Translanguaging and identity construction among Indonesian–English bilinguals on X social media platform: A computer-mediated discourse analysis

Abstract

Background: The evolution of communication in the digital era has led to increasingly flexible and dynamic language practices in everyday interactions. Social media, serving as a virtual public space, enables bilingual and multilingual users to combine multiple languages within a single utterance, a phenomenon known as translanguaging. Aims: This study aims to identify the forms of translanguaging in posts on the X platform and analyze their role in shaping users’ digital identities during institutional crises. Methods: The research employs a qualitative approach using Susan Herring’s (2004) Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) framework. The dataset consists of a small purposive corpus of seven posts discussing academic sexual harassment cases on Indonesian X, collected through documentation and analyzed through coding, categorization, and interpretative analysis. Results: The findings revealed that code-mixing is the dominant form of translanguaging, accompanied by limited instances of hybrid language forms. These linguistic practices function to express emotions, reinforce opinions, deliver social criticism, and address systemic institutional issues. The examined cases indicate that translanguaging serves as a highly deliberate, context-sensitive discursive strategy to navigate context collapse, manage audience design, and establish positioning in digital interactions. Furthermore, language choices project fluid, multifaceted personas, shifting between intellectual, critical, and empathetic positionings. Implications: The study demonstrates that translanguaging is not merely a linguistic phenomenon but also a social practice closely tied to citizen agency, self-representation, and the dynamics of digital communication during crisis situations.