“See you soon! ADD OIL AR!”: Code-switching for face-work in edu-social Facebook groups

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics Vol. 184; pp. 18 - 28
• Main Authors: Chau, Dennis, Lee, Carmen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.10.2021; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Code switching; College students; Computer mediated communication; Face-work; Facebook; Hong Kong; Informality; Linguistics; Medium of instruction; Politeness; Social media; Social network-educational space; Social networks; Social network-educational space; Hong Kong; Face-work; Facebook; Informality; Code-switching
• ISSN: 0378-2166; 1879-1387
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.019

Despite a rich body of research on face-work, how it is performed in online edu-social groups remains under-explored. Drawing on posts and comments of Facebook groups created for courses at a university in Hong Kong, together with interviews with students, tutors, and the lecturer, this article examines how code-switching is deployed as a powerful discursive resource in the performance of face-work. Notwithstanding English being the medium of instruction of the courses, code-switching is noticeable. Focusing on these participants' practices, our analysis discovers that code-switching serves primarily to signal the breakdown of the expectedly formal academic participation frame and the switch to an informal frame. Multiple layers of action frames are collaboratively and constantly designed and redesigned in these ‘social network-educational spaces’ (Chau and Lee, 2017), where the formal-informal, public-private, and academic-social boundaries become indistinct. Closer analysis within and across the spaces further reveals that norms of appropriateness of code-switching to achieve informality and solidarity may vary depending on a combination of individual, contextual, and temporal factors. In addition to contributing to existing literature on code-switching and face-work on Facebook, the article offers practical implications for understanding the increasingly informalized discourses in institutional contexts. •Code-switching is a face-work strategy to achieve informality and express solidarity in social network-educational spaces.•Norms of appropriateness of code-switching vary depending on individual, contextual, and temporal factors.•This paper contributes to the strand of literature on face-work with a focus on online discourse in a multilingual setting.