emmajeans

I’m submitting this to the Second Annual Roundtable of Language and Society Centre - Intercultural communication: From the streets to the Internet.

Writings used for previous studies into bilingual identity have tended to be highly literate and usually academic published works. It cannot be assumed that the authors of these works have similar experiences to other, younger, less academic or less linguistically proficient bilinguals.

My research addresses this gap by examining introspective online writings of seven (Mandarin Chinese/English) bilingual women aged 22-28 years, from a variety of language histories and backgrounds. The research corpus is made up of a survey and the most recent 100 blog posts from each participant.

Unlike traditional publications, any person with basic technical proficiency may immediately publish their unedited and uncensored ideas using a blog. Unlike traditionally published works, blogging may involve a degree of audience interactivity, allowing participants different ways to create and maintain their identity.

Although some participants generally preferred to use their first language (L1), both English L1 and Chinese L1 participants wrote in English language varieties more frequently than Chinese. Participants also used online language varieties to perform their hybrid identities as online bilinguals.

Participants used aspects of online language varieties including l33t (leet) and LOLspeak to communicate ideas and pragmatic cues. Additionally, participants from Malaysia frequently switched between online language varieties and English, Chinese and Bahasa Melayu at an intra-sentential level; and used a combination of standard morphemes from different languages, along with popular culture slang, to coin words to more accurately describe their experiences.

Participants constructed and performed their linguistic identities differently to authors in previous studies into bilingual identity. Because online bilinguals are using a combination of standard and non-standard languages in a new global communication culture. It is suggested that the term ‘multiple hybrids’ be used to describe online bilinguals.

This research may provide a starting point for future studies into bilinguals’ online language usage and online cultural identity.

References:

Besemeres, M. & Wierzbicka, A. 2007, Translating Lives, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia.

Crystal, D. 2006, Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Herring, S.C., Scheidt, L.A., Wright, E. & Bonus, S. 2004, Bridging the Gap: A genre analysis of Weblogs, Indiana University Hawaii.

Huffaker, D.A. & Calvert, S.L. 2005, ‘Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs’, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, vol. 10, no. 2, online. Retrieved 4 December 2008 from

Pavlenko, A. & Blackledge, A. 2004, Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

I’ve never written an abstract before, never needed to. But there’s a first time for everything!
So without further ado; here is my research in 250 words or less…

Abstract

This thesis examines the online introspective writings of seven young bilingual women to investigate the relationship between their online language usages and their linguistic identities.

Starting from the premise that linguistic identities are both the cause and effect of the lived experiences of language participants, this study analyses ways that respondents use English and Chinese language varieties to publish their thoughts using web logs (blogs), to create and maintain their linguistic identities online. This study is situated on the intersection of three research areas: bilingual linguistic identities, online identity, and online languages. A brief discussion of previous research into bilingual identities exposed through traditionally published language autobiographies is included. I also provide an overview of the history of computer mediated communication, and the online language varieties that have emerged in the 37 years since the first email was sent.

Examination of the way language is used reveals that blogging is regarded as a separate communication context, with some participants using a less preferred language variety in their blogs to better communicate with their intended audience. Language usage also reveals a number of online linguistic identity traits that are common to all participants. Finally, it is found that some bloggers regard their available languages as imperfect ways to express their private self through a medium that allows the presentation of a relatively controlled version of their identity to their intended audience.

Eva Sallis writes:

A different linguistic self is a different thinking, social being who has different expressions, a different mode. When I open my mouth in Arabic I am trapped in a mode of charming (imperfect) formality, and this colours not only who people think I am, but who I feel myself to be…
These selves, my Arabic and English selves, are not mutually exclusive: I can write in English about what my Arabic self has experienced.

(Eva Sallis 2007, ‘Foster Mother Tongue’ in Translating Lives, eds M. Besemeres & A. Wierzbicka, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, p152)

The different coping strategies that people use to compensate for their language deficiencies reveal aspects of their linguistic personalities.

People perceive me as having different personalities, different identities in English, depending what situation I am in, and I agree. I do not use the same language strategies to compensate for deficiencies in my language when I am teaching a class of five year olds, when I am teaching a class of seventeen year olds, when I am the student; when I am at home with my closest friends, when I am visiting my grandparents. In all these situations, I find different things funny, different things sad, I have different standards of ‘acceptable’ and ‘normal’.

So why would it be any different in Chinese? There would not be a way of being at work, a way of being at home, and a way of being in Chinese! Both languages are part of who you are; your expression changes in different situations depending on what feels appropriate at the time: but (for me) there is usually an over-arching sense of being in Chinese that I do not have in English. My compensation strategies are always there and affect how I *can* be in Chinese.

Even though the participants all say that they feel like their L2 is imperfect, they all have different ways of being in their L2 as distinct from their L1. Sommer notes that her Chinese linguistic identity is more stereotypically feminine and childlike; Amy feels that she is more practical and business-like in Chinese; and Lily M’s English linguistic identity seems more softly spoken. Each participant has a different mode of expressing herself in her L2 compared with her L1, and this is not just a stock standard way of behaving as a generic person with incomplete access to a second language. There is no generic way of behaving, I think.

Besides, all the participants in my study are language participants, not just language learners. They have ways of being in their L2, because they use their L2 for real life situations (not just translating ‘(I saw) his uncle’s black yak walking behind the hill’, or ‘Gubo and Palanka went to see Ding Yun sing Peking Opera’).

