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Technologies, Identities, and Expressive Activity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2015

Steven L. Thorne ,
Shannon Sauro  and
Bryan Smith
Steven L. Thorne
Affiliation:
Portland State University and University of Groningensthorne@pdx.edu
Shannon Sauro
Affiliation:
Malmö Universityshannon.sauro@mah.se
Bryan Smith
Affiliation:
Arizona State Universitybryansmith@asu.edu
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Abstract

Digital communication technologies both complexify and help to reveal the dynamics of human communicative activity and capacity for identity performance. Addressing current scholarship on second language use and development, this review article examines research on identity in digital settings either as a design element of educational practice or as a function of participation in noninstitutionally located online cultures. We also address new frontiers and communication in the digital wilds, as it were, and here we focus on cultural production in fandom sites and the processes of transcultural authoring and community building visible in these settings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , Volume 35 , March 2015 , pp. 215 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Black, R. W. (2008). Adolescents and online fanfiction. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

This book presents an ethnographic analysis of adolescent English language learners’ fan fiction authoring and participation in attendant online communities. This research illustrates that fan fiction communities provide rich opportunities for the engaged and interactive use of English, as well as other languages, that resulted in improved composition skills through the creation of narrative identities that developed over time.

Chen, H. (2013). Identity practices of multilingual writers in social networking spaces. Language Learning & Technology, 17 (2), 143–170.

This longitudinal study of two multilingual writers illustrates the power and importance of employing mixed methods in examining SNS interaction. Using multiple methods the author was able to illuminate learners’ own voices and beliefs, allowing for a more complete analysis of the data. While Facebook allowed both participants to navigate across multiple languages, cultures, and identities, they presented themselves differently in the form, quantity, and quality of their SNS use.

Klimanova, L., & Dembovskaya, S. (2013). L2 identity, discourse, and social networking in Russian. Language Learning & Technology, 17 (1), 69–88.

This article illustrates the importance of employing dynamic methodologies in researching online leaner identity. In a two-semester study of interaction between nativeand nonnative speakers on the Russian language SNS site VKontakte, the researchers explored how L2 learners of Russian and Russian heritage speakers discursively established their online L2 identities when interacting with native speakers. They presented clear and compelling benefits of employing interpretive phenomenological analysis of the participants’ experiential accounts of the interaction, especially when it comes to illuminating issues related to power relationships in establishing online identities.

Leppänen, S. (2008). Cybergirls in trouble? Fan fiction as a discursive space for interrogating gender and sexuality. In Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. & Iedema, R. (eds.), Identity trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities (pp. 156–179). Houndmillls, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

This study of young fans in Finland explores how young women write different types of fanfiction including genre parodies and self-insert romantic or tragic fanfiction in English to interrogate gender and sexual identities in Finnish society.

Norton, B., & Toohey, K. (2011). Identity, language learning, and social change. Language Teaching, 44 (4), 412–446.

This state-of-the-art article provides an overview of postructuralist approaches to language, identity, power, and constructs such as investment and imagined communities. It also includes an insightful section on digital technologies, identity, and language learning.

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