Table Of ContentMobile Messaging and Resourcefulness
This book advocates a new post-digital linguistic ethnography approach
to unpacking mobile communication and enabling a more informed
understanding of individuals’ communicative practices in cities today.
Drawing on data from a group of ordinary working people, multilingual
individuals from superdiverse cities across the United Kingdom, the
volume brings observations from this data together to form a new
concept of ‘resourcefulness’ as a means of explaining the emergent sense
of agency individuals develop towards remediating existing forms of
technology in their everyday lives. The book in turn establishes the notion
of the ‘networked individual’ by way of demonstrating the ways in which
communicative practices cross spaces and platforms. Further chapters detail
examples to highlight resourcefulness at work in enabling more efficient
business communication, routes to self-expression and the creation and
development of social support systems, while a concluding chapter looks
at both the limitations and possibilities of resourcefulness and directions
for future research. This innovative volume will be of particular interest to
students and researchers in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic
ethnography, and media and communication studies.
Caroline Tagg is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at The Open
University, UK. Her research into language and digital technologies rests
on the understanding that digital communication practices are deeply
embedded into individuals’ wider lives. She is author of Taking Offence
on Social Media (with Philip Seargeant and Amy Aisha Brown, 2017)
and Message and Medium (with Mel Evans, 2020).
Agnieszka Lyons is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Queen
Mary University of London. Her research employs multimodal and
mediated discourse analytic as well as ethnographic approaches to explore
the discursive construction of embodied identity in polycentric migrant
environments. She has published on issues related to migration and mobility
in Language in Society, Journal of Pragmatics and Social Semiotics, among
others.
Routledge Focus on Language and Social Media
Editors: Sirpa Leppänen and Caroline Tagg
Designed for socially oriented researchers with an interest in language
and technology, this series covers innovative and in-depth studies of
communication through and around social media. The series takes a broad
and inclusive approach, which recognises the rapid expansion of the field,
due not only to the recent proliferation of social media platforms and the
increasing reach of the internet across our working, social and personal lives,
but also to broadening interpretations of what both ‘language’ and ‘social
media’ entail, including growing recognition of the multiple modes used
alongside language, and the embedding of social media in our everyday
lives. Language and Social Media publishes studies concerned with a wide
range of relevant issues and concerns. These include, but are not limited to:
• Identity work; identity trouble
• Constructing and debating belonging, communality, relations and
networks
• Sharing, collaboration and participation
• Discourse trajectories and recontextualizations
• Complexity, diversities and differences
• Governance, surveillance and control of/in social media activities and
interactions
• Digital literacies and informal learning
• Creativity and play
• Affect and attachment
• Language and social media in commercial and professional practices
• Media/language ideologies
• The wider roles of social media in the lives of individuals, groups and
communities.
Language, Gender and Parenthood Online
Negotiating Motherhood in Mumsnet Talk
Jai Mackenzie
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Focus-on-Language-and-Social-Media/
book-series/LSM
Mobile Messaging and
Resourcefulness
A Post-digital Ethnography
Caroline Tagg and Agnieszka Lyons
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Caroline Tagg and Agnieszka Lyons
The right of Caroline Tagg and Agnieszka Lyons to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 9780367143541 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032269412 (pbk)
ISBN: 9780429031465 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429031465
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Post-digital Ethnography and the Networked
Individual 13
3 Mobile Resourcefulness 32
4 Polymedia Repertoires 54
5 Sharing in Mobile Conversations 78
6 Conclusion 104
References 115
Index 131
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Interweaving of the digital and the non-digital 13
3.1 Ordering meat on WeChat 32
3.2 A shift in register on WeChat 46
3.3 Setting up a WeChat business 48
3.4a, b Pricing powdered milk through WeChat 49
3.5 Extending a texting repertoire 52
4.1 Moving from Skype to Viber 55
4.2 The polymedia nest (Tagg and Lyons 2021) 57
4.3 Edyta and Taduesz’s polski sklep 60
4.4 Chatting on Viber while at work 65
4.5 Checking up on children through Viber while at work 66
4.6 Coordinating a stock order through SMS 68
4.7 Checking product availability through Facebook
Messenger 71
4.8 Pre-ordering shop items through Facebook Messenger 73
4.9 Relieving boredom at work through Viber 74
4.10 Negotiating the boundaries of the customer–shop
owner relationship 75
5.1 Sharing a weblink on WhatsApp 78
5.2 Sharing a screenshot on WhatsApp 86
5.3 Inviting someone into the moment through WhatsApp 87
5.4 a, b, c Creating a focus for attention in a WhatsApp group 89
5.5 Sharing location on WhatsApp 94
5.6 Location sharing as a conversational turn 94
5.7 Sending updates via WhatsApp while on the move 95
Illustrations vii
5.8 Expressing ritual appreciation through WhatsApp 97
5.9 Drawing attention through photo sharing on WhatsApp 98
5.10 Checking-in multimodally on WeChat 99
5.11 Sharing a sticker on WeChat 101
5.12 Sharing WeChat news articles 102
Table
4.1 The polymedia repertoire (Tagg and Lyons 2021) 58
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank all our participants on the TLANG project, whose mobile
messaging practices and generosity with their time made this book possible.
