Online fan communities and fan sites are home to many different kinds of fandom tasks and projects, perhaps the best known of which is fan fiction These are stories that reinterpret and remix the events, characters and settings found in fiction and popular media. Other online fandom tasks include translation projects such as fan-subbing, amateur subtitling of movies and television series carried out online by teams of fans in different countries, and spoiling, in which fan networks track down and share information via social media for the purpose of speculating about a television show or movie’s plotline before it is released (Duffet, 2013). Research in applied linguistics on fandom practices has explored how youth have used fan fiction, in particular, to foster identity and second language development in the digital wilds (see for example Leppänen, 2008 and Thorne & Black, 2011). However, less attention has been paid to the older language learners in online media fandoms who also represent a type of language learner engaged in autonomous and long-term extramural language learning (Sundqvist, 2009) in the digital wilds. Moving from the wilds to the classroom, more recent research has begun to explore the domestication of fan fiction tasks in formal classroom contexts (Sauro & Sundmark, in press 2016) and which also holds promise for the design of technology-mediated tasks to support the learning of both language and literature. This talk, therefore, discusses findings from case-study research with older fans as well as classroom-based research to explore how these fandom tasks and fan practices are used to facilitate the development of linguistic, literary, and digital competences both in the wilds and in the classroom.

1. FAN FICTION AND FAN PRACTICES: INTEGRATING THE
DIGITAL WILDS AND THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
Shannon Sauro
Malmö University, Sweden
shannon.sauro@mah.se |@shansauro | mah.academia.edu/ShannonSauro | ssauro.info

2. “…’fan’ is actually a much wider social category, referring to a mode of
participation with a long history in a variety of cultural activities,
including literature, sports, theater, film, and television.”
(Cavicci, 1998 p. 3)

3. “A fan is a person with a relatively deep positive emotional conviction
about someone or something famous, usually expressed through a
recognition of style or creativity.”
(Duffet, 2013, p. 18)

4. Affirmational Fandom
“the source material is re-stated,
the author’s purpose divined to
the community’s satisfaction, rules
established on how the characters
are and how the universe works.”
(obsession_inc, 2009)
Transformational Fandom
“laying hands upon the source and
twisting it to the fans’ own
purposes”
(obsession_inc, 2009)

5. Online Fandom
“the local and international networks of fans that develop around a
particular program, text or other media product and which foster the
sharing of responses to the source material, including the production of
novel fan-generated content.” (Sauro, 2014, p. 239)

6. Extramural English
“…English-related activities that learners come in contact with or
are engaged in outside the walls of the English classroom,
generally on a voluntary basis.” (Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2014, p. 4)

7. Young Fans and Applied Linguistics
• A teen L2 English learner’s development of a textual identity through fan
site web design and interaction in fan spaces (Lam, 2000)
• Case studies of teen L2 learners’ use of fanfiction in anime fandoms to
transition from novice writer in English to successful writer (Black, 2006;
2009)
• Bilingual fanfiction writing practices of young Finnish fans of American
television shows to index multilingualism and global citizenship (Lepännen,
et al, 2009)

8. Non-Teen Fans and Language Learning
• The cyclical relationship between anime consumption and Japanese learning
among university-aged learners of Japanese as a foreign language
(Fukunaga, 2006).
• The language learning practices of a 26-year-old Spanish manga fan who
engaged in amateur translations (scanlation) of Asian manga into Spanish
(Valero-Porras & Cassany, 2015).

9. Case Study of Steevee
To explore the L2
language development
and digital literacy
practices of an adult fan
and second language
learner of English.

10. 2009
• convergence of online & offline
events
• Began university
• Joined Supernatural Fandom
• Joined Twitter; Created a fan FB
page
2010
• Joined Torchwood and Doctor
Who fandoms
• Created a Tumblr
Steevee
30 year-old female fan from eastern Germany
2012
• Joined Sherlock fandom
• First read fanfiction
• Wrote first fanfiction
2013
• Began reporting on filming of
Sherlock #setlock
• Developed fact-checking skills,
brevity & speed in English for
posting.
2015
• Joined The Man from Uncle fandom

11. “As we have noted, motivation is
never simply in the hands of the
motivated individual learner but is
constructed and constrained
through social relations with
others”
(Ushioda, 2008, p. 157)

12. I tried to shift my accent from American English to British English. I tried to
learn to write colour with ‘ou’ and so on. And I started to watch Doctor Who
and Torchwood. Those were my next two big fandoms.
(Interview, 14 December 2015)
…it was the opportunity to completely immerse myself in the English
language. That was it for me. I was so stoked. I’m going to get online and I’m
going to talk to people and learn English. And I’m going to learn new words.
And I used to sit there with a notepad next to Twitter and write down words
I’d never seen before, look them up, learn them.
(Interview, 14 December 2015)

13. Spoilers
Spoiling
“…the purposeful discovery
of crucial developments in
the plot of a fictional story of
a film or TV series before the
relevant material has been
broadcast or released.”
(Duffett, 2013, p. 168)

14. “The non-native speakers are
really the lose canon because
they might understand
something incorrectly because of
their own lack of knowledge of
the English language or sarcasm
or whatever is being used as a
metaphor for example.”
(Interview, 14 December 2015)

15. “And setlock has taught me in a way
to check many things that come up.
Like today, it was the Pope posted his
first selfie…Within one minute I had
found out, even before Buzzfeed had
found out, I knew that the picture
was not a selfie but a screengrab
from an interview he once did.”
(Interview, 14 December 2015)

