This paper takes a socially oriented perspective on human activity (Chaiklin & Lave 1993, Rogoff 1990, Säljö 2005, Wertsch 1998). Meaning-making processes in everyday life are here accorded primacy when compared to formal structural properties of linguistic variation, modalities and identities (Jewitt 2009, Linell 2009). The point of departure here is that human beings communicate with one another and they create meaning together, irrespective of whether this communication occurs in one, two or more linguistic varieties, dialects, registers or written-, pictorial-, oral-, signing- modalities. Ideas that emerge from micro-empirical analysis of (i) monolingual and bilingual communication, (ii) bilingual communication in visually-oriented “deaf” environments, and (iii) written-pictorial communication (for instance social- and mass-media) are highlighted. My analysis from these traditionally segregated academic fields (for instance research results in fields such as mother tongue, bilingualism, reading and writing, deaf communication, etc) allows for exploring the concept of chaining. More specifically, I deal with learning in and through language and the constitution of human identity in and through communication. Focusing social practices – what gets communicated and the ways in which the same occurs – allows us to problematize the dominating monolingual-monomodality position in addition to the “monological” essentialistic perspectives on languages and identities.