Weirdos and snobs: Strategies and social meanings of code choice across social media platforms in Argentine fan communities

Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson

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Abstract:

The global circulation of English has led to a concomitant circulation of discourses that posit English as the global language. In Argentina, these discourses operate alongside historical narratives of English that link the language to attempts at British colonization as well as to the country’s elite. Thus, display of English in Argentina is multivalent. It can index both cosmopolitan participation in positively valued global cultural flows, as well as a socially striving orientation to local elites. Young people in Argentina who participate in global media fandoms, particularly for Anglophone franchises like Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Star Wars, reckon with this conflict in unique ways. In this talk, I explore how Argentine fans of English-language media orient to these contrasting discourses through code choice on different social media platforms. Platforms such as Facebook highlight local networks of Argentine fans—thus, in these contexts, use of English is highly marked. While in moderation it can signal claims to an authentic, hard-core fan identity, more frequent use of English can index an elitist, snobbish persona. Other platforms popular with fans, such as Tumblr, do not offer the same affordances for interest- and region-based groupings. Thus, display of English on this platform does not carry the same risk of inadvertently indexing a snobbish persona. On the other hand, engagement with communities on Tumblr also carries with it a risk of being labeled a “weirdo” due to a perceived overinvestment in Anglophone media products. By exploring metapragmatic commentary about how these fans navigate considerations of code choice in digital contexts, I show how local linguistic choices are implicated in broader flows of global linguistic and mediascapes.