To Örebro University

As Technology Mediated Communication increasingly becomes a dimension of human everyday life, individuals can engage in communication anywhere they go, without being concerned with logistical issues. Learning is understood as participation and distributed in networks of relationships across geographical spaces that come together when individuals communicate in virtual spaces. This allows an analytical focus on externalizing human experiences through a range of practices, inscriptions and technologies.

The study presented in this paper has a twofold aim: (i) to present salient features of virtual institutional learning spaces where language learning is focused within higher education; (ii) discuss issues of fieldwork boundaries in netnographic research and theorise methodologies that follow participants not only across time and space but also across language varieties and modalities that are afforded when human-beings interact in synchronous virtual learning spaces.

The empirical data in the study presented here is drawn from a larger project at the CCD (Communication, Culture and Diversity) research group in Sweden and includes netnographic data with approximately 40 hours of naturally occurring interactional material, generated through screen recordings of online sessions which are part of an Italian for Beginners course offered by a Swedish university. The present study investigates analytical and theoretical-methodological issues related to languaging and participation in virtual institutional environments from micro and macro levels. Sociocultural and postcolonial points of departure are deployed with the aim of throwing light upon netbased language learning and social positionings therein.

The language varieties that are used in the virtual glocal community are framed in terms of what Pennycook calls complex ”mobile resources” (2012:27) that move across contexts and modes and across time and space. Mobility “affects the nature and function of the conventional conception of language in linguistics” (Blommaert, 2010:21) also when individuals in virtual language courses are not required to leave their homes and commute to a specific site where the course is offered.