Online Translanguaging Practices Among Hispanic International Students in the United States

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the translanguaging practices on social networks of Hispanic international students in American universities, with a focus on how they translanguage and what social functions their translanguaging practices have. To answer these questions, this study examines the posts and messages of five participants through critical and multilingual discourse analysis. The results show that participants translanguage within the lexical, at the lexical, and at the sentential level, while evidencing a high level of creativity. The type of translanguage and its frequency is closely linked to the audience and the social network used: participants translanguage more frequently and in more diverse ways when communicating with fellow SpanishEnglish bilingual international students, while expressing different identities and different emotions. The present study suggests that translanguaging is more complex product than a mixture of two languages and its presence is highly reliant on the audience.