Abstract Summary
This paper discusses collage-based research-creation projects with students and teachers in Canada, France and the United States to examine how creative inquiry can not only expand our methodological toolkits but also apprentice us into new ways of seeing and theorizing more equitable applied linguistics research with minoritized language users.
Abstract :
Communication in the 21stcentury involves not only languages and their varieties but also a range of dynamic multimodal and multisemiotic practices. To overcome what Li (2018) describes as ‘lingua bias’ requires a shift from studying (named) language(s) onlyto co-investigating communication practices with social actors who draw on their expansive communicative repertoires differentially across many contexts over their lifespan. Recent turns in the field of applied linguistics including the Multilingual Turn (2014) and the Visual Turn (2018), have opened up space to interrogate multilingualism through creative inquiry. In this talk, I discuss how collaborative research-creation, particularly with minoritized language users, can support applied linguists in decolonising multilingualism (Phipps, 2019). I argue that creative inquiry is, in fact, essential to developing more critical and equitable approaches to studying and theorizing multilingualism. Creative visual and multimodal methods blur the boundaries of what constitutes language(s). Research-creation as a process and a product generates space for researchers/artists to dialogue in generative ways that do not privilege (named) languages but rather amplify diverse ways of seeing, knowing and being.
To illustrate my argument, I discuss a number of collage-based research-creation collaborations with elementary students and their teachers over the past decade in Canada, France and the United States through which we have investigated children’s social representations of language(s), language users and language learning. In particular, I trace across these projects how collage as a creative method for engaging culturally and linguistically diverse children equitably in research developed into a metaphorical lens for theorizing children’s language practices and identity negotiations. I consider, consequently, the transformative capacity of collaborative research-creation not only to expand researchers’ methodological toolkits but also to apprentice us into new ways of seeing and theorizing more equitable applied linguistics research with minoritized language users.
