The Discursive Construction of Online Vernacular Writing

Abstract

The previous chapter explored vernacular writing by looking at what people said on Facebook and the linguistic resources they used to say it. This chapter explores vernacular writing by looking at what Usman said in interviews about his choice of the written and spoken forms of the linguistic resources discussed in the previous chapter and how he defines and justifies the use of these language resources online. The aim here, therefore, is to explore how online vernacular writing is constructed in the self-report interviews. I analyse the discursive strategies and linguistic means and forms of realisation that are employed to legitimise why specific language resources are used. These choices are influenced by the evaluations individuals make about different language varieties. Because these language ideologies are ‘cultural ideas, presumptions and presuppositions with which different social groups name, frame and evaluate linguistic practices’ (Gal 2006: 13), in the analysis I examine how language choices are (re)constructed by the key respondent in this study in order to identify the linguistic and rhetorical traces which he uses to describe his language practices. The texts I analyse are two self-report interviews with Usman in which I asked him about the reasons people use different languages and literacies in the online data.