SOCIAL NETWORKING, SOCIALIZATION, AND SECOND LANGUAGE WRITERS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW IDENTITIES AND LITERACIES

The availability of Web 2.0 tools and multiple modalities through digital media is promoting a growing renaissance in linguistic diversity and cultural affiliations, providing a cosmopolitan and plurilingual and multicultural landscape for multilingual users. Full participation in these digitally-mediated activities involves not only printbased literacy but also new literacies that are emerging within Internet-mediated social and communicative contexts. In an effort to better understand how these communication technologies can be used to enhance second language acquisition (SLA), this study explores the relationship between social networking and second language (L2) learning. Grounded within theoretical frameworks of an ecological approach to language (van Lier, 2004), second language socialization (Duff, 2008), and new literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006), this dissertation examines use of social networking sites (SNS) by L2 learners/users of English as a group and as individuals over time in social networking communities through a mixed method approach, including quantitative (e.g., survey) and qualitative (e.g., case study) methods. The ultimate goal is not simply to describe the use of SNS by L2 users, but to apply the findings to L2 writing pedagogy that can bridge students’ inschool and out-of-school literacy practices, and to examine the efficacy of that pedagogy. The intent here is not only to fill in the research gap in the literature on social media and SLA but also to inform second language writing pedagogy. The three interrelated studies are comprised of 1) a survey-based study of SNS literacy practices and second language learning, 2) a longitudinal case study of two L2