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English Language Teaching Educational Journal   ISSN 2621-6485 
Vol. 5, No. 3, December 2022, pp. 180-190  

       https://doi.org/10.12928/eltej.v5i3.7650          http://journal2.uad.ac.id/index.php/eltej/index          eltej@pbi.uad.ac.id  

Intertextuality as semiotic mediation for youth’s enactment of 
agency and identity in everyday digital literacy practices 
Ahmad Budairi  

Jl. Kapas No.9, Semaki, Kec. Umbulharjo, Kota Yogyakarta, Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta 55166 
budairi@pbi.uad.ac.id   
 

 

ARTI CLE  I NFO 
 

ABSTRACT   
 

 
Article history 
Received 20 September 2022 
Revised 26 October 2022 
Accepted 25 November 2022 

 The purpose of this research is to investigate the practice of intertextuality 
of Farah (pseudonym) a 20-year-old female university student who 
engaged in a variety of culturally shaped digital literacy practices. In 
particular, it seeks to elucidate how Farah’s practice of intertextuality 
serves as a semiotic mediation for her exercise and enactment of agency 
and identity during her everyday literacy practice on Instagram. This 
research was framed as a case study design with a connective 
ethnography approach specifically suited to the online environment and 
digital communication where the researcher’s physical presence as an 
observer is no longer required. Data were collected by means of digital 
media and technology such as WhatsApp Message Service, informal 
phone interviews, and online observation. The collected data comprised 
online snapshots of quote bots, pictures, drawings and comments that 
Farah produced and shared as part of her everyday digital literacy 
practice. The data analysis entailed examination of Farah’s practice of 
intertextuality through the lens of sociocultural perspective on text 
production and interpretation. The findings revealed that Farah’s use of 
quote bots and doodles posted on Instagram involved the act of borrowing 
texts from other sources as well as mixing English with Indonesian 
language. Farah’s practice of intertextuality was pre-mediated, calculated 
and purposeful, allowing her to engage in digital authorship involving 
creativity, improvisation and consciousness as ingredients of agency. In 
the same vein, Farah’s practice of intertextuality allowed her to author the 
self as a contemplative religious individual. The research concluded with 
an appeal to policy makers and educational practitioners to respond to the 
learners’ changing learning landscape by re-defining the way we view 
learners/students, from merely a recipient of knowledge to an individual 
who has agency, identity and funds of knowledge that have to be 
acknowledged and appreciated in any process of curriculum design and 
its implementation on a daily basis. 
 

This is an open access article under the CC–BY-SA license. 

    

 

 
Keywords 
Digital literacy practice 
Intertextuality 
Agency 
Identity 
 
 

 

How to Cite: Budairi, A. (2022). Intertextuality as a semiotic mediation for youth’s enactment of agency and 
identity in everyday digital literacy practice. English Language Teaching Educational Journal, 5 (3), 180-190. 

1. Introduction 
This study investigates a particular discursive practice on social media known as intertextuality.  It 

explores how such type of text production as part of digital literacy practice serves as semiotic 
mediation for agency and L2 identity construction of a 20-year-old female university student learning 
to practice and develop English skills. The idea for this research originates in the fact that digital 
communication mediated through a variety of social media has become a commonplace practice 
among young people. It allows them to engage in a variety of culturally shaped everyday digital 
literacy practices such as posting a comment on Twitter, writing a status on Instagram, and 



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participating in an online discussion. These are few examples of digital literacy practices that have 
figured into everyday life of young people today (Buckingham & Willet, 2006).  This new reality has 
raised some questions as to what it means for young people to engage in literacy practice in digital 
era, how digital communication disrupts the traditional view of literacy, from merely technical to socio 
cultural, and what implications digital space brings to learning as traditionally conceptualized.  

While digital technology and media has benefited youth in many respects, it has also been argued 
that the ‘fast come and go’ nature of digital media deprives youth of the necessity to develop literacy 
skills normally required to engage in academic discourse, resulting in what is termed as ‘low literacy’ 
(Bauerline, 2008). The public debate around the impact of digital media on youth literacy development 
signifies the need to re-conceptualize literacy in ways that capture the changing landscape of learning 
context. The traditional view of literacy can no longer suffice to elucidate the different ways literacy 
takes place in digital space. In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), a similar question 
might be asked as to what constitutes communication in English, and what is deemed legitimate or 
illegitimate in regard to the use of English on digital platforms involving the production and 
dissemination of text (Jewitt, 2020).  

By the same token, digital literacy practices allow young people to gain knowledge and skills in 
ways that differ considerably from traditional classroom-based instruction. Literacy practice taking 
place beyond classroom has been well documented in many ethnographic studies focusing on youth 
everyday literacy practice. A substantial number of research studies have revealed how youth takes 
advantage of out-of-school learning affordances as a spin-off from everyday social interaction in a 
much more natural and liberating ambience (Kress, 1997; Ito et al., 2010; Hull & Schultz, 2002; Gee, 
2003, 2008). A case study conducted by Lam (2009) of a teenager engaging in writing on the Internet 
revealed some interesting facts about digital literacy practice. The teenager, a Chinese immigrant 
named Almond who emigrated from HK to USA at the age of 12, had gone through hard times in his 
early years as he had to cope with difficulties in learning English in ESL classroom. He reveals a sense 
of his marginalized position in society and a perception that his inability to speak English like a native 
speaker will hinder his prospects in life. English both signifies and constitutes his feeling of not 
belonging. However, after attending an introductory class on email and browsing for information, he 
continued to look up different websites for tutorial on how to make personal homepages and engage 
in online chats. Since then, his digital literacy practice had expanded to include making personal 
homepages where he made use of multimodalities, compiling on-line chat mates from around the 
world as well as starting to write regularly to a few email pen pals. 

The aforementioned studies speak volumes of the different nature of out of school literacy as 
compared to traditional classroom instruction. In most cases, such literacy allows for meaningful 
interaction and participation in a community of practice that grows naturally in the absence of 
authoritative figures and formal instruction.  The goal of literacy shifts from attaining knowledge 
through instruction as commonly conceived in school to ‘sustained participation in the social and 
cultural practice’ (New London Group, 1996). Consequently, literacy as social practice encompasses 
a range of social purposes, social identities and power relations. In the context of Second Language 
Acquisition, it is worth investigating how language learners’ participation in digital literacy practices 
are built around both social purposes and learning. As English has become the most prevalent language 
of online platforms, L2 learners may take advantage by participating in an online community which 
allows them to establish social interaction while learning to develop their English skills.  

Indonesia ranks fifth globally in terms of the number of internet users (Internet World Stats, 2018) 
and third after Saudi Arabia and India in annual growth of social media users (Smart Insights, 2018). 
This emerging digital landscape has compelled us to raise a question as to how young people, 
especially in Indonesia, incorporate digital media technology into their everyday lives to mediate their 
social interaction. Similarly, against the long binary categorization of L2 learners as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, 
‘proficient’ and ‘deficient’, that has caused frenzy among students in many educational contexts in 
Indonesia, it stands to reason that students in Indonesia might be able to make use of affordances 
outside of academic context in ways that strengthen their identity as L2 learners and contribute to their 
literacy development. Hence, this research study seeks to investigate L2 learner’s practice of 
intertextuality during participation in digital literacy practices in ways that serve as a semiotic 
mediation for the enactment of agency and construction of L2 identity.  More specifically, this 
research aimed to achieve the following objectives: 1) To identify the participant’s everyday literacy 
practices on Instagram, 2) To describe the participant’ practice of manifest intertextuality and 



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interdiscursivity, and 3) To examine the link between the practice of intertextuality, agency and L2 
identity 

