This book seeks to contribute to the critical applied linguistics by
investigating the dynamic role of English on social media, focusing on
EFL university students in East Asia - Mongolia and Japan. Drawing on
sets of Facebook data, the book primarily emphasizes that the presence
of English on social media should be understood as 'translingual' not
only due to its multiple recombinations of resources, genres, modes,
styles, and repertories but also due to its direct connections with a
broader socio-cultural, historical and ideological meanings. Secondly,
EFL university students metalinguistically claim multiple ideologies of
linguistic authenticities in terms of their usage of 'translingual
Englishes' on social media as opposed to other colliding language
ideologies such as linguistic purity and linguistic dystopia. The
question of how they reclaim the notion of linguistic authenticity,
however, profoundly differs, depending on their own often-diverse
criteria, identities, beliefs, and ideas. This shows that mixing and
mingling at its very core, the existence of 'translingual Englishes' on
social media provides us with a significant view to accommodate the
multiple co-existence and multiple origins of authenticity in the
increasingly interconnected world. The book concludes the possibility of
applying the ideas of 'translingual Englishes' on social media in
critical EFL classroom settings, in their careful re-assessment of the
complexity of contemporary linguistic experiences and beliefs of their
EFL learners.
