Abstract Summary
This paper presents results of the project My Literacies on children’s attitudes and investment in language and literacy learning in school and out-of-school contexts. The interpretation of visual products (photos, drawings) and conversational data shows the children’s ambivalent emotions towards multilingualism as a result of discourse and institutional practices.
Abstract :
This contribution presents data from a larger research program, "My Literacies", engaging children in research on their multilingual and multiliteracies repertoires. 70 children in three primary schools (~ 80% “migration background”) were encouraged to record literacy practices in school and out-of-school contexts. The data collected consist of visual products (photos, drawings) and conversational data that are analyzed by means of conversation analysis, discourse analysis and social semiotics and provide interesting insights into children’s experiences of multilingualism in their every-day life.
With a theoretical background in the New Literacy Studies (Barton/Hamilton 2000; Street 2013) and the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (Kalantzis/Cope 2012), Critical Discourse Analysis, and Darvin/Norton’s (2015) Model of Investment, we focus on children’s attitudes and emotions about language and literacy learning in plurilingual families and communities, but largely monolingual education systems.
Children in the sample name a range of several "languages" and "varieties" that have a role in their every-day life. Many children take part in so-called “mother tongue classes” in school, while others participate in extra-curricular language courses organized by local communities. Many but not all of these languages are closely associated with their family or "country of origin" but are not necessarily those that children feel most proficient in. The data show several cases where children express quite ambivalent emotions towards these languages, even if these – from an outside view – are considered as their L1. This ambivalence is expressed in verbal, non-verbal and visual ways and indicates the differential status or "importance" of languages that result in different forms of investment in these languages. From a critical interpretation of these findings as a result of institutional practices, discourses and language ideologies, we aim to derive pedagogical implications for Critical Multilingual and Multiliteracies education and for teachers’ pre- and in-service training.
