View Content #26840

By Misaki Kato, CASLS Fellow

Engaging students can be one of the most difficult things to do in any classroom. Using authentic materials is one way to grab students’ attention as it offers them opportunities to connect their learning with how their target language is used in real communication. However, does the use of authentic materials, such as social media, create authentic learning experience for learners? In this Topic of the Week, we consider how authentic materials can be used, particularly through the use of hashtags, to help learners gain insight in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication.

An increasing amount of discourses happen in the digital world, shaping interactions at various levels ranging from personal conversations among friends to news or advertisements regarding politicians, celebrities, and companies (Steiglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2012). One common form of digitally-mediated communication is hashtags, a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (such as #BlackLivesMatter in the example below), used to identify specific topics in the form of “social tagging” (Zappavigna, 2015) in platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Hashtags have become integrated in people’s communication so deeply; for example, #blacklivesmatter was voted Word of the Year by American Dialect Society in 2014 (https://bit.ly/2UbmLkP).

@telesurenglish  Today marks the 51th anniversary of the assassination of #MartinLutherKingJr. He was an iconic civil rights and human rights leader who pushed the #US to live up to its rhetorical ideals of freedom, democracy and equality. #MLK #BlackLivesMatter

With hashtags being so ubiquitous, understanding and being able to use them has become a prominent part of multilingual communication. But how can language teachers approach the use of hashtags in second/foreign language classroom? Sykes (in press) identifies three functions that serve as a goal for learners’ interaction(s) in multilingual/multicultural contexts:

• Function 1: Marketing and public relations
• Function 2: Interpersonal interaction
• Function 3: Text organization

Analyzing how corporations, celebrities, and politicians use hashtags (Function 1) can provide a window into understanding language and cultural trends in both learners’ native and non-native languages. People use hashtags at a more personal level as well (Function 2) to build solidarity with members inside a smaller community. For example, in the following tweet, #dogmama indicates a community of dog owners who may especially relate to the content of the tweet.

@MissGadsby Unplanned visitor means I’m sharing a single bed with my dog for the night #comfy #squashed #dogmama

Finally, Sykes (in press) suggests that grouping and categorizing hashtags (Function 3) based on similarity, particularly through translation and analysis of event-driven trends, is useful for broadening learners’ perspectives and promoting their engaged participation. For example, translations of a hashtag about a particular event in multiple languages allow learners to examine how speakers of those languages view the event.

These three functions of hashtags provide a framework for connecting learners’ experience with authentic materials, helping learners not only to participate in digitally-mediated communication in the target language but also to extend their cultural understanding beyond digital contexts. However, as Sykes and Reinhardt (2013) suggest, authentic materials do not necessarily create authentic learning experiences for learners. That is, consideration for task design is critical to make the use of authentic materials personally relevant to the learners, encouraging them to create authenticity in their own experiences. Hashtags and other types of social media materials are authentic communication tools that people are increasingly using in multi-lingual/multi-cultural communities. However, whether learners are able to create authenticity in their experience of analyzing or using these tools depends largely on the activity that integrates the use of these tools.

References

Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2012, January). Political communication and influence through microblogging--An empirical analysis of sentiment in Twitter messages and retweet behavior. In System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 3500-3509). IEEE.

Sykes, J. M. and Reinhardt, J. (2013). Language at Play: Digital Games in Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

Sykes (in press, 2019). Emergent digital discourse(s): What cat we learn from hashtags and digital games to expand learners’ second language repertoire? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 39.

Zappavigna, M. (2015). Searchable talk: the linguistic functions of hashtags. Social Semiotics, 25(3), 274-291.