Language in the Wild—Living the Carnival in Social Media

Abstract

This study presents results from an intervention case study at upper secondary level, in which Blogger was introduced during English class. The overarching interest was to explore the students' social performances and their interplay with students' uses of language across multiple forms of literate activities in blogging. The study draws on a sociocultural perspective, taking a particular interest in language as a meditational tool for communication and interaction in the students' own digital vernacular practices. Goffman's dramaturgical approach including the concepts of performance and role distance in front and back regions together with Bakhtin's notion of carnival were invoked as analytical tools for the analysis of video material as well as ethnographic scraping of online content in the blog. It was found that the students presented a witty, humorous image of themselves, while playing around with language as well as bringing in manipulated media for mockery and self-irony. Analytically speaking the students were living the carnival by utilizing a norm-breaking language-a language in the wild. Though this in-depth study presents a limited number of students' blogging, the findings contribute to an increased understanding of the in situ creation of a blogger text providing a basis for discussing the uses of language in social media and what this implies for learning languages and for teaching practices.

Language play in a second language: Social media as contexts for emerging Sociopragmatic competence

“…This study is part of a research project called Linguascapes, which investigates L2 learning activities in social media contexts as part of institutional learning Lantz-Andersson 2015;2016;Lantz-Andersson et al 2013;2016;Vigmo and Lantz-Andersson 2014). The theoretical underpinnings of the study incorporate a sociocultural perspective, where learning is understood as developing in social activities that cannot be predefined, because they are created, recreated and negotiated by participants in the practice.…”

A digital learning environment mediating students' funds of knowledge and knowledge creation

“…Building more coherence among a student's funds of knowledge across contexts can support the development of that student's learning, identity, and creativity (Honey & Kanter, 2013;Kumpulainen, 2017;Rajala et al, 2016). An example of such efforts to build coherence is studies that have incorporated new online spaces and digital tools to support meaningmaking where children and young people's informal and formal identities, interests, and discourses can intersect (Erstad, 2014;Kumpulainen & Mikkola, 2014;Lantz-Andersson, Vigmo, & Bowen, 2013;Vasbø, Silseth, & Erstad, 2014;Vigmo & Lantz-Andersson, 2014). In addition, fostering robust disciplinary learning has motivated the development of pedagogical approaches to connect student learning across contexts in science (Engle, 2006;Scott, Mortimer, & Ametller, 2011), language (Dyson, 1993;Wiseman, 2011;Wong, Chin, Tan, & Liu, 2010), and mathematics (Cribbs & Linder, 2013)…”

Goffman’s Backstage Revisited: Conceptual Relevance in Contemporary Social Interactions

“…Goffman deals only with face-to-face situations with the persons being physically present: -on every occasion when two or more persons are in one another's immediate physical presence, a complex set of norms will regulate the commingling‖ (Goffman, 1986, p. 495). Is this backstage idea relevant and with heuristic ability if applied in the interactions that are established through digital means, as it happens with the possibility of online social interactions that occur a lot in the contemporary context (Vigmo & Lantz-Andersson, 2014)?…”