Veranstaltungsprogramm

This paper discusses how heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981) in digital realms facilitates interaction and kinship management among translocated speakers of Marwari, a marginalized dialect of Western India, to illuminate the ways online communicative practices serve as an instrument for the sustentation of language and culture.

The present-day globalized world, characterized by the growing mobility of individuals and internet-enabled connectedness, has led to the flourishing of online communities. This paper draws an intersection between language, new media, and translocality to explicate the interconnectedness of digi-social actors through heteroglossic communicative repertoires that shape their lived experiences. To this end, it studies how Marwari natives transcend the limits of physical territories, bond on social media platforms, engage in social rituals, and maintain ties with their kin.

The paper attempts to answer the following questions:

• How are digital media enabling community formation, transmission of traditional knowledge, and construction of socio-cultural identities?
• What cultural values and practices are reflected in the content that users create and consume on social media?
• How does translocality on the internet expand a dialect/language’s use and preservation?

Methodologically, the paper will examine interactions of a WhatsApp extended family group of 55 native speakers of Marwari. Multimodal discourse analyses of this group’s text exchanges and semiotic elements will show how the family flexibly exploits the diverse lingua-communicative affordances of the digital medium for translocalization purposes. This will be complemented by a content analysis of Marwari language textual (posts, comments, messages, etc.) and multimedia (viz. images, memes, gifs) data available on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The findings will illuminate how language serves as a means as well as a product of navigating translocal socialization in digitized times, thereby contributing to the understanding of linguistic sustainability in this globalized world.