Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics Praxis: Multilingual and Multisemiotic Meaning Making With Middle Schoolers

• In Event: Pedagogies of Hope: New Trends in Bilingual Education

Abstract

1. Objectives
The purpose of this paper is to explain and illustrate key theoretical tenets of our culturally sustaining SFL pedagogical framework (CSSFL), which we developed in the Southeast of the United States to challenge monoglossic school policies. We draw from two larger qualitative case studies: CSSFL in a science classroom for newcomer bilingual learners; and in an afterschool arts-based youth participatory program.

2. Theoretical framework
We conceptualize our approach as one that validates and sustains student cultures and languages while also taking “a critical stance toward and critical action against unequal power relations” (Paris, 2012, p. 95).. From an SFL perspective, language with its three register meta functions (field, tenor and mode) is “eco-social” in that it fluidly accommodates variation in social, linguistic and cultural registers (Lukin, Moore, Herke, Wegener & Wu, 2011). In multilingual contexts, meaning making emerges through configured use of all available semiotic resources (e.g., linguistic repertoires, modalities). Our CSSFL perspective aligns with research on translanguaging, a fluid resource to communicate in social and academic contexts (Canagarajah, 2013; García, 2009; Daniel & Pacheco, 2016).

In teaching science or the arts, CSSFL educators and bilingual learners shunt among every day, specialized and reflective knowledge domains. Findings from our research in a science classroom and an afterschool arts-based youth participatory program highlight how multimodality and translanguaging were frequently used by participants to co construct disciplinary and creative texts.

3. Modes of Inquiry
Functional literacy approaches, developed in Australia and later applied to U.S. contexts, contribute knowledge on how semiotic systems work to achieve discursive goals. Our conceptual study contributes to the development of SFL by examining multi semiotic resources of productive civic and academic youth engagement. We seek to address the following question: What were the multi semiotic resources that supported and encouraged (or not) adolescent youth to engage in scientific and artistic knowledge domains?

4. Data Collection and Analysis
We selected critical moments from two larger studies (Fairclough, 2003) to explore when and how bilingual and bidialectal learners availed of translanguaging, multi semiotic systems and register shunting. We then conducted an SFL analysis of the selected samples (e.g., ideational and appraisal resources). The analysis illuminated the ways that learners appropriated Spanish, English, vernacular dialects, physical and visual domains to make meaning (e.g. understanding of new scientific concept, writing poetry, architectural model making).

5. Preliminary Hunches
Informed by SFL analysis, we found that the CCSFL approach supported youth and adult participants in expanding their semiotic repertoires (e.g. use of translanguaging and expanded modalities). For example, in the arts-based program, the youth creatively re-mixed available resources to rap, draw, construct models, and perform newly constructed understandings of their cultural and linguistic identities. However, overall school assessment of disciplinary literacies continued to be monolingual and monoglossic.

6. Significance of the Study
Our conceptual paper, with illustrative examples from CSSFL classrooms, challenges educators to consider the importance of developing and cultivating culturally sustaining strategies with youth (Humphrey, 2010). CSSFL can support bilingual/bidialectal students in interpreting and enacting rich linguistic repertoires and knowledge that they already use in their everyday lives (Pacheco, 2009).

Authors

• Ruth Harman, University of Georgia - Athens

• Lourdes Cardozo-Gaibisso, University of Georgia - Athens

• Jason D. Mizell, University of Georgia - Athens