1.1. Intertextuality and literacy practice  
Intertextuality is one of the many forms of literacy practice that has been known to characterize 

young people’s engagement in digitally mediated literacy practice. The term refers to the 
interconnectedness between a text and other texts as a foundation for the production and interpretation 
of texts (Bazerman, 2010; Emerson & Holquist, 1986; Kristeva, 1986). Intertextuality holds 
significance in helping us understand the purpose and meaning of any given literacy practice. As 
echoed by Bakhtin (1981), any given utterance is always populated with intention and emotional-
volitional tone of the speaker; it always has dialogic orientation. There are two different types of 
intertextualities: ‘manifest intertextuality’ and ‘interdiscursivity’. As pointed out by Fairclough 
(1992), ‘manifest intertextuality’ refers to parts of text which can be traced to an actual source in 
another text. This type of intertextuality is marked by direct quotation or hypertexts. 
‘Interdiscursivity’, on the other hand, involves patterns of language use, genres, discourses, and styles 
in the production and interpretation of text that do not explicitly reveals the interconnectedness 
between different texts. In this research, both forms of intertextuality were understood as representing 
youth’s creativity in using language while allowing them to project a sense of the self in an online 
community.  

1.2. Semiotic mediation  
Vygotsky (1978) was primarily interested in the process of “semiotic mediation” and the 

development of voluntary control over human behavior, through higher mental functioning mediated 
by social and cultural devices. Culturally and socially constructed signs and tools— according to 
Vygotsky—provide people with the means to alter their behavior, their social environment, and their 
cognitive, emotional, and psychological development. These cultural devices are part of systems of 
meaning that are collectively formed and sociohistorical in nature. Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & 
Chain (1998) propose that these devices can be seen as tools for agency: 

Vygotsky’s exposition of semiotic mediation as a means to agency gives us a good vantage on the 
social and historical creation of identities as means to self-activity. ‘Heuristic development’ clearly 
directs attention away from the extremes of cultural determination on the one hand and situational 
totalitarianism on the other (Vygotsky, 1978).  

Vygotsky suggested that individuals use socially-created symbols and symbol systems as cultural 
tools to mediate our interactions with others and our social surroundings (Souza-Lima & Emihovich, 
1995; Vygotsky, 1978, 1987; Wertsch, 1991). Cultural tools, such as words, forms of speech, forms 
of literacy, art, and scientific concepts, are socially specific in their making an meaning; they are social 
in origin and carry with them a historical legacy of meaning. Cultural tools are external “objects” 
gained through social interaction and structured by their history of previous use. Semiotic mediation 
via cultural tools is generative. From our social interactions with others within a particular socio-
historical environment, we take up tools and then use them to assign meaning to stimuli. We use tools 
to make meaning and to communicate meaning to others and ourselves as we negotiate our way 
through our social worlds. 

2. Method 
To allow for a close investigation of the participants’ particular aspects of everyday life and cultural 

practices, this research project adopted a case study design with ethnographic perspective.  
Traditionally, ethnographic research is an interpretive process that typically involves a combination 
of methods, most commonly participant observation and interviews, with the purpose of 
understanding how people make sense of particular practices, behaviors and activities in everyday 
settings (Watson-Gegeo, 1988). It may also involve staying in a physical location for a substantial 
period of time to engage in and understand the culture under study (Leander, 2008). However, as the 
notion of culture has shifted, from a bounded structure in a physical location to culture as a process 
(Cazden, 2000), ethnographic studies of culture need not be confined to a singular location. Rather, 
ethnography can be expanded to the investigation of cultural practices across multiple spaces or 
places. Hence, the ethnographic approach adopted for this research   can be best described as connective 
ethnography. This method assumes that people routinely build connections between online practices 



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and offline practices (Leander, 2008), thus blurring the boundaries between online/offline, virtual/real, 
and cyberspace/physical space.  

