Identity and Psychological State in Multilingual and Multimodal Posts: Insights from Indonesian Students Abroad

Identity is fluid, negotiated, and complex produced socially through self-consciousness, interpretation, and projection. This fluidity and complexity can be studied from language choice and mode selection performed by networked multilinguals on their Social Networking Sites, including Facebook. This study aimed to analyze to what extent Sasak students overseas project their multilingualism and identity (including psychological state) through language use and multimodality on Facebook. To answer the research question, this study collected 80 data corpora of participants’ Facebook posts (20 posts for each participant) posted during their study abroad. To strengthen the data gathered from the screen-based, a semi-structured interview designed based on the work of Androutsopoulos (2015) was also addressed with all participants. For multilingualism projection, all data collected were analyzed through Critical Discourse Analysis based on the theory proposed by Androutsopoulos (2015). To explore the multimodality projection, this study also employed Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis and was thematically analysed by referring to van Leeuwen’s theory (2008). This study showed that all participants projected their multilingualism through various language resources. This projection also represented their identity as a part of their local community (Sasak community), Indonesian people, and the global community; academic professionals; international students; Muslims, and creative and humorous language users. This study also found that all participants projected their identity, including their Spatial, Relational, and Functional identity using various modes. Furthermore, the semiotic and mode choices also served as a psychological strategy to manage psychological state: stress, homesickness and emotional needs.