Social Media as an Extension of, and Negotiation Space for, a Community of Practice: A Comparison of Nouchi and Tsotsitaal

Abstract

This chapter investigates two African (urban) youth languages, one from Cote d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast and one from South Africa, and their use on social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, to highlight how community, meaning and identity are negotiated through these language practices, as well as through other semiotic moves on these social media platforms. The chapter makes the argument that these described practices can be seen as the negotiation of a ‘community of practice’ in Wenger’s (Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) terms. This means that the social media domain provides a space for users to collectively learn and bond through interactions which create shared (language and other) resources. In this chapter we show how the different construals of Nouchi and Tsotsitaal operate socially within the online space, and unveil the metapragmatic and ideological stances signalled by interactions in Nouchi and Tsotsitaal. The comparison also highlights how these youth varieties very closely mirror each other in their different national contexts, suggesting that the work they do is central to contemporary African youth identities.