This article examines the discursive construction of social presence and identity in a bilingual collaboration between tertiary distance learners of German in New Zealand and Academic English students in Germany. Drawing on positioning theory, this small-scale study investigated the collaborative practices of a group of students, whose synchronous online interactions were analyzed for manifestations of social presence and discursive strategies to project or resist identity positions through bilingual means. The findings showed the enactment of a "work & play" identity, where formal monolingual discourse patterns alternated with playful and creative uses of humour and translanguaging strategies. The learners developed a rich interactional structure supported through multiple layers of cohesive ties which helped build a productive learning community embedded in social interaction and facilitated by social presence.