Multilingual Practices in Transnational Digital Contexts

• In Event: 65.069 - Exploring Technology-Mediated Transnational Language and Literacy Engagements

Abstract

New contexts of migration and mobility call for a reevaluation of our understanding of how people engage in communicative practices and what it means to learn languages and use languages to learn. A number of scholars have proposed the term repertoire to describe the range of linguistic and semiotic resources that people develop as they relate to and move across diverse communities (e.g., Blommaert & Backus, 2011; Rymes, 2010). For many migrants and children of migrants, their communicative repertoires are developed in transnational contexts as they negotiate relationships across local and distant territories using multiple languages and modes of communication.
In this presentation, we provide a theoretical synthesis of research studies that documented and examined the kinds of language and literacy practices and learning that are associated with the use of transnational media among migrant youths. We consider the new and changing communication media (the Internet, mobile, and social media) that are used for engaging in social interactions and with texts that circulate across national borders. We also connect this review to some related themes in the research literature of diaspora media studies where applicable to provide a larger context.
Our review of the research shows the multiple and complex influences that contribute to the literate repertoires of these young people. These diverse influences are demonstrated in the use of multiple languages, genres, and hybrid linguistic codes; images, music, and other forms of semiotic signs; as well as the content and cultural references that are represented through these diverse semiotic forms in the youths’ digital texts. The youths’ digital texts indicate that they are orienting to different sets of cultural norms and practices coming from both local and translocal contexts, across their countries of origin and settlement.
The diversification of communicative repertoire in the contexts of transnational migration and digital communication raises questions of how we theorize the kinds of repertoire learners develop in these contexts and how we can leverage and build on their repertoires for teaching and learning. We propose that these questions require that we consider issues of scale in understanding the ways in which migrant learners relate to language and literacy norms and practices that are prevalent within different geographical spaces, locally and translocally, and that have functional purpose for them (Blommaert, 2010; Collins, Slembrouck, & Baynham, 2009; Lam & Warriner, 2012). In particular, we suggest that the youths’ digital practices indicate the use of language and literacy as scale-shifting practices whereby English or Standard English is part of a larger communicative repertoire that the youth leverage to position themselves and navigate an interconnected and changing world. We discuss scale shifts as strategic maneuvers to cross or traverse socially differentiated spaces with the goal of expanding one’s agency and sphere of influence. Understanding how migrant learners participate in and make sense of the value of these practices may provide us an entree into thinking about how these learners’ transnational experiences and communicative repertoires can provide resources for learning that serve to enhance their mobility across spaces.

Authors

• Wan Shun Eva Lam, Northwestern University

• P. Zitlali Morales, University of Illinois at Chicago