Jannis Androutsopoulos, who took part in the project's second conference (Berlin 2010), is Professor of German and Media Linguistics at the University of Hamburg. Trained as a sociolinguist, Androutsopoulos has published extensively on language varieties, in particular youth language. His recent and current research focuses on computer-mediated discourse (CMD). He asks how the tension between technology and social context shapes language online, and how new media users draw on semiotic (linguistic and multimodal) resources to construct social identities and relationships. With a number of methodologically important contributions to CMC/CMD studies, Androutsopoulos is now a leading scholar of language and mediation, and of the sociolinguistics of the internet.
In Bergen, Androutsopoulos offers a lecture and a workshop:
Lecture Mon 13 Feb, 9.30–12h
Multilingual practices on Facebook: five principles of ‘networked multilingualism’ and a case study
Gr.rom P 09:30-12:00
Workshop Mon 13 Feb, 13–16h
Sociolinguistic and discourse analysis of social media data
Aud R 13:00-16:00
Abstracts
Lecture
Multilingual practices on Facebook: five principles of ‘networked multilingualism’ and a case study
Integrating recent sociolinguistic work on multilingualism and research on code-switching in computer-mediated communication, this paper proposes the term ‘networked multilingualism’ and presents findings from a case study to explore its implications for the theorising of multilingualism. Networked multilingualism is a cover term for multilingual practices shaped by two constraints: being networked, i.e. digitally connected to others within the boundaries of a web environment, and being in the network, i.e. embedded in the global digital mediascape of the Web. These multilingual practices encompass everything language users do with the entire range of linguistic resources, mediated by keyboard-and-screen technologies, and related to networked audiences. Five principles that shape networked multilingual practices are discussed: literacy backgrounds; constraints of keyboard production; visualness; embeddedness in the global network; and orientation to networked audiences. The empirical part of the paper discusses the Facebook language practices of a small group of Greek-background students in a German city. Data collection followed an online ethnography approach, which combines systematic observation of online activities, collection and linguistic analysis of online textual data, and data elicited through direct contact to users. Focusing on four weeks of discourse on profile walls, quantitative and qualitative analysis examines the participants’ repertoires, language choices for status updates and video postings, language choices for dialogic exchanges, and performances of multilingual talk. The findings suggest that networked multilingual practices are individualised, genre-shaped, and based on a wide and stratified repertoire.
Workshop
Sociolinguistic and discourse analysis of social media data
This workshop is intended as a (partially hands-on) illustration of procedures and problems in sociolinguistic research on social network sites and participatory online environments. It is organised in four parts, the first two more frontal, the others hands-on: a) key analytical and methodological distinctions in language-centred CMC research; b) two descriptive devices developed in my recent work on YouTube and Facebook, i.e. the ‘participatory spectacle’ and the ‘wall event’, with demonstration of their use in analysis; c) hands-on exercise on metalinguistic discourse on (German) YouTube; d) hands-on exercise on code-switching in Facebook wall events.
Events are open to the public.