2.1. Research participants  
The participants for this study were selected using a purposive sampling. This technique was 

chosen as it was considered useful for the identification and selection of information-rich cases for the 
most effective use of limited resources (Patton, 2002). I purposefully selected second-semester 
university students of non-English major from the Faculty of Pharmacy. All of the participants had 
previously learned English in Secondary and High schools for a total of 6 years. During their first 
semester, they were also enrolled in a compulsory general English course (a 2-credit point unit). As 
many as twenty students expressed interest by signing a letter of consent to participate with a shared 
understanding that they would be required to report their everyday literacy practices on digital 
platforms. However, as the data collection unfolded, the number of participants was narrowed down 
to six who were selected as focal participants. Out of these six participants, there was one particular 
case of Farah (pseudonym) that was further investigated as she proactively shared her digital literacy 
practices which contain most instances of intertextuality.  

2.2. Data collection tools  
This research employs a number of data collection tools such as informal semi-structured 

interview, WhatsApp message service, and online observation.  
1) Informal semi-structured interview  
The semi-structured interview was conducted to gain in-depth understanding of how the 

participants perceive, think and feel about their engagement in everyday literacy practices   mediated 
by and through English language. The semi-structured interview format enabled me to ask open-ended 
questions with little control over the participants’ responses (McMillan & Schumacher, 2010). The 
questions I asked centered around the purposes underlying each literacy event that the participants 
engaged in 

2) WhatsApp message service  
The use of WhatsApp message service proved to be extremely useful in my research both during 

and post data collection process. It was through WhatsApp message service that the participants shared 
snapshots of their online activities on Instagram. Out of the six focal participants, Farah was selected 
to be a case study as she was the one who consistently responded to my questions and requests over a 
period of one month and a half. Also, she was most willing to share snapshots of her digital literacy 
practices that represent the practice of intertextuality. As a result, she shared the most number of digital 
snapshots showing her practice of intertextuality, providing me with sufficient data from which the 
need to focus on intertextuality emerged.    

3) Online observation  
 The online observation was aimed at further corroborating the data collected through WhatsApp 
message service and interviews. It was particularly useful to capture the entirety of the situated nature 
of Farah’s practice of intertextuality. During the data collection process, I asked for Farah’s permission 
to accept my request to follow her Instagram since she made it private. She voluntarily provided access 
to her Instagram which allowed me to observe her activities both in the past and at the time I was 
doing this research. I was able to have a better picture of a variety of contents that Farah had shared. 
This helped me in my understanding of Farah’s interests, passion, dreams and life goals, which I 
consider essential in looking at her literacy practice at more depth. 

2.3. Data analysis  
 In this research project, literacy events were used as a unit of analysis. Literacy events are typically 
observable moments shaped by literacy practices (Barton et al., 2000). Barton (1998, 2007) defines 
literacy events as moments when a person or people try “to comprehend or produce graphic signs” (p. 
36). Heath (1982, 1983, 2008) has provided a definition of a literacy event to include “talk” around a 
piece of writing and/or situations in which literacy plays a central role. Literacy events are viewed as 
a communicative exchange that regards acts of literacy (reading, writing, and/or speaking) as the 
primary focus (Barton, 2007; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Heath, 1983). 

The data were analyzed in two phases. First, the collected data in the form of quote bots, drawings 
and words were analyzed using Fairclough’s (1992) theory of intertextuality to identify instances of 



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intertextuality. Second, they were subsequently re-contextualized into the lens of Bakhtin’s (1981, 
1986) notion of utterances and Vygotsky’s semiotic mediation to make sense of Farah’s practice of 
intertextuality at more depth to establish the link between intertextuality, agency and identity. 

