Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Page 173

identity. When looking at the data presented in the analysis the use of linguistic
features associated with English seems to be used in different ways among the
participants: Sometimes it is used as a lingua franca, sometimes it is used as a
stylistic resource and sometimes the use of English appears unmarked and an
integrated part of the participants’ everyday language use. In the latter instances,
it appears as if the borders between what is English and Icelandic are blurred and
not relevant from a participant perspective. Furthermore, the use of local vs.
global identities in the analysis only takes us so far in describing what is going on
when English is used as a linguistic resource among the participants. One could
have wished for a more detailed analysis of the indexical values of English and a
more elaborate description of what identities are actually constructed (and nego-
tiated) when the participants use English in different ways on Facebook — and
not least, what social functions such identity work serves.
I also want to address the topic of linguistic normativity and the participants’
use of different correction practices. I want to take Figure 29 (p. 142) as a point
of departure. In this interaction the participant C1 corrects the language use/lan-
guage choice of the participant Sonja. Sonja has written a Facebook post in
German and C1 reacted by posting this explicit metalinguistic comment: “Ice -
landic is our language. I don’t want to see such nonsense from you! 😉”. Based
on this I ask the following questions:
Is this the only example of explicit orientation toward language choice?
Do you find other types of metalinguistic corrections in your data? (E.g.
spelling mistakes, typos etc. which could provide knowledge about the partic-
ipant’s normative orientations toward standard orthography in practice.)

Vanessa Isenmann:
Yes, there are other examples, which show how the users must navigate dif-
ferent audiences and that this can become tricky at times.
Firstly, there is the user Hafbjörg with a post about the Eurovision song
contest, in which she complains about the fact that she cannot vote in the
first semifinal. This complaint is written in Icelandic. A German-speaking
friend responds to the post asking for clarification because she sees the word
Þýskaland (‘Germany’) in the post. The German-speaking friend under-
stands that word but not what the rest of the post is about. In her response
to the comment, Hafbjörg explains the topic of her initial post to her
German friends and the conversation in the comment section then moves to
a German exchange.
In another exchange the informant Valdís reports about starting on a
new job, in fact she becomes the head of a political party and people read
about it on the news. The informant herself posts her new job title on her
Facebook profile. Following this,Valdís receives a lot of congratulations and
Comments and discussion points from the second opponent 173