Abstract

This study describes how members of a transnational social network of Mexican bilinguals living in Chicago manipulate their language on online social media to facilitate and maintain close connections across borders. Using a discourse-centered online ethnographic approach, I examine conversations posted on members’ Facebook walls and the contexts in which the discourses are formed. I argue that members of this transnational social network engage in the use of deterritorialized discourse to create chronotopes; that is, through discourse, members connect temporal and spatial relationships and form them into a single constructed context. These chronotopes help members recontextualize Facebook as a unique transnational social place that connects families and allows for the continuation of cultural practices that maintain their transnationalism. This study sheds light on the use of linguistic resources and modes of communication to examine how individuals construct imagined experiences within a real intimate community in the deterritorialized space of online social media.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2017-04-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088317693996
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. College Composition and Communication
  2. Computers and Composition
  3. College English

References (54) · 4 in this index

  1. Agha A. (2007). Recombinant selves in mass mediated spacetime. Language & Communication, 27(3), 320-335. http…
  2. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism
  3. Androutsopoulos J. (2008). Potentials and limitations of discourse-centred online ethnography. Language@Inter…
  4. Handbook of language and globalization
  5. The dialogic imagination: Four essays
Show all 54 →
  1. Transnational literate lives in digital times
  2. Blommaert J., Backus A. (2011). Repertoires revisited: Knowing language in superdiversity. Working Papers in …
  3. Blommaert J., Collins J., Slembrouck S. (2005). Spaces of multilingualism. Language & Communication, 25(3), 1…
  4. boyd d. m. (2008). Taken out of context: American teen sociality in networked publics (Unpublished doctoral d…
  5. A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites
  6. Brenner J. (2013, December 31). Pew Internet: Social networking (full detail). Retrieved from http://www.pewi…
  7. Burrell J., Anderson K. (2008). “I have great desires to look beyond my world”: Trajectories of information a…
  8. Christiansen M. S. (2015a). “A ondi queras”: Ranchero identity construction by U.S. born Mexicans on Facebook…
  9. Christiansen M. S. (2015b). Mexicanness and Social Order in Digital Spaces Contention Among Members of a Mult…
  10. Christiansen M. S. (2016a). “¡Hable Bien M”ijo o Gringo o Mx!’: Language ideologies in the digital communicat…
  11. Continuidades y Cambios en las Migraciones de México a Estados Unidos
  12. Migration from the Mexican Mixteca: A transnational community in Oaxaca and California
  13. Txtng : The Gr8 Db8
  14. Davies J. (2012). Facework on Facebook as a new literacy practice. Computers & Education, 59(1), 19-29. https…
  15. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia
  16. Duggan M., Ellison N. B., Lampe C., Lenhart A., Madden M. (2015, January 9). Social media update 2014. Retrie…
  17. 10.7560/713468
  18. Written Communication
  19. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research
  20. Greenwood S., Perrin A., Duggan M. (2016, November 11). Social media update 2016. Retrieved from http://www.p…
  21. Hutchby I. (2001). Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology, 35(2), 441-456. https://doi.org/10.1177/S0…
  22. 10.2307/468416
  23. INEGI—Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática. (2015). Estadísticas a Propósito del Día Mu…
  24. Jacquemet M. (2005). Transidiomatic practices: Language and power in the age of globalization. Language & Com…
  25. Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide
  26. Multimodal literacy
  27. Discourse analysis
  28. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication
  29. 10.1598/RRQ.44.4.5
  30. Lam W. S. E. (2014). Literacy and capital in immigrant youths’ online networks across countries. Learning, Me…
  31. 10.1080/09500780802152929
  32. Lam W. S. E., Warriner D. S. (2012). Transnationalism and literacy: Investigating the mobility of people, lan…
  33. 10.1525/9780520926707
  34. The changing face of home: The transnational lives of the second generation
  35. 10.1515/9780804779227
  36. Migration and new media: Transnational families and polymedia
  37. Milroy L. (2002). Social networks. In Chambers J. K., Trudgill P., Schilling-Estes N. (Eds.), The handbook of…
  38. Otsuji E., Pennycook A. (2010). Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal…
  39. Rumbaut R. G., Komaie G. (2010). Immigration and adult transitions. Future of Children, 20(1), 43-66. https:/…
  40. 10.4324/9780203129616
  41. 10.1002/9780470758373
  42. Towards a transnational perspective on migration: Race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism…
  43. Mexican New York: Transnational lives of new immigrants
  44. Discourse 2.0: Language and new media
  45. College English
  46. Written Communication
  47. Research in the Teaching of English
  48. 10.4159/harvard.9780674736283
  49. Yi Y. (2009). Adolescent literacy and identity construction among 1.5 generation students: From a transnation…