Bible. During specific interactive events, they reflect on their responses to different Biblical discourses, thus aiming to r…

Bilingual practices in an online community : code-switching and language mixing in community and identity construction at www.godspeed.fi

Heteroglossic and multimodal resources in use : participation across spaces of identification in a Christian lifestyle sports community

This dissertation examines how members of one particular youth community, Christian lifestyle sports enthusiasts in Finland, use language and other semiotic resources to construct participation in their community of practice (CoP). The CoP is organized around the late-modern activity culture of lifestyle sports. The participants also share the Christian faith and in their snowboarding camps organize Bible study sessions and engage in prayer and worship. The theoretical and methodological framework incorporates sociolinguistics, social semiotics, discourse studies and connective ethnography, including the exploration of both the digital and physical spaces of the community. The dissertation …

Young People's Translocal New Media Uses: A Multiperspective Analysis Of Language Choice And Heteroglossia

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the particularities of the linguistic, social and cultural action of young Finns in translocal new media spaces, and the ways in which they themselves make sense of and account for their actions. We present findings from 4 case studies, each of which illustrates aspects of translocality in young Finns' new media uses. Theoretically and methodologically the case studies draw on sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and ethnography, making use of the concepts of language choice and linguistic and stylistic heteroglossia. Through the 4 cases in focus, the paper shows how young people's linguistically and textually sophisticated new media uses are geared…

Entextualization and resemiotization as resources for identification in social media

Drawing on insights provided by linguistic anthropology, the study of multisemioticity and research in computer-mediated discourse (CMD), this chapter discusses how entextualization (Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Silverstein & Urban, 1996; Blommaert, 2005, pp. 46–8) and resemiotization (Iedema, 2003; Scollon & Scollon, 2004, pp. 101–3; Scollon, 2008) are key resources for identity work in social media. Three key arguments inspire and give direction to our discussion, each of them laying down touchstones for language scholars who wish to investigate identity in social media. First, for many individuals and social or cultural groups, social media are increasingly significant grassroots arenas for in…

Superdiversity perspective and the sociolinguistics of social media

This chapter shows how the superdiversity perspective suggested in recent critical sociolinguistics provides the study of social media discourse and communication with a useful approach to conceptualizing and empirically investigating complex and multiple axes of diversity and difference in social media practices. It discusses recent work in sociolinguistics of social media, highlighting how social media practices illustrate many of the aspects of contemporary social life and communication that are considered symptomatic of superdiversity. It shows how research in this field has moved from viewing superdiversity as a quality or quantity characterizing specific places, spaces, groups and net…

Introduction: Social Media Discourse, (Dis)Identifications and Diversities

The focus in this volume is on social media discourse, (dis)identifications and diversities. It demonstrates how particular ways of mobilizing verbal, discursive and other semiotic resources serve as means for identity work (Bucholtz, 2003; Blommaert, 2003), involving acts, processes and practices of (dis)identification as essential aspects of sociality in social media. It will also illustrate how such social action also increasingly engages with a range of diversities in social media. peerReviewed