Memes and identity in language teacher education
Boris Vázquez-Calvo, Alba Paz-López & Sergio Rey-Godoy · Language Learning & Technology, 29(1), 1-27
DOI: 10.64152/10125/73620
Overview
Fandom is one of the most productive spaces for understanding how language learning can emerge from participation, affinity, creativity and social interaction.
Fan communities bring together people who read, write, translate, subtitle, dub, remix, comment, meme, theorize, debate and create around shared cultural interests. These practices often involve multilingual interaction, genre knowledge, audience awareness, multimodal composition and sustained engagement with texts, media and other participants.
My research examines fandom as a site of informal digital language learning and digital literacy development. Rather than treating fan practices as marginal or merely recreational, I study how they support language exposure, participation, identity work, metalinguistic reflection and creative meaning-making across languages and platforms.
This work connects fanfiction, fansubbing, fandubbing, fan translation of games, scanlation, memes, gaming communities, online comments and social media practices with broader questions in language education. It also explores how fan-based practices can inspire pedagogical designs for future language teachers.
Research themes
This topic connects fandom studies, digital literacies, informal language learning and language teacher education.
Affinity spaces
Interest-driven participation
How fans participate in communities organized around shared passions, cultural texts and collaborative forms of knowledge-making.
Informal learning
Language learning beyond school
How fandom supports vocabulary development, genre awareness, pragmatic learning, multilingual interaction and self-directed language practice.
Digital literacies
Reading, writing and remixing
How fan practices involve complex literacy work, including reading, writing, multimodal composition, commenting, remixing and collaborative production.
Fanfiction
Narrative and identity
How fanfiction and fan writing can foster extended writing, audience awareness, creativity, feedback and identity exploration.
Memes
Humour and multimodality
How memes function as multimodal texts for identity work, humour, stance-taking and reflection in language teacher education.
Pedagogy
Fan-based language education
How fan practices can inspire classroom activities, teacher education, writing tasks, translation tasks and critical digital literacy work.
Related publications
Selected publications connected to fandom, fan communities, fan translation, memes, games and informal digital language learning.
Fan translation of games, anime, and fanfiction
Boris Vázquez-Calvo, Leticia-Tian Zhang, Mariona Pascual & Daniel Cassany · Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 49-71
DOI: 10125/44672
“We are cookin’, love” or “We’re a crooked love?”: Swifties’ Language Learning Experiences on Reddit
Boris Vázquez-Calvo & Esther Aguilera-Pérez · Research on Language Learning and Teaching in Digital Spaces, 124-145
From Foe to Friend: The Role of Fan Translation in Language Education
Boris Vázquez-Calvo · Translation, Translanguaging and Machine Translation in Foreign Language Education, 115-136
Guerrilla fan translation, language learning, and metalinguistic discussion in a Catalan-speaking community of gamers
Boris Vázquez-Calvo · ReCALL, 33(3), 296-313
Open materials and teaching
This research area has also led to open educational materials and classroom designs for language teacher education.
Open educational resource
Fan-Based Learning in Language Education
A microseries on fanfiction, fansubbing, cosplay, podcasts, vlogs, participatory culture and digital ethics for language education.
Teacher education
Fandom as pedagogy
My teaching uses fan practices to help future language teachers understand digital literacies, learner agency, multimodal composition, genre awareness and meaningful language use.