Exploring Bilingual Practices in the Indonesian Student Twitter Community
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v14i2.11747Keywords:
bilingual practices, language attitude, sociolinguistic motivationAbstract
This study examines language attitudes and sociolinguistic motivations underlying Indonesian-English code-switching (CS) and code-mixing (CM) in the Indonesian StudyTwt community on Twitter (X), an understudied academic online space, comparing high school seniors and university students. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, 43 active members completed a 22-item Likert-scale attitude survey, followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 purposively selected participants. Descriptive results showed an overall positive attitude toward bilingualism (M = 3.95, SD = 0.48) across all three dimensions, with high school students scoring significantly higher than university students on cognitive, behavioral, and overall attitudes (all p < .05), though not on affective attitude. Thematic analysis identified six motivational themes across three categories: situational (lexical gap, audience alignment), affective (comfort and anti-cringe, peer influence), and social indexicality (belonging, identity projection). These qualitative themes explain the quantitative pattern: shared affective motives (comfort, avoiding "cringe") account for the non-significant affective group difference, while more instrumental cognitive rationales and emotionally charged identity accounts among university students echo the significant cognitive and behavioral group differences. Together, the findings show that positive attitudes and sociolinguistic motivations jointly sustain bilingual fluidity in this academic digital space, offering one of the first empirical accounts of the StudyTwt community and addressing a gap in research on Indonesian digital bilingualism beyond entertainment-oriented platforms.
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