Abstract
In their article, Guo et al (2022: 1-2) observe that the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) of 2014 created more opportunities, unprecedented convenience, and stronger incentives for international students and employees to come to mainland China. This paper focuses on the languaging practices of multilingual transnational African doctoral students in mainland China who come together on the Chinese social media/instant messaging application known locally as Weixin and internationally as ‘WeChat’. On this social media platform involving people from different countries, linguistic backgrounds and language communities, language choice becomes an important issue. Utilising empirical data from social media posts among multilingual African doctoral students on WeChat, this paper examines strategies of language choice and negotiation. It draws on the sociolinguistic framework of translanguaging space, the sociolinguistics of translanguaging and computer-mediated discourse analysis to explore how language users bring together different dimensions of their personal histories, experiences, and environments; their attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies; their cognitive and physical capacities, into one coordinated and meaningful performance on WeChat. In this way, this paper contributes further to our understanding of the sociolinguistic implications of super-diversity, the critical role that digital mediation plays in its development and maintenance, and the emergence of new multimodal forms of communication.
Presenters
Kelechukwu IhemereAssociate Professor, Department of Applied Linguistics, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Communications and Linguistic Studies
KEYWORDS
TRANSLANGUAGING SPACE, SUPER-DIVERSITY, TRANSNATIONAL, SOCIOLINGUISTICS, WECHAT, AFRICAN, COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, CHINA
