Moments of sharing: Entextualization and linguistic repertoires in social networking

Abstract

This paper reports findings of a case study of the networked language practices of two young users of the social networking site Facebook. Theoretically informed by sociolinguistics and computer-mediated discourse analysis, this paper contributes to the study of language and participation in social media by developing an empirical approach to sharing and by focusing on the relation between sharing practices and linguistic repertoires. The paper proposes an understanding of sharing as an interactional practice of entextualizing significant moments for a networked audience. Data collection and analysis follow a mixed-methods approach. The primary data consists of the participants’ public Facebook timelines during a period of one year. It is complemented by qualitative interviews and systematic observation of the their digital literacy practices on Facebook. The analysis distinguishes three stages of sharing – selecting, styling, and negotiating – and then moves on to individual case studies, which illustrate how the two participants mobilise linguistic resources in order to share moments of transnational mobility with their audience. The findings show how subtle shifts in the selection, combination and negotiation of linguistic resources index participants’ transnational trajectories and their orientation to particular subsets of their audience, and how the audience takes an active role in negotiating the modes and meanings of sharing in social networking.