Anywhere in the globalized world, a language learner who has a smart phone and
internet connection can interact with multiple facets of their L2. In their leisure time, many of
these same language learners engage with the social media application Instagram. Rather than
considering these two things independently, I propose that L2 learners become multilingual
Instagram users. There are different possibilities for multilingual involvement on Instagram:
from seeking out original L2 content, to disabling and re-enabling automatic translation
functions to create parallel texts, as well as the creation of L2 content by learners. My journey
as a polyglot informs this presentation of methods that transform Instagram into a language
learning tool. Aside from my experience as an avid Instagram user in five languages, I draw from
applied linguistics research on multimodality in language acquisition and I use the pedagogy of
multiliteracies described by Cope & Kalantzis (2015) as a theoretical foundation. Rather than
yielding to the ease of using automatic translators and making social media content conform to
our L1, I show how to harness a popular social media tool in order to promote polyglossia.
