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Facebook as Transnational Space: Language and Identity among 1.5 and Second Generation Mexicans in Chicago

Christiansen, Martha Sidury Juarez Lopez
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366196872

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, EDU Teaching and Learning.
This dissertation documents a two-year ethnographic study of a Mexican-origin transnational network members’ engagement with each other via Facebook. By focusing on four emic criteria – language, skin color, transnationalism, and culture display and practice – this project examines the ways in which network members’ participation on Facebook supports and complicates two major practices – displaying of identity, and displaying of a new social order (of centralization and marginalization). Using an ethnography of communication and indexicality framework, the analysis of Facebook data shows that, through language use, members of this transnational social network use multiple varieties of English and Spanish to invoke language ideologies of purism, standardization, and bilingualism. Simultaneously, members also index three fluid and complex identities: transnational U.S. Mexican identity, ranchero identity, and indigenous Mexican identity. In constructing and negotiating these three multivalent identities, members are shifting their social order from a traditional hierarchy based on age and gender, to one of centrality and marginalization, contingent upon members’ perceived levels of Mexicanness and degree bilingualism. Members’ level of Spanish proficiency alone is not as important as the ability to switch back and forth between different varieties of English and Spanish (codeswitching). The more bilingual a member is, the more central he or she is placed within the network. Facebook has allowed members to construct a transnational discourse in which their language becomes localized, causing members to feel they are in the same place. As members of the network engage in Facebook conversations with others in both Mexico and in the U.S., Facebook becomes a multimodal platform where members can share pictures and events, thus creating the sense that they are experiencing the same event at the same time. Facebook used as an imagined space allows members to keep in touch with their growing family in an organized way, to fulfill their family roles (such as monitoring youth behavior), and strengthen ties and relationships with other members. Additionally, members of the network also use Facebook’s transnational space to construct identities and experiences together, or contest presentations of self that exaggerate or romanticize an identity or do not reflect the identity that others see in them. While members of the network leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the participation by family members in the U.S. and in Mexico forces all users to grapple with the dynamics of display of identity and social order. Often, in doing so, members rework their notions of what it means to be Mexican. As members of the network engage in Facebook conversations, they constantly reconstruct their identities, and they indirectly index a centralized placed in their network on the basis of being more Mexican than others in the network, and as an authentic Mexican in the larger U.S. Mexican-origin society. The study of language ideologies and identities is paramount to understanding the linguistic and academic choices that second language learners and bilingual students such as the Mexican-origin individuals in this study could make.
Marcia Farr (Advisor)
Leslie Moore (Committee Member)
Alan Hirvela (Committee Member)
491 p.
Bilingual Education; Communication; Cultural Anthropology; English As A Second Language; Ethnic Studies; Foreign Language; Hispanic Americans; Language; Latin American Studies; Linguistics; Modern Language; Multilingual Education; Social Structure; Sociolinguistics; Technology
identity; language ideology; bilingualism; Facebook; language varieties; sociolinguistics; social network sites; Mexican; second-generation; language use; codeswitching; discourse analysis; indexicality; Latinos in the U.S.; transnationalism; ranchero

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Christiansen, M. S. J. L. (2013). Facebook as Transnational Space: Language and Identity among 1.5 and Second Generation Mexicans in Chicago [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366196872

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Christiansen, Martha Sidury. Facebook as Transnational Space: Language and Identity among 1.5 and Second Generation Mexicans in Chicago. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366196872.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Christiansen, Martha Sidury. "Facebook as Transnational Space: Language and Identity among 1.5 and Second Generation Mexicans in Chicago." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366196872

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1366196872
6,402
© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.