3. Findings and Discussion 
3.1. Introducing Farah 

Farah was born in Padang, West Sumatra. Unlike Sari and Hanafi, she just turned 18 when I first 
met her as a research participant. Her parents are both highly educated, the father being a university 
lecturer and the mother working as a HRD manager in a company dealing with heavy equipment. 
Farah has one younger brother who was studying in his final year of high school. As written in the 
student background sheet, Farah’s interests include art (dancing, drawing, theater) journalism, 
scouting, and “I like joining some organization such as OSIS, BEM” as she put it. Farah was in essence 
also multilingual. At home she speaks mostly in Padang dialect, while outside she keeps switching 
from Indonesian to Padang and vice versa depending on whom she interacts with. In addition to these 
two languages, Farah can read Arabic as required to recite the Holy Scripture Al Quran  

Interestingly, when asked if she could understand the meanings, she said that sometimes she was 
at a loss. But, fortunately, she likes to go online to search for information about each surah or verses 
through Google. She said “Yes I like reading on the internet sir. Because it is fast and practical. All 
information about Al Quran is there the meaning and background also available” (Second interview, 
September, 2019). She also explained that having lived in Yogya for almost 2 years, she has acquired 
some Javanese language vocabulary. 

What is most striking about Farah is that she grew up loving English. She was first introduced to 
English when she was in the third grade of Elementary School. She fondly reminisced those moments 
when she was for the first time taught how to say numbers and to name objects in English. She thought 
it was ‘keren’ (cool) as she put it. Even at the age of 9, she had already imagined it would be ‘cool’ to 
use English in everyday conversation. Her early years of schooling were also characterized by her 
love for English, such as taking private English lessons, going to an English village in Kediri on 
school holidays, and participating in different English competitions.  

Based on data analysis, I discovered that Farah’s digital literacy practices encompass different 
literacy events that serve as a space for her to mark her authorship on Instagram. Some of the literacy 
events she engaged in include the practice of intertextuality in which she borrowed others’ words to 
be infused with her own intentions, styles, and accents. As Bakhtin (1984) argues, linguistic forms 
have already been used in a variety of settings. The user of language has to make them his/her own, 
to populate them with his/her own intentions and accent. The findings show that Farah’s practice of 
intertextuality serves as a semiotic mediation to enact her agency during her participation in everyday 
digital literacy practice. They are presented in two different sections below. 

3.2. Farah’s practice of manifest intertextuality 
The findings showed that during participation in everyday literacy practices mediated through 

different online social media, Farah engaged in intertextuality in which she produced a particular text 
that can be traced back to a particular source via online tracing. In one of the posts on her Instagram, 
Farah was seen to post several captions that feature quote bots or wise sayings as can be seen in Figure 
1. Interestingly, she combined several captions into one frame featuring texts of contemplative nature. 

 
 
 
 
  
 

                         
Fig. 1. Farah’s contemplative captions on Instagram 



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Farah’s use of captions serve as a medium to project the self in a particular way that establishes 
her identity as a contemplative religious individual among her online friends on Instagram. In the first 
instance, she posted the text which read “Never explain yourself to anyone because the one who likes 
you would not need it and the one who dislikes you wouldn’t believe it.” This text is contemplative in 
the sense that it shows her character to reflect upon such seemingly mundane life experience and turn 
it into something transcendental. In the rest of the captions, Farah’s inclination to contemplate is 
anchored in her affiliation with Islam as her faith and her understanding of Islamic teachings. For 
example, in the caption which reads “Sujood a love story no one will understand except those who 
pray,” he is drawing upon the notion of ‘Sujood’ in which Muslim prostrate to God by bringing down 
the knee, forehead, and both hands and all toes to the ground in the direction of the Kaaba at Mecca to 
praise and glorify Allah. She apparently appeals to her Instagram followers to ponder upon the 
meaning of ‘sujood’ while simultaneously suggesting that only those who pray would ultimately be 
able to develop intimate relationship with God through the act of ‘sujood’. The invitation to engage 
in transcendental thinking is also apparent in the caption which read “The beauty of Islam is that it’s 
never too late to ask Allah for forgiveness but we also have to remember you never know when you 
will die.” Here, she displays her contemplative nature by inviting her Instagram followers to refrain 
from the feeling of despondency and to seek forgiveness from God in the soonest manner possible 
before it is too late  

In another snapshot of her literacy practice that she shared with me on WhatsApp message service, 
Farah produced doodles that she drew and posted on her personal blog which was also linked to her 
Instagram story as seen in Figure 2. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fig. 2. Farah’s creation of doodles  

