Embodied Identity-Making: Bilingual Digital Storytelling in Virtual Spaces

• In Event: Multimodal Narratives for Liberation: Toward Embodied Literacies

Abstract

material-informed netnography in researching biliteracy learners’ identity making in virtual spaces. Undergirded by New Materialism, this research disturbs traditional interviewing that relies heavily on descriptive language representations of youth’s identity enactment. Instead, this research focuses on Canadian and Chinese biliteracy learners’ embodied identity making through cross-border digital story-making in virtual spaces. Findings reveal biliteracy learners’ relationship-building with non-human animals, materials, and spaces in the processes of meaning making and identity construction. Findings and discussions also relate the affordances of the material-informed netnography in documenting and analyzing the focal participants’ moment-by-moment transformation in thinking, meaning making, and becoming.

Authors

• Zheng Zhang, Western University

• Le Chen, University of Toronto

• Zhen Lin, The University of British Columbia