The Construction of Mono- and Multilingual Identity Portrayals on Social Media: The Case of Instagram

Abstract

Language has been widely considered a key element in the performing and display of identities and in the construction of our individuality. According to Joseph, “[i]dentities are manifested in language as, first, the categories and labels that people attach to themselves and others to signal their belonging; second, as the indexed ways of speaking and through which they perform their belonging; and third, as the interpretations that others make of those indices” (2016: 19). Norton defines ‘identity’ as “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is structured across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (2013: 45).

2However, in an era of rapidly evolving international interdependence, extant research has not fully caught up with the effect that globalizing processes on the use of language, the performing of identities, and the connection between them. Elsewhere, Blommaert (2010) alludes to the fact that even if globalization has always characterized our societies, the scale and speed of globalizing processes are such that we need to reassess their effect on the social and linguistic conditions of our world.

3One of the early effects of this increased speed of globalizing processes has been the rise of the necessity to learn a foreign language and the increased interest in intercultural learning in the second half of the 20th century (e.g. Morgan & Byram, 2004). In light of these events, at the beginning of the 21st century, it was absolutely exceptional that in Europe children were not taught English at school, and study abroad became almost a must, giving shape to the so‑called “generation Erasmus”, higher education European students who went to study abroad and settled in a third identity-space between an expat and a migrant.

4Nonetheless, the increase in bilingual repertoires where English is usually the second language has also received criticisms from linguists who claim that producing fluid English language users, and thereby flexible workers, merely responds to neoliberal agendas that aim at producing subjects that fit in the political and economic context (e.g. Flores, 2013). And, while more research is needed to understand the dynamics between multilingual repertoires and the economy, what is clear is that multilingualism, together with an increase in human mobility triggered ways to construct identities that are new and should be treated as such.

5In a large number of studies, this phenomenon has been analyzed in relation to migrants (e.g. Pavlenko, 2004). On the other hand, more recent studies, such as Mocanu (2019) focus on the relationship between identities and multilingual repertoires constructed through language learning processes in study abroad programs.