As can be seen from Figure 2, a common thread running through Farah’s everyday literacy 
practices is the utilization of captions and doodles as mediational tools for her participation in different 
literacy events on social media such as Instagram and Twitter. As evidenced through the above 
snapshots, Farah’s caption and doodles consist of different elements such as words, drawings, 
handwritings, and photos. However, upon further investigation through WhatsApp chats, Farah 
acknowledged that most of the wise words/motivational messages and religious quotes were not fully 
her own but were taken from other sources like Pinterest, a virtual bulletin or cork board that allows 
users to find and curate images and videos. Farah wrote: “and those are my writings when I was in 
Mr.bob kampung Inggris pare and my insta 80% of my posts r English quotes.” (WhatsApps Chat, 
September 2019). Hence, it is understandable that her Instagram and Twitter were charged with the 
expression or ideas that she might have encountered before. In this sense, Farah has demonstrated the 
practice of intertextuality that serves as a semiotic mediation for her enactment of agency and identity. 

3.3. Farah’s practice of interdiscursivity  
As described in the previous section, the practice of interdiscursivity entails the production and 

interpretation of text that came or originated from another text, which were not explicitly signaled in 



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the forms of quotation, paraphrase or copying but was related in a more abstract way to social 
conventions (i.e. patterns or template of language use), genres, discourses, and styles (Fairclough, 
1992). This can also include a mixing of elements, visuals and languages that have become commonly 
known. The snapshot in Figure 3 shows how Farah felt about relinquishing her role as a member of 
Student Executive Body 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fig. 3. Farah’s goodbye post on Instagram 

The post was addressed to her fellow friends who also had to part with the organization as their 
terms of office came to an end. Farah appears to feel so overwhelmed by such occasion that she wrote 
“I am not really sure how much I really love it. I love dara juang family until it hurts me to be 
demisioner (s) with them.” This remark echoes her feeling of sadness, and strong emotional 
attachment to the community of friends with whom she had worked together through the ebbs and 
flows so as to develop a strong bond as a family, which she dubbed ‘dara juang family.’ 

As seen in Figure 3, it is apparent that Farah mixes English and Bahasa Indonesia to bring a 
particular effect to what she is trying to express. Within such a relatively short writing, Farah 
deliberately oscillates between English and Bahasa Indonesia to produce a coherent text in ways that 
establishes her authorial presence among her Instagram followers. Through such a mixing, Farah 
demonstrates the practice of interdiscursivity involving cross border, simultaneous use of two 
languages. In this sense, Farah demonstrates improvisation and creativity in her ability to orchestrate 
others’ voices and turn them toward her own discourse. In Bakhtinian perspective of language, the 
quote bots, caption and doodles represent others’ voices which have been appropriated into internally 
persuasive discourses. They have become half her own and half others (Bakhtin, 1986).     

3.4. Looking at intertextuality as semiotic mediation for agency and identity  
From Vygotskian’s (1974) theory of human consciousness development, Farah’s agency can be 

analyzed in terms of semiotic mediation involving the use of cultural tools. Cultural tools are external 
objects gained through social interaction and structured by their history of previous use. Words, forms 
of speech, forms of literacy, art, and scientific concepts, are cultural tools which are socially specific 
in their meaning making; they are social in origin and carry with them a historical legacy of meaning. 
As Farah acknowledged, her captions and religious quotes were taken from Pinterest, a social media 
where users could share images associated with their particular experience, projects, goods and 
services and discover new interests by browsing images others have posted. As a social network, users 
can interact with each other through liking, commenting, and re-saving each other’s stuff. We could 
see here that Farah’s quotes and captions had been subjectively experienced and assigned different 
meanings as they were circulating in social media over time. This shows that the quote bots and 
captions used by Farah are part of systems of meaning that are collectively formed and socio-historical 



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in nature. Farah’s agency manifested in the way she used these cultural tools to improvise during 
interactions with people and to gain control over her inner and expressive behavior. Farah’s creation 
of doodles, for example, could be understood as her expression of agency to navigate through             her 
boredom and engage in authorship involving appropriation of the words of others. As Vygotsky (1974) 
notes, just as humans altered the physical environment with tools, we can also modify the social 
environment and our mental states with symbols. 

