This study examines how five multilingual teaching assistants use daily digital interactions to build communities, manage face, and construct identities in a KakaoTalk group chat. Analysis of 442 messages collected over 5.5 months (September 2025 – February 2026) revealed systematic changes: task-focused talk decreased from 32% to 7%, while social talk increased from 19% to 42%. Using qualitative discourse analysis with quantitative frequency tracking, this study identified five recurrent practices: emotional support (8.1%), apology and responsibility management (2.7%), task coordination (20.1%), leadership implementation (4.5%), and cultural sharing (1.6%). A single conflict in October was resolved through a distributed apology (9% of monthly messages) and increased support (13%), illustrating collaborative facework (Goffman, 1967). Drawing on communities of practice theory (Wenger, 1998), relational approaches to politeness (Locher & Watts, 2005), and computer-mediated discourse research (Herring & Androutsopoulos, 2015), the analysis shows that, although English is a shared language, participants draw on culturally embedded resources: Korean members use Korean-specific emoticons, the American member uses global common emojis, and the Uzbek member shares cultural references in 4.1% of their messages. This study contributes to multilingual academic communication research by demonstrating how digital communities form and negotiate their identities on KakaoTalk, an important non-Western platform.

Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
    2.1. Identity Construction
    2.2. Face Management
    2.3. Summary and Research Gap
3. METHODOLOGY
    3.1. Research Design
    3.2. The Speech Community
    3.3. Digital Meeting Space
    3.4. Data Collection
    3.5. Data Analysis
    3.6. Ethical Considerations
4. RESULTS
    4.1. Overview: The Group's Communication Profile
    4.2. Evolution Over Time: From Strangers to Community
    4.3. Individual Communication Styles
    4.4. Key Interactional Sequences
5. DISCUSSION
    5.1. Communities of Practice: Formation Over Time
    5.2. Relational Work: Beyond Politeness
    5.3. Identity as Interactional Achievement
    5.4. Multimodality as Cultural Resource
    5.5. The Significance of KakaoTalk
    5.6. Theoretical Implications
6. CONCLUSION
    6.1. Limitations
    6.2. Future Research
    6.3. Final Reflections
REFERENCES

• Matkhiya Usmonova Rustamovna(Ph.D. Candidate, TESOL, Sookmyung Women’s University; 100 Cheongpa-ro 47-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul 04310, South Korea)