ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has precipitated an increased reliance on technology mediated communication, especially in online education. As African education emerges from the devastation of Covid-19 and adopts digital transformation, there is a need to implement multilingual policies and multilingual pedagogies. South Africa has some of the best policies in the world that proclaim equity of languages, educational access and redress, yet the conceptualization of online multilingualism is still underdeveloped and English monolingualism is hegemonic. This chapter seeks to explore alternative Southern multilingualisms that are influenced by technology in an online university. It also describes the intersection of digital language use and digital literacy practices among students in higher education. The data reveals emerging digital multilingual repertoires, subject-identification through indigenous languages, and subject-positioning through digital multilingual repertoires, sociality, and relationality. Students are critically aware of indigenous cultural identification by using African languages and the necessity of English as a multilingual franca through technomultilingualism. Therefore, written online multilingualisms have the potential to bridge the digital divide, and reduce the mismatch between language policy and online multilingualism.
