Translanguaging dynamics in the digital landscape: insights from a social media corpus

Abstract

Based on a new Turkish social media influencer corpus consisting of 30 YouTube vlogs, this study explores young adults’ translanguaging practices, prevalent linguistic events, and spatial repertoires in communication. The analysis focuses on vlogs, where linguistic resources become available in relation to the activities, audience, and organization of places or objects and young adults’ translanguaging practices and their situated functions. The findings demonstrate how to use translanguaging as a comprehensive methodology to analyze communication unfolding with multimodal, multilingual, and digital semiotic repertoires at speakers’ disposal and for the imagined audience integral to the communication in vlogs. Taking a corpus-linguistics perspective to translanguaging, we propose a usage-based focus and undertake a broader understanding of translanguaging as a linguistic and multimodal phenomenon.

ABSTRACT (TURKISH)

30 YouTube vlogundan oluşan yeni bir Türk sosyal medya etkileyicileri derlemine dayanan bu çalışma, genç yetişkinlerin diller ötesi pratiklerini, vloglarda hakim olan dilsel olayları ve iletişimdeki mekansal repertuarlarını incelemektedir. Analizin odağında genç yetişkinlerin dilsel kaynaklarının, etkinlikler, izleyici ve mekanların veya nesnelerin düzenlenmesi, diller ötesi pratikler ve bu pratiklerin yerleşik işlevleri ile ilişkili olarak kullanılabilir hale geldiği vloglar bulunmaktadır. Bulgular, vloglardaki iletişimin ayrılmaz bir parçası olan hayali izleyici için üretilen iletişimin konuşmacıların tasarrufunda olan çoklu modlu, çokdilli ve dijital göstergesel repertuarlar ile bir bütün olduğunu ve bu iletişimi çözümlemek için kapsamlı bir metodoloji olan diller ötesilik kuramının kullanılabileceğini göstermektedir. Bu çalışma, diller ötesiliği derlembilim destekli bir yaklaşımla ele alarak, kullanıma dayalı bir odak önermekte ve diller ötesiliği dilbilimsel ve çok modlu bir olgu olarak daha kapsamlı bir anlayışla ele almaktadır.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

In our research, we look at how people use language in their everyday online videos (vlogs). Central to our study is the concept of translanguaging. It is a practical theory of language that helps us understand how people use different languages together, get creative with language, and create new ways of communicating online. This perspective goes beyond the traditional view, which treats multilingualism as simply switching between distinct linguistic systems. This is especially important on social media where global and local influences interact, and users access new activity spaces. We built a specialized corpus that contains 30 vlogs of six Turkish social media influencers on YouTube and used software called ELAN. This helped us analyze how they use both languages and visuals to communicate. What we found is that these influencers translanguage, use unique expressions, and include visual elements to connect with their audience online. Our study also emphasizes how interpreting and self-­interpreting in translanguaging helps convey meaning for an imagined audience. By studying these practices, we learn more about how language works in today’s social media spaces and how it challenges our traditional conceptions of language.

Keywords:

• vlog
• translanguaging
• social media corpus
• spatial repertoire
• social media influencer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ethics approval for the larger project on which this research was based was obtained from the METU Human Research Ethics Committee with protocol number 0044-ODTUİAEK-2022.