Multimodal Mismatch in Digital Language Promotion: A Conceptual Framework for Migrant Workers in the Pearl River Delta

Abstract

Digital technologies have widened access to language-learning and language-service resources, but availability alone does not ensure relevant participation. This conceptual article examines that problem through the context of mobile workers in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), where occupational diversity, mobility, and varied patterns of digital participation complicate fixed assumptions about language need. Drawing on language needs analysis and research on digital inequality, the article develops a framework of multimodal mismatch to describe misalignment across five linked dimensions: user representation, situated communicative needs, resource provision, participation conditions, and feedback. Four forms of mismatch are distinguished: representation mismatch, resource relevance mismatch, participation mismatch, and feedback mismatch. To address these gaps, the article proposes multimodal profiling, which understands users relationally as people acting in particular situations rather than as collections of demographic or behavioral attributes. It then conceptualizes precision promotion as a process of sustained alignment involving needs sensing, profile integration, resource matching, participation, feedback interpretation, and collaborative adjustment. The framework further introduces functional data boundaries and distributed institutional knowledge as conditions for responsible implementation. The contribution is therefore not a model of greater personalization alone, but a broader account of how digital language promotion can connect people, communicative situations, resources, participation opportunities, and feedback over time.