Visual silence in the language portrait

Frequently used in support of biographical, subject-based approaches to multilingualism research, the language portrait is a method that is uniquely positioned to gain detailed insights into the complex lived experience of language, including language attitudes and ideologies that influence how speakers make sense of their linguistic repertoires. Research employing the language portrait has contributed to making visible individuals' complex multilingual repertoires, particularly in spaces where institutional language regimes may invisibilise speakers' repertoires or parts thereof.

Rather than analysing the visual representations created by speakers using the language portrait silhouette with a focus on elements that were included in the drawings, this paper draws attention to elements that are absent from the language portrait as a result of individuals purposefully excluding them from the visualisation of their linguistic repertoire. Based on a theoretical framework that draws on the notions of silence and, more specifically, visual silence, I explore the case study of one language portrait created by a primary school student in Luxembourg. This portrait was marked by the erasure of languages that are regularly used at school. The analysis explores the motivations behind these instances of visual silence which are heavily connected to the affective dimension of language in the student's understanding of their linguistic repertoire and lived experience of language. The analysis of this example demonstrates the potentially self-empowering ways in which (young) people can use the language portrait to resist languages that are part of the educational curriculum at school, and thus visualise and validate their linguistic repertoire.