Critical Multilingual Language Awareness: Preservice Teachers' Multimodal Representations of Language, Identity, and Power

• In Event: Educators' Development of Advocacy, Critical Language Awareness, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Across the Educational Continuum

Abstract

This cross-institutional qualitative study builds upon extant scholarship that demonstrates the potential for Critical Multilingual Language Awareness to disrupt deeply rooted English-only ideology and illuminate the rich linguistic repertoires of multilingual students (Athanases, Banes, Wong, & Martinez, 2018; García, 2015; Hélot, 2018). Using Serafini’s (2014) multimodal reconceptualization of Halliday’s (1978) metafunctions of language, we examined what meaning emerges from 22 pre-service teachers’ semiotic representations of the relationship between language, power, and identity. Through these representations, pre-service teachers were able to examine their understanding of language and the sociopolitical implications for multilingual repertoires. The findings provide important implications for how teacher educators and researchers can help shift language ideology to reflect more inclusive and asset-based perspectives of multilingual, multimodal linguistic repertoires.

Authors

• Matthew R. Deroo, University of Miami

• Christina M. Ponzio, Melvindale-Northern Allen Park Schools