I have argued in presenting this case study that the two students' experiences with English in an Internet
chat room can be seen as a process of language socialization through which they acquired a particular
linguistic variety of English to construct ethnic identifications with other young people of Chinese
descent around the world. For these students, communicating in English on the Internet involves adopting
and negotiating new norms of use and developing new identities for speaking the language. I have also
argued that the significance of the girls' participation in the chat room needs to be understood in relation
to their experiences with English in the national context of the US. In other words, the girls' language
experiences in the US affected how they approached and participated in the chat room, and their language
practices in the chat room in turn influenced their relation to the English language in the USA. A
Robertson (1992, pp. 100, 104) comments on cultural globalization, there is an interpenetration of the
global and local in the processes of socialization: People are influenced by the global, but this is
interpreted locally and local transformations are as much a part of globalization as the lateral extension of
social connections across time and space