Making (and Not Making) Connections With a "Mirror Text": Intertextuality With Refugee and Immigrant Youth

• In Event: 34.097 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Four - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 34.097-5 - Intertextuality, Frame, and Footing: Exploring Linguistic Performance

Abstract

Drawing on a sociolinguistic understanding of intertextuality (cf., Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993), this qualitative research study explores the connections and disconnections made by refugee and immigrant youth and their teacher to a proposed mirror text (Sims Bishop, 1993) at an ESL afterschool program. Employing an ethnographic framework, I utilize intertextuality as a discourse analytic tool to highlight the different texts indexed by participants as they make (dis)connections, and how they position themselves and one another in relation to the text. Findings from this study thus (1) problematize the common uptake of mirror texts and (2) call for greater consideration of how local and broader socio-political contexts mediate the social construction of intertextuality for minoritized youth in language arts classrooms.

Author

• Jackie Ridley, The Ohio State University