Mediated Bricolage and the Sociolinguistic Co-Construction of No Sabo Kids

Bibliographic Data

ID5901488
AuthorsSalvatore Callesano (0000-0002-6312-9608, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume8
Issue3
Pages206
Publication date2023-08-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages8030206
OpenAlexW4386324527
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited56

Sociolinguistic styles and the resultant ascribed identities are understood as the product of simultaneous variables, leading to the notion of bricolage, or the co-occurrence of variables and their collective indexical meanings. Relatively little attention has been paid to these processes as they manifest on social media platforms. The goal of the current paper is to understand which linguistic and thematic features co-occur in the online production of the no sabo kid style and identity, which manifests as a form of linguistic discrimination towards U.S. Latinx youth. "Hashtag communities" were used to locate posts about no sabo kids on TikTok (N = 95), and videos were automatically and manually coded for salient linguistic and discursive resources in the online no sabo kid community. The results show the co-occurrence of code-switching and phonological and lexical variation, alongside discursive themes, namely 'proficiency', 'ethnicity', and 'performative lexical gaps'. I argue that the no sabo kid hashtag community is a mediated manifestation of ideologies surrounding U.S. Latinx bilinguals, where a supposed lack of proficiency in Spanish and grammatical blending of Spanish and English index inauthentic ethnicity. Mediated instantiations of sociolinguistic styles shed light on how linguistic features become enregistered through multimodality and semiotic bricolage

Art · Bricolage · Code-switching · Ethnic group · Indexicality · Linguistics · Literature · Multimodality · Performative utterance · Salient · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Style (visual arts · Anthropology · Computer Science · Digital Communication and Language · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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