In a similar vein, Farah’s development of consciousness was socio-culturally constructed; it is as 
a product of social interaction involving religious quotes as a form of cultural tools. However, caution 
must be taken so as not to reduce or attribute such development solely to sociocultural interactions. 
Rather, the sociocultural interactions contribute to the formation of an individual consciousness but 
do not supplant it. For example, in the literacy act of posting religious captions on her Instagram, 
Farah essentially demonstrated agency when she consciously used such cultural tools to provoke the 
engagement of thought, emotion, and imagination on the part of her Instagram community. Hence, 
Farah’s agency is both subjectively enacted and socio-culturally and historically shaped through 
doodles and quote bots as semiotic mediational tools. And this is precisely what agency holds in 
Vygotskian sociocultural perspectives. 

Farah’s identity as the contemplative/religious was mediated through her posting of captions on 
Instagram (self  as author) featuring religious quotes from the Holy Book. Her identity as the 
inquisitive/knowledge seeker was mediated through the choice of reading texts featuring unique 
information and knowledge. Her identity could be understood as emerging out of the way she 
described her experience to me as a researcher (self as author) and the impression that I had of her 
(the impression that she gave off) as a researcher. One distinctive feature of Farah identity entails the 
use of doodles as a semiotic mediation (Vygotsky, 1974) to help her navigate through her boredom. 
In Bakhtinian terms, Farah’s identity was heavily permeated with language, highlighting the role of 
language in one’s development of consciousness.  

The different examples above illustrate Farah’s practice of borrowing texts from other sources both 
as a direct quotation and implicit use of borrowed words. Although it is obvious that the quotes are 
not their own, they most often were able to use them in an appropriate manner to suit the context of 
the interaction and to the rest of the text. Such practice of intertextuality reflects the participants’ 
creativity and improvisation in coping with their situation and constraints as English learners. 

4. Conclusion 
This research has shown how a 20-year-old university student, Farah, engaged in the production 

and interpretation of text known as intertextuality in digital space and how such practice serves as a 
semiotic mediation for her enactment of agency and identity as L2 learner. Intertextuality has been 
shown to play a major role in enabling Farah to mark her authorship in a digital community of friends 
and strangers in ways that satisfy her need for self-expression and social relations and cohesion. 
Through Instagram posts, Farah was able to show creativity in authoring the self by borrowing texts, 
mixing languages and synthesizing symbols, drawings, and captions, highlighting her agency in 
everyday digital literacy practices. On a similar note, her practice of intertextuality also allows her to 
enact her multiple identities during her participations in culturally shaped digital literacy practices. 
Farah’s acknowledgment of feeling liberated in writing and using English and Bahasa Indonesia 
echoes the nature of out-of-class literacy practice that is more empowering, engaging and liberating 
to a great extent.  

The findings from this research have provided some insights into the changing landscape of literacy 
practice in the wake of digital communication and media proliferation. Literacy can no longer be 
conceived as merely acquisition of discrete technical skills but also include sociocultural aspects 
embedded in learning. Teachers and educational practitioners need to develop awareness of learners’ 
changing learning landscape where technology and digital media have become an indispensable part 
of learners’ everyday life. To respond to this changing landscape would partly mean to change the 
way we view learners/students, from merely a recipient of knowledge to an individual who has agency, 
identity and ‘funds of knowledge’ that has to be acknowledged and appreciated in any process of 
curriculum design and its implementation on a daily basis. 

 



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Declarations 
Author contribution : All  
Funding statement : The research is funded under self-funded initiative 
Conflict of interest : The authors declare no conflict of interest. 
Additional information : No additional information is available for this paper. 
 
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