Between play and precarity: translingual practices of youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Brdarević-Čeljo, Amna ^[1] ; Dubravac, Vildana ^[1] ; Milak, Eldin ^[2]
  1. [1] International Burch University

     International Burch University

     Bosnia y Herzegovina

     
  2. [2] Curtin University

     Curtin University

     Australia

     
• Localización: International journal of multilingualism, ISSN 1479-0718, Vol. 23, Nº. 3, 2026, págs. 1288-1302
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The present study explores the playful translingual practices of a group of young women in the European Global South. More specifically, it observes translingual playfulness in the mediascapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and investigates how young Bosnian translinguals draw on their multimodal semiotic and linguistic repertoires to develop and negotiate their global youth identities and challenge Standard and monolingual language ideologies. The research employs qualitative methodology, adopting digital ethnography to analyse group chat interactions and follow-up semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that Bosnian youth display complex instances of translingual play within their online/offline nexus and integrate global linguistic repertoires with local cultural contexts. However, while acknowledging the naturalness of and enjoyment in such translingual practices, these translinguals also express uneasy attitudes towards this inherent fluidity and unboundedness of language categories which inform these practices and perceive them as deviant from the Standard monolingual norms. This inconsistency emerges from the affiliated ethnonational discourse and monolingual norms deeply ingrained in this Global South context, and it is further compounded by global pressures from the Anglophone Global North. Bosnian translinguals consciously restrict their practices to safe spaces to conform to expectations, illustrating precarity of translingual practices across social spaces.