Virtual (or unvirtuous?) language use and digital technologies: power niches in social networking sites

Abstract Summary

Abstract :

The connection between language education and digital technologies potentially allows for the emergence of power niches within which individuals can exercise freedom and create possibilities to escape from more powerful oppressive forces (e.g. school regulation). The great challenge of and contribution from the contact between technologies and language learning was language education, as opposed to language instruction (limited and enslaving). The use of digital technologies could be important resource, since teaching was transgressive and allowed for critical reflection and subversion of practices/discourses. I have therefore been giving less prominence to digital technologies as tools of motivation or updating, and started looking at these resources - particularly social networking websites - as a means for the emergence of power niches and zones of autonomy as a consequence of the fact that power could be everywhere and therefore nowhere (Amselle, 2015). Expanding from language learning to language use, we have recently seen evidence that social networking websites consolidate as an environment for the proliferation of these power niches. Through language, groups covering diverse topics (from football teams to political/religious affiliation) have emerged and become a niche, which create autonomy zones for the dissemination of previously invisible ideas. Racism, homophobia, sexism and other kinds of prejudice spread endemically and seemingly yield force, through language, to the power niches. In such niches, individuals can develop zones of autonomy where oppressive powers can be confronted. In this presentation, my aim is to reflect on the use of digital technologies, more specifically social networking sites, by individuals once invisible, to build and/or reinforce their power niches and their autonomous zones by the language they use. There may be collateral issues, such as the impermeability of the power niches to discourses in opposition, as well as questions regarding the conditions for the emergence of such groups.

Pre-recorded video :