Bilingual Facebook Users’ Cognitive Writing Processes

This study seeks to explore the cognitive processes involved as bilinguals wrote English and Spanish Facebook status updates. Three phases of data collection were employed: individual interviews, examination of participants’ Facebook status updates and a group interview. The findings suggested that regardless of the language in which participants wrote, they made a series of decisions as they selected the content, chose the language, formulated the text and typed the status updates. The findings also indicated that for the individuals in this study, higher language proficiencies resulted in increased automaticity when converting thoughts to nonstandard online communications. While participants engaged in many experiences found in Flower and Hayes’ Cognitive Process Model (1981), additional explanation was needed to illustrate how this process varied for online bilingual writers.

Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology