English social media and the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Sociolinguistic and educational implications in the context of Japanese EFL university students
Monday, 25 September 2017 - 5:30 pm
Location
Where: 
Arts Building, 70 Laurier Avenue East (map)
Room number: 
509
Contact information
Contact person: 
Alysse Weinberg
Email: 
weinberg@uottawa.ca
Registration
Registration required: 
No
Cost to attend: 
Free of charge
  • This event is offered only in English.
Event type: 
Lectures & conferences, Lecture/talk
Event organizer: 
Modern Languages and Literatures
Event language: 
English
Intended audience: 
Future Students, Open to all, Students, Undergraduate students, Graduate students, Professors, Staff, Alumni, Public
Event sponsors: 
Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI) and Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

The linguascape of English social media and the Fukushima nuclear disaster: The sociolinguistic and educational implications in the context of Japanese EFL university students

Guest lecture by Dr. Sender Dovchin, Associate Professor at the Centre for Language Research, the University of Aizu, Japan

Monday, 25 September 2017, 5:30 pm, MHN 509

Abstract

This study conducts a critical discourse analysis on English language Western social media such as Facebook through the “eyes of Japanese EFL university students”, focusing on thematic issues specifically related to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. She argues that the overall linguistic diversity and sociolinguistic practices of social media participants should be better understood through the notion of “linguascape” rather than the traditional terms such as “mono/bi/multilingualism and codeswitching/codemixing” because of the social media users’ recontextualization of varied transnational flows of linguistic, cultural and semiotic resources circulating across the current globalization.