TY - JOUR
T1 - “See you soon! ADD OIL AR!”
T2 - Code-switching for face-work in edu-social Facebook groups
AU - Chau, Dennis
AU - Lee, Carmen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Despite a rich body of research on face-work, how it is performed in online edu-social groups remains under-explored. Drawing on posts and comments of Facebook groups created for courses at a university in Hong Kong, together with interviews with students, tutors, and the lecturer, this article examines how code-switching is deployed as a powerful discursive resource in the performance of face-work. Notwithstanding English being the medium of instruction of the courses, code-switching is noticeable. Focusing on these participants' practices, our analysis discovers that code-switching serves primarily to signal the breakdown of the expectedly formal academic participation frame and the switch to an informal frame. Multiple layers of action frames are collaboratively and constantly designed and redesigned in these ‘social network-educational spaces’ (Chau and Lee, 2017), where the formal-informal, public-private, and academic-social boundaries become indistinct. Closer analysis within and across the spaces further reveals that norms of appropriateness of code-switching to achieve informality and solidarity may vary depending on a combination of individual, contextual, and temporal factors. In addition to contributing to existing literature on code-switching and face-work on Facebook, the article offers practical implications for understanding the increasingly informalized discourses in institutional contexts.
AB - Despite a rich body of research on face-work, how it is performed in online edu-social groups remains under-explored. Drawing on posts and comments of Facebook groups created for courses at a university in Hong Kong, together with interviews with students, tutors, and the lecturer, this article examines how code-switching is deployed as a powerful discursive resource in the performance of face-work. Notwithstanding English being the medium of instruction of the courses, code-switching is noticeable. Focusing on these participants' practices, our analysis discovers that code-switching serves primarily to signal the breakdown of the expectedly formal academic participation frame and the switch to an informal frame. Multiple layers of action frames are collaboratively and constantly designed and redesigned in these ‘social network-educational spaces’ (Chau and Lee, 2017), where the formal-informal, public-private, and academic-social boundaries become indistinct. Closer analysis within and across the spaces further reveals that norms of appropriateness of code-switching to achieve informality and solidarity may vary depending on a combination of individual, contextual, and temporal factors. In addition to contributing to existing literature on code-switching and face-work on Facebook, the article offers practical implications for understanding the increasingly informalized discourses in institutional contexts.
KW - Code-switching
KW - Face-work
KW - Facebook
KW - Hong Kong
KW - Informality
KW - Social network-educational space
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112598639&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.019
DO - 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112598639
SN - 0378-2166
VL - 184
SP - 18
EP - 28
JO - Journal of Pragmatics
JF - Journal of Pragmatics
ER -