16. Fanfiction
"writing that continues,
interrupts, reimagines, or just
riffs on stories and characters
other people have already
written about."
(Jamison, 2013 p. 17)

17. The Blogging Hobbit: A collaborative story of a missing
moment from Tolkien’s The Hobbit:
Task 1: Story outline and map
Task 2: Collaborative roleplay fanfiction - each group member to
write from the perspective of one character from The Hobbit
Task 3: Reflective paper

18. “this writing activity has
influenced my language
skills…. During this project I
have been able to expand
my repertoar [sic] of
English words which are
not so commonly used in
everyday English anymore.”
(Student 14, Cohort 2013)

19. “[a]fter a short
while, the writing
became very fluent
and I did not have to
think too hard
before writing”
(Student 40, Cohort 2013)

20. It is lying still, yet it spins around
It tries to move but its body is bound
All because of the precious it stole
Fool us again and they eats it whole.
(from The Mirkwood Mysteries)

21. Learner Fanfiction (172,911)
• N=31 stories produced by
Cohorts 2013 & 2014
• 2000-16000 words each
• Rated Teen
• Gen
• Canon compliant
Ao3 Fanfiction (92,760)
• N=18 stories posted Dec 1
2013 – Jan 31, 2015
• 2000-16000 words each
• Rated Teen
• Gen (no het or slash)
• Not alternate universe or
other sub-genres

22. Keywords
Third Person Plural Pronouns: we, our, us
Character Names: Gandalf, Beorn, Balin, Elrond,
Gollum, Dori, Bombur, Bilbo
Species: dwarves, goblins, wizard, elves
Less Common Irregular Plural: dwarfs

23. Negative Keywords
Third person singular pronouns: she, her, his, him
Kinship terms: son, sister, mother, brother, uncle
Character names: Thranduil, Legolas, Tauriel, Bifur
Contracted forms: d, s, re, t

24. “I think ours was very, kind of, very much like the book in a
way, so maybe it wasn’t as exciting as some other fanfiction
because it wasn’t innovating in that way…”
(B. Dream Team Interview)

25. A Study in Sherlock
CollaborativeCasefic

26. Option 1
Retell a Sherlock Holmes story but
in a different universe.
(Transformational)
Option 2
Tell an original Sherlock Holmes
mystery in the original context
(Victorian London) or in an
alternate universe.
(Affirmational or Transformational)

27. The last member of our gang
was the dog Scooby Doo, which
belonged to Sherlock’s mother
and had a fantastic nose for
mysteries and funny business.
Our gang practically lived in our
car, a blue van with flowers on it
(Sherlock didn’t like it much and
thought it was a bit vulgar) we
called it the Mystery Machine
and with it we cruised around
searching for mysteries to solve.
Nowhere to Hyde

28. “Good afternoon, sir.
This is Bragevägen 21B,
the home of Sherlock
Holmes? Is he available?”
asked one of the officers
who introduced himself
as chief officer
Gregsson.
The von Sydow Murders

29. “…instead of saying “he said”, we and Doyle instead used “said he”. Second, we
and Doyle often, from Watson’s perspective, referred to Sherlock Holmes as “my
colleague”, and from Sherlock’s perspective referring to Watson as “my friend”.
Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes often said “pray” instead of “please”, and “I fancy”
instead of “I believe”, which we also used in our fanfiction. “
(Student 16, Cohort 2015)

30. “Doyle writes also quite linear with Watson’s first person narrative, which
contributes to maintaining the suspense, since Watson, as a limited narrator, is
many times as clueless as the reader is, which I tried to keep in mind at all times. I
also tried to give my writing a variable rhythm, slowing it down with descriptions
sometimes, and speeding it up with action verbs at other times.“
(Student 8, Cohort 2015)

31. References
Black, R.W. (2009). Online fan fiction, global identities, and imagination. Research in the Teaching of English, 43, 397-425.
Black, R.W. (2006). Language, culture, and identity in online fanfiction. E-learning, 3, 180–184.
Cavicci, D. (1998). Tramps like us: Music and meaning among Springsteen fans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New York/London: Bloomsbury.
Fukunaga, N. (2006). “Those anime students”: Foreign language literacy development through Japanese popular culture. Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy, 50(3), 206-222.
Jamison, A. (2013). ‘Why Fic?’ in A. Jamison (ed.). Fic: Why fanfiction is taking over the world. Dallas, TX: Smart Pop Books.
Lam, W. S. E. (2000). Literacy and the design of the self: A case study of a teenager writing on the Internet. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 457-484.
Lepännen, S., Pitkänen-Huhta, A., Piirainen-Marsch, A., Nikula, T., & Peuronen, S. (2009). Young people’s translocal new media uses: A
multiperspective analysis of language choice and hetero-glossia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14, 1080–1107.
obsession_inc. (2009). Affirmational fandom vs. transformational Fandom." Accessed May 31, 2016.
Sauro, S. (2014). Lessons from the fandom: Task models for technology-enhanced language learning. In M. González-Lloret & L. Ortega (Eds).
Technology-mediated TBLT: Researching technology and tasks, (pp. 239-262). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sauro, S., & Sundmark, B. (In Press.) Report from Middle Earth: Fan fiction tasks in the EFL classroom. ELT Journal.
Scott, M. (1997). PC analysis of key words - and key key words. System 25, 233-245.
Sundqvist, P., & Sylvén, L.K., (2014). Language-related computer use: Focus on young L2 English learners in Sweden. ReCALL, 26(1), 3-20.
Ushioda, E. (2008). Language motivation in a reconfigured Europe: Access, identity, autonomy. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development,
27(2), 148-161.