Our thanks go also to the project team for their support and insights, particu-
larly Adrian Blackledge, Angela Creese, Rachel Hu, Li Wei and Zhu Hua.
10.4324/9780429031465-1
1
1 Introduction
This book explores how mobile communication – in the form of mobile
messages sent via apps like WhatsApp and WeChat – fits into and shapes
people’s social and working lives. It looks at how mobile messaging facili-
tates carrying out everyday tasks and maintaining relationships with family,
friends and colleagues, and the opportunities it provides for self-expression
and self-presentation. It also considers the extent to which the new technol-
ogy transforms our lives and what it means to be social – to do, to be and
to relate to others – in the early twenty-first century. The book points to the
need to recognise ordinary people’s agency in navigating and exploiting
increasingly complex technological environments, while acknowledging
that choices are constrained and enabled by the surrounding practices, dis-
courses, people, technologies and material objects.
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, our lives, relationships and
identities have become increasingly dominated by mobile devices, espe-
cially internet-enabled mobile phones (or smartphones). Mobile phones not
only allow us to carry out conversations with people who are not physically
present, but to do so while we are on the move and simultaneously engaged
in other activities. Our mobile phone interactions – whether mediated by
voice, video or mobile messaging apps – interweave with and mutually sup-
port our physical contexts and offline activities, facilitating our journeys,
helping curate significant life events, or distracting us from boredom. On
the one hand, through our mobile phones, we are constantly available to
others regardless of our physical location; but, on the other hand, our atten-
tion is divided and we are present simultaneously in different spaces – we
can, for example, send sporadic messages to a colleague and post a selfie
on Instagram while on a voice call with a friend and helping to prepare a
family meal at home. Whether this is perceived positively or negatively,
how we present ourselves, how we maintain relationships and how we get
things done are shifting in line with our changing use of technologies. For
many people, their mobile phone has become an indispensable tool for
DOI: 10.4324/9780429031465-1
2 Introduction
maintaining a sense of self, managing relationships, socialising and carry-
ing out professional and personal activities. In other words, mobile phones,
along with various social media platforms, messaging apps, emoji and gifs
have become part of our communicative repertoires, the set of resources
through which we make meaning.
In this book, we work with the concept of the communicative reper-
toire – the range of linguistic and other semiotic resources available to indi-
viduals and which people draw upon in communication with others. We
are motivated by the key observation that our repertoires have expanded
in recent years to include mobile technologies, social media and a whole
range of digital resources. We seek to understand the implications of this
reconceptualisation of repertoire for individuals, exploring the ways in
which their mobile communication intersects with and mutually shapes
their offline interactions. We show how people draw resourcefully on their
mobile phones as part of their wider communicative repertoires, highlight-
ing their human agency in exploiting the available technologies to achieve
communicative and social goals, while foregrounding the contextually
bound nature of their technology use. In doing so, we show how detailed
sociolinguistic understanding of seemingly ordinary, fleeting conversations
carried out via mobile phone messaging apps can play a key role in helping
us appreciate the nature of individual lives and relationships in contempo-
rary society.
In the rest of this introductory chapter, we explain the research project on
which this book is based and introduce the key mobile phone users who fea-
ture in the book, before outlining how our study builds on and extends exist-
ing understandings of communication mediated by mobile messaging apps.
The Research behind the Book
The book explores the communicative practices of six multilingual individu-
als living and working in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in Birmingham
and London. Our participants use various communication apps on their
mobile phones to carry out business transactions, maintain social support
networks and express themselves in the context of their wider working,
social and domestic lives. We focus on how mobile messaging exchanges
carried out through multiple apps intertwine with everyday face-to-face
activities and wider identity projects, strengthening existing relationships,
and we point to the role that language and other semiotic resources play in
achieving this.
The research in this book is part of a four-year ethnographic project called
‘Translation and Translanguaging: Investigating Linguistic and Cultural
Transformations in Superdiverse Wards in Four UK Cities’ (TLANG)
