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YouTube polyglots are an online community whose origin can be traced to the late 2000s, when language learning forums and YouTube videos of language learning enthusiasts began appearing online. This article draws on critical discourse analysis to examine the discourses of language learning that are manifest in polyglot videos and websites. It also situates this online community and their conception of language learning in the historical context of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, a period marked by intense technological acceleration, rapid social change and the commodification of lifestyles in the global marketplace of the internet. As representative figures of this period, polyglots turn to discourses that are suffused with tropes of speed and other related values such as efficiency, entrepreneurialism and individuality. They see language as an individual skill, rather than as a social practice, and language learning as a personal endeavor guided by productivity.
