Indigenous Languages in an Online Space: Translanguaging for Visibilisation of Multilingualism and Multisemiotic Modes

Abstract

Drawing on the notion of translanguaging, we show how Facebook actors enact and sustain the use of a variety of Zambia’s indigenous languages alongside the English language. We conceive of Facebook as an online semiotic/linguistic landscape that occasions opportunities for language display through status updates and subsequent comments that draw on English and selected Zambian indigenous languages (Tonga, Bemba, and Nyanja) in the most unpredictable ways. Thus, we argue that translanguaging privileges the visibilisation of multilingualism and multisemiotic modes which help bring to the fore the multiple multilingual identities acted out by the social actors in the process of meaning-making. We argue that translanguaging as a language practice broadens the semiotic resources from which online actors draw without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of the named languages. We insist that meaning on Facebook should be seen from individual positionality anchored on the linguistic freedoms, which eventually enable the social actors to deploy a range of multisemiotic modes.

Keywords:

• indigenous languages
• online conversations
• Facebook
• translanguaging
• social commentary
• stylising identities