The present study explores informal English language teaching and learning (ELTL) on the social media platform of Facebook. In contrast to a formal second/foreign language (L2/FL) education setting which is institutionally sponsored and highly structured, the context of informal ELTL under investigation is "recreational" (Chik, 2015) in the sense that it is unconstrained by institutional structures and largely driven by personal interests and goals. With the unprecedented success of social media and social networking sites (SNSs), this new form of learning and teaching can be found in a variety of languages and discourses across diverse digital landscapes. This study pays particular attention to the context of Thai speakers in three ELTL communities formed on Facebook Pages (FPs). The aim is to describe the participants' SNS-mediated L2 literacy practices as informed by Thai culture, beliefs, and values. This research project is grounded in the concept of new literacies (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011) and the multimodal social semiotic approaches to analyzing digitally-mediated communication (Kress, 2010; Jewitt, 2009; Van Leeuwen, 2005). The analysis is also informed by the interpretative framework of positioning theory (Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré & van Langenhove, 1991) and sociolinguistic approaches to stances (Du Bois, 2007; Jaffe, 2009a). The integration of various theoretical and analytical models offers a holistic understanding of the participants' Facebook-based literacy practices from different perspectives. A mixed method approach that combines qualitative (e.g., multimodal analysis, online ethnographic observation) and quantitative (e.g., survey, user statistics) data analysis also helps describe the users’ semiotic productions and interactions from a diachronic point of view. While the purpose of the project is to examine contemporary L2 literacy engagement in an underexplored historical and cultural context, the analysis does not simply discuss the way Thai SNS users teach and/or learn English online. Rather, the findings also shed light on other important issues relating to digital literacies including multimodal production, identity construction, social relationship formation, stance-taking acts, and language ideology. These emerging literacy practices are presented in three separate but interrelated analysis chapters. They are comprised of: 1) the multimodal analysis of the interplay between Facebook affordances and the users' semiotic activities; 2) the investigation of the participants’ self- and other-positioning strategies; and 3) the discussion of the participants' stance-taking acts in various aspects relating to English language teaching, learning, and use in contemporary society. Altogether, the findings pinpoint the complex and interconnected relationships among digital media, self, community, and ideology as fundamental to meaningful learning experiences on SNSs. They also support the view of language learning as a social practice, which highlights the fact that meaning and knowledge are socially and culturally situated, shaped by contexts, and shared by members within particular communities (Gee, 2010; Lankshear & Knobel, 2011; Thorne, 2013). The dissertation, therefore, has implications for pedagogies and practice because it provides insights about how to design equitable learning materials and activities that address these contemporary social practices. Ultimately, the research suggests the use of a social media-enhanced ELTL site to develop meaningful interactions between learner, language, media, and community during the process of learning.

The European Parliament (EP) is the scene where certain issues concerning over 500 million ‘Europeans’ are publicly debated and where politically relevant groupings are discursively coconstructed. While the Members of the Parliament (MEPs) pursue their political agendas, intergroup boundaries are drawn, reinforced, and/or transgressed. Speakers constantly take stances on behalf of groupings in relation to some presupposed other groupings and argue what differentiates ‘Self’ from ‘Others’. This study examines patterns of language use by the MEPs as they engage in the contextually and historically situated dialogical processes of intergroup positioning and stance-taking. It further focuses on the strategic and competitive activities of grouping, grounding, and alignment in order to reveal the dynamic construction of intergroup boundaries. The study is based on a collection of Blue-card question-answer sequences from the plenary debates held at the EP in 2011, when the Sovereign Debt Crisis had been stabilized to some degree but still evoked plenty of controversy. Theoretically the study builds on Stance Theory (Du Bois, 2007), Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1990), and several broadly social constructivist approaches to discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995). The analysis shows that intergroup positioning in the EP emerges as what I call a ‘collaborative competition’ between contradictory ideologies and political agendas. The MEPs strategically manipulate their opponents' prior or projected utterances in order to set up positions for self, a grouping he or she stands for, and thereby its adversaries. All participants engage in the maintenance and negotiation of intergroup boundaries, even though the boundaries hardly ever coincide between the different speakers. They discursively fence off some imaginary territories, leaving their adversaries with vague positions. When asking Blue-card questions, the MEPs use a particular turn organization, which involves routine forms of interactional units, namely addressing, question framing and question forms, each of which is shown to contribute to stance-taking. A dynamic model of stance-taking is suggested, allowing for a fluid transformation of the stance object as well as the discursively constructed stance-takers. While Blue-card questions are meant to serve as a structured procedure for eliciting information from a speaker, the analysis demonstrates that the MEPs accomplish various divergent actions that serve intergroup positioning. The dissertation thus contributes to the understanding of the discursive games played in the EP as the MEPs strive to construct social realities that fit their political ends. / Europaparlamentet (EP) är scenen där vissa frågor rörande mer än 500 miljoner ‘européer’ officiellt debatteras och där politiskt relevanta grupperingar diskursivt konstrueras [co-constructed]. Medan parlamentsmedlemmarna (MEPs) driver sina egna politiska agendor dras gränser mellan grupperna, och dessa gränser förstärks och/eller överträds. Talare intar oavbrutet vad man skulle kunna kalla för olika ‘hållningar’ (stances) för olika grupperingar i relation till vissa förutsatta andra grupperingar, och argumenterar för vad som skiljer ‘jaget/det egna’ (Self) från ‘de andra’ (Others). Denna studie undersöker språkmönster som används av parlamentsledamöterna när de hänger sig åt kontextuellt och historiskt situerade dialogiska processer rörande positionering mellan grupper (intergroup positioning) och stance-taking. Den fokuserar vidare på de strategiska och konkurrensutsatta aktiviteterna grouping (gruppformering), grounding (ung. legitimering av en talares stance) och alignment (när man placerar sig i linje med eller tar avstånd från en annan talares åsikter) för att urskilja den dynamiska konstruktionen av gränser mellan grupper. Studien baseras på en korpus av så kallade ‘Blue-card question-answer sequences’ från plenardebatter som hölls i EP under 2011, när statsskuldkrisen hade stabiliserats något men fortfarande utgjorde grunden för många kontroverser. Teoretiskt sett bygger studien på Stance-teori (Du Bois, 2007), Positionerings-teori (Davies & Harré, 1990) och ett flertal breda socialkonstruktivistiska infallsvinklar till diskursanalys (Fairclough, 1995). Analysen visar att positioneringen mellan de olika grupperingarna i EP framstår som något jag kallar ‘kollaborativ konkurrens’ mellan motstridiga ideologier och politiska agendor. Parlamentsledamöterna manipulerar strategiskt sina motståndares tidigare eller förutsedda yttranden för att positionera sig själva, en gruppering de står för, och därigenom dess meningsmotståndare. Alla deltagare agerar för att upprätthålla och förhandla gränsdragningen mellan grupperna, trots att gränserna nästan aldrig överensstämmer mellan de olika talarna. Diskursivt styckar de av några imaginära territorier, vilket lämnar deras motståndare i vaga positioner. När de ställer Blue-card questions använder sig parlamentsledamöterna av en särskild turtagningsorganisation, vilken inbegriper rutinformer av interaktionsenheter (interactional units), tilltal (addressing), hur frågor initieras (question framing), och frågeformer (question forms), av vilka var och en visar sig bidra till stance-taking. En dynamisk modell för stance-taking föreslås, vilket möjliggör en transformation av det kontinuerligt omdefinierade stance-objektet såväl som av de diskursivt konstruerade stance-takers. Medan Blue-card questions är avsedda att fungera som en strukturerad procedur för att få fram information från en talare demonstrerar analysen att parlamentsledamöterna lyckas med olika avledande manövrer som tjänar positioneringen mellan grupper. Avhandlingen bidrar på så vis till förståelsen av det diskursiva spelet i Europaparlamentet där parlamentsledamöterna strävar efter att konstruera sociala realiteter som tjänar deras politiska mål.