Language, Culture, and Identity in Online Fanfiction

TLDR

The study uses theories from second‑language acquisition, literacy, cultural, and media studies to examine how networked technologies and fan culture give a young English‑language learner a platform for developing her English language and writing skills. The aim is to explore how identity shifts over time as the ELL participates long‑term in a fan community. The authors analyze how popular and fan culture serve as points of affiliation and dialogic resources that the learner appropriates in her writing and interactions with other fans. The article shows that through engagement with popular culture and technology, the adolescent ELL develops a powerful, transcultural identity, becoming a popular, multiliterate writer whose identity is discursively constructed from diverse cultural perspectives and literacies shared by fans worldwide.

Abstract

This article draws on constructs in second-language acquisition, literacy, cultural, and media studies as theoretical bases for examining how networked technologies and fan culture provide a young English language learner (ELL) with a site for developing her English language and writing skills. During this process, she also develops an online identity as a popular, multiliterate writer. To understand how this happens, the notion of identity is explored as a fluid construct that shifts over time with this ELL's long-term participation in a fan community. Popular and fan culture are also examined as points of affiliation and as dialogic resources that she appropriates, both in her writing and in her interactions with other fans. In so doing, the article demonstrates how popular culture and technology converge to provide a context in which this adolescent ELL is able to develop a powerful, transcultural identity, discursively constructed through the different cultural perspectives and literacies that she and other fans from across the globe bring to this space.