Transnational Flows of Digital Media as a Resource for Language Maintenance

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

Abstract

1. Objectives
Research on family literacy and language practices has shown how immigrant parents draw on home culture resources and beliefs (Gillanders & Jiménez, 2004; Murillo), particularly as strategies of cultural and linguistic maintenance in new migration settings (Machado-Casas, 2008; Villenas, 2001). Yet, the adoption of digital tools to support these efforts remains unexplored. This paper examines immigrant parents’ mobilization of semiotic resources and transnational digital media flows in their evaluation and composition of educational texts for their children.
2. Theoretical framework
In this analysis, language is framed within a repertoire perspective (Blommaert & Backus, 2013), with attention to individual patterns of semiotic resources in polycentric contexts of communication—hence, noting how repertoires are shaped by multiple ideologies and power relations, as parents negotiate affiliations in their local and transnational contexts (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004; Lam & Warriner, 2012). Critical and participatory approaches to parental engagement inform the study design, examining how parents as writers and critical educators (Hurtig, 2005; Hurtig & Dyrness, 2011) can reframe their positions and transnational knowledge in relation to their children’s schooling.
3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
This participatory action research project was conducted over two academic years (2012-2014) in a family digital literacy program for parents at an elementary school in the U.S. South, serving approximately 70% of Latino students. Designed in collaboration with school personnel and parents, 56 two-hours sessions in the program were facilitated by the researcher and a graduate assistant, with a focus on exploration, critique, and production of educational resources for K-5 students.
4. Data sources
Data collected include field notes by the researcher and assistant, 96 hours of audio-recording of classroom interaction, individual interviews with 10 focal parent participants from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, and collection of digital and print-based texts. The analysis involved coding key classroom interactions in which parents retrieved and evaluated digital media, discussing their selection criteria, and coding of interview excerpts related to language maintenance efforts.
5. Results
Findings reveal parents’ selection and repurposing of digital media in Spanish that represented knowledge of specific regions and events related to their transnational practices, such as YouTube videos and images of religious processions in specific towns of Michoacán, or digitalized versions of children’s literature they themselves read as children. Parents drew on local language varieties to locate media (e.g., “olotes” for corncobs), hence demonstrating their strategic selection of transnational media, building on their individual repertoires. Yet, their design and criteria also incorporated academic literacy features; such as including vocabulary definitions, or preferring texts with comprehension questions at the end—hence, reflecting the polycentricity of transnational knowledge and school-expected practices.
6. Scientific or scholarly significance
This study illuminates the affordances of digital media in critical and participatory projects, as it allows visibility of the semiotic resources and knowledge immigrant parents bring as they reconfigure their relations to schools and showcase the complex repertoires they mobilize in non-traditional migration settings.

Author

• Silvia C Nogueron-Liu, University of Colorado - Boulder