LINGUIST List 24.2922
Thu Jul 18 2013
Diss: Applied Ling/ Socioling: Lenihan: 'The Interaction of Language Policy, Minority Languages and New Media: A study of the Facebook translations application'
Editor for this issue: Rebekah McClure
<rebekahlinguistlist.org>
Date: 15-Jul-2013
From: Aoife Lenihan <aoife.lenihan
ul.ie>
Subject: Applied Ling/ Socioling: Lenihan: 'The Interaction of Language Policy, Minority Languages and New Media: A study of the Facebook translations application'
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Institution: University of Limerick
Program: PhD Applied Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2013
Author: Aoife Lenihan
Dissertation Title: The Interaction of Language Policy, Minority Languages and New Media - A Study of the Facebook Translations Application
Dissertation URL:
http://academia.edu/2470294/The_Interaction_of_Language_Policy_Minority_Lan
Linguistic Field(s):
Applied Linguistics
Sociolinguistics
Dissertation Director:
Helen Kelly-Holmes
Dissertation Abstract:
The site of this research is new media, primarily the WWW. Language policyhas traditionally been seen as the work of governments and their institutionsand not related to domains such as Web 2.0. The primary research questionof this thesis is to consider: what impact do new media have on languagepolicy, in particular with regard to minority languages? It focuses on both the‘top-down’ language policy and the increasingly ‘bottom-up’ languagepractices in new media. It is situated within the field of ‘new mediasociolinguistics’ and aspires to move the focus of this area from the issue oflinguistic diversity to the issue of language policy. What differentiates it fromprevious work is its attempt to link practice on the WWW with languagepolicy. The method of investigation is virtual ethnography, which involveslooking at computer-mediated communication (CMC) in online networks andcommunities, analysing the language content and observing the onlineinteractions at the level of the users. It is used here to observe andinvestigate the de facto language policies on Facebook. It was the potentialuse of the community driven Facebook Translations app as a mechanism oflanguage policy by ‘bottom-up’ interests, which first drew the researcher’sattention. In terms of language policy, Facebook, the Irish languagecommunity and their members act in both a ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ sensedepending on the context of the situation, and thus the current researchdemonstrates that the assumed dichotomy of ‘bottom-up’ forces opposed to‘top-down’ forces is not always in evidence. It conceptualises language policyas a process, ongoing and fluid, developed discursively and via the practicesof commercial entities and language speakers. Furthermore, it finds thatlanguage ideologies play a primary role in language policy processes andconsiders if the future of language policy will be driven by ‘produsers’ (Bruns,2008).
Page Updated: 18-Jul-2013