Performing plurilingual identity through code-mixing: French-speaking BIPA learners on Instagram reels

Aims and Objective: Code-mixing is increasingly recognized as a resource for identity performance in digitally mediated language use. This study investigates how French-speaking learners of Bahasa Indonesia (BIPA) perform plurilingual identities through code-mixing on Instagram Reels. A qualitative digital discourse analysis was conducted on 30 publicly accessible videos posted by three French-speaking BIPA learners with active Indonesian audiences. Multimodal transcripts were examined using Muysken’s typology, Coupland’s stylization, and Silverstein’s indexicality to analyze linguistic alternation alongside captions, hashtags, and platform-specific affordances. Findings/Conclusion: The findings show that code-mixing is dominated by insertion practices strategically placed at humorous or emphatic moments. Indonesian consistently appears as the matrix code to index cultural alignment and legitimacy, while English and French support pragmatic clarity, cosmopolitan self-branding, and playful stance. Algorithmic visibility and interface features such as looping videos, animated subtitles, and trending audio shape how multilingual performances are curated and circulated, highlighting Instagram as an identity-producing environment rather than a neutral medium. Significance: This study contributes to emerging scholarship on learner-generated multilingualism in Global South media spaces by showing that L3/L4 learners deploy code-mixing not as linguistic compensation but as socially valued persona work. Pedagogically, the findings point to the potential of social media as a space for plurilingual meaning-making that supports affective confidence, audience-aware communication, and deeper participation in Indonesian-speaking communities.