Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Blaðsíða 172

tic to me. Vanessa makes a similar argument when writing about the relation
between language and identity. She writes (p. 182):
For example, the informants emphasize their local Icelandic identity and
affiliate themselves with fellow Icelanders or the Icelandic speech commu-
nity by drawing on Icelandic features. By employing multilingual practices,
in turn, users can bring their multicultural competence to the forefront. The
users Hekla and Móa, for example, repeatedly draw on both Icelandic and
English features in their contributions, thereby projecting glocal identities.
While Icelandic in these cases serves to address fellow Icelanders and to
assert local affiliation, English borrowings, idioms, and phrases aid users in
performing a cosmopolitan personality.
Similarly to the analysis of language choice and audience design, Vanessa argues
that the use of Icelandic features indexes local affiliation, the mixing of linguistic
features indexes glocal identities, i.e. including both local and global factors, and
the use of English indexes a global or cosmopolitan identity. Again this appears
a bit too simplistic to me. Against this background, I ask the following questions:
Is it really that simple?
Does English always index global identities? Or could English also be a way
to reach an Icelandic-speaking audience when used as a stylistic feature,
unmarked “borrowing” etc.?

Vanessa Isenmann:
I would argue that in social media people always write for an audience.
Therefore, the imagined target audience always plays a crucial role for the
users’ linguistic practices. I cannot think of a situation in which someone
would share something on Facebook or another social network site (SNS)
without having any audience in mind or without doing the sharing for some-
one. And of course, English does not always index glocal identities, it can
very well be used for stylistic purposes, for example to index informality
and a personal connection. I have shown this in several examples in my the-
sis, for example in a conversation in the comment section of a post by the
user Hilda about the Eurovision song contest. In the comments Hilda and
one of her contacts go back and forth about the performances at the Euro -
vision song contest. Both Hilda and her contact repeatedly use English bor-
rowings in their contributions, thereby suggesting a close and informal rela-
tionship with each other.

My point is that Vanessa appears to reproduce an ethnolinguistic assumption, by
establishing a (rather) direct link between language (choice) and (local/global)
Andreas Candefors Stæhr172