Also, I can do and say things in Chinese that would feel inappropriate in standard Anglo Australian English. I have no shame when I bargain in Chinese, even in Australia, even in the USA. But when I start by trying to bargain in the markets in English, I stammer, I am tongue-tied, I blush and feel like I just want to hand over some money so that I can get out of there! So, when I hear the stall keeper answer the phone or call to his assistant in Mandarin, I know I can switch, and suddenly it is much smoother.
Similarly, when my student is not paying attention in class, there are words and phrases that I go to in Chinese that I would never use in English.
‘He doesn’t listen to the teacher. He needs to work more in class, and practise when he gets home’, I say, and his mother agrees.
There is no faffing about with discussing cognitive and social development - and not only because I do not have the Chinese words for these ideas.

Does being forthright in Chinese affect my ‘real’ personality (the identity above and behind my languages)? I think it might. It certainly gives me a new way of seeing the world. I take off one pair of glasses, and put on another.

I am reluctant to write anything about how I am in Tibetan or Indonesian, because my linguistic identity in those languages is not developed yet, because my proficiency in those languages is not developed yet. My identity is that of a language learner, not a language participant.

I know that when I began learning and experimenting with using Indonesian so many years ago, I felt and sounded like a petulant child; and I know this is because my role models for my language were my stepmother and my younger sister… who is 20 years younger than me. My questions were whined in the intonation of a curious 5 year old (’Ini apa???????‘) and my answers were very simple and to the point.

On the other hand, my Tibetan language role models were Rinpoche Lama Choedak and Ani Nijun; my language lessons were full of laughter, and bilingual puns relating to Buddhist doctrine, and stern attention to detail. It will not surprise me, when my Tibetan linguistic identity as a language participant finally emerges that Rinpoche’s laughter will come through, especially when my language deficiencies make themselves known.

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I’m getting into the crunchy part of the research now. I have started writing, but mostly reflections on other people’s research. My own is still underway.

Ideally, I would like to have another 3-18 participants, just to make sure any results I find will be more likely to be true for more people.

If you know of anyone who is over 18, who uses English and Mandarin online, would you please ask them to do my survey?
The link is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=depShi7qTx5TZCB3SiS_2bZQ_3d_3d

I would be very grateful to you, if you could help out.

After much beta-testing by some lovely friends and getting the all-clear, the English-language version of my survey is up, here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=depShi7qTx5TZCB3SiS_2bZQ_3d_3d

Please, please, please click on the link and take the survey if:

• you can speak/read/understand at least a little bit of English
• you can speak/read/understand at least a little bit of Chinese
• You use the internet to communicate with other people
• You are 18 or older

If you have any questions about anything, please email me at estewar4@une.edu.au

(Did I mention how grateful I will be if you participate in my research?)

So many people have researched how we use the internet and what affect it has on our literacy, our language, our friendships, our family lives, and on our multiple identities.

So what am I doing that’s so different?

Well, I guess I’m taking a lot of what has already been researched for granted. I’ve been using email for fifteen years, IM and chat for ten years, and blog for five years.
(I know, I know. I’m late to the game. But in high school I was living in rural Queensland where there was one internet-connected computer in the community centre. I swapped some admin and cleaning work in exchange for using the internet once a week. I would do my maths homework as I waited for each page to load! But I made up for it. When I got to a (slightly) bigger city, I developed a chat addiction… I had to go cold turkey for a while there. Now there people whom I’ve never seen face to face, but who have been my friends for ten years - not just on Facebook or Twitter, but in RL, too.)

Some of the research talks about teenagers having four or more email addresses. *I* have more than four email addresses, and I use each of them regularly for different, unrelated purposes. This is not a new phenomenon for me. I am not an outsider exploring a strange concept. This is real, normal life.

By the same token, there has been a lot of research into linguistic identities, how some bilingual people feel like they have different identities when they speak each of their different languages.

For me, the idea I want to explore is the combination of the different linguistic identities and online identities. When you blog in Chinese, do you have a different identity or a different persona, compared to when you blog in English? Will you flame on a forum someone in English, but not in Chinese? Do you have English-speaking sock puppets or Chinese-speaking alts? Are you more honest about yourself online when you are speaking your mother tongue?

I have been travelling in China.

This year I was the proud recipient of the Endeavour Language Teacher Fellowship, which is awarded annually by the Australian Government. I had a lovely time travelling with a group of other Chinese language teachers to Beijing, Shanghai, Yangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing. I had fun living the life of a foreign student at Nanjing University, and learned a lot about Chinese Internet language from some new friends.

Now I am back and am getting back to work on my research!

The survey is up and is in Beta mode. I decided to go with Survey Monkey… and then had to figure out how to work it. It turns out, I can’t do anything fancy in the text using .html or other codes, but I think it looks okay. I have sent it to some friends for beta testing, and hope to have it up online within the week.

Meanwhile, I am on the hunt for blogs.

If you have arrived at this site and know of any bilingual Chinese/English blogs, I would be forever grateful if you would leave me their URL in a comment or in an email (estewar4@une.edu.au).

Hi!

Welcome to my research blog.
This is where I will keep track of information I come across that will relate to my study of the linguistic identity of bilingual bloggers.

This page probably won’t be updated so often, but unless I am being terribly slack, I will post at least monthly in the blog portion of the site.

Please feel free to comment or leave me links or feedback.

:)
emmajeans