Representing Language and Literacy Practices in Refugee-Background Nepali-Speaking Bhutanese Households: A Critical Social Semiotic Approach

• In Event: Amplifying Voices and Experiences: Representations of Languages, Literacies, and Identities Among Refugee-Background Children and Families

Abstract

Studies in family language and literacy of immigrant households have proliferated worldwide and illustrated the diversity of language and literacy practices in immigrant homes (Author 1, 2013, 2019; Auerbach, 1989; Compton-Lilly, 2007; Li, 2003; Pahl & Kelly, 2005; Perry, 2009). Moreover, central to these studies is the view that the wider society broadly recognizes and perceives family language and literacy of immigrant households as deficit, single, or simplistic. However, less attention has been paid to recently arrived refugee groups such as the Bhutanese, which is one of the top five groups to arrive in the United States during the past decade (Monin, Batalova, & Lai, 2021). This multi-site ethnographic study is informed by a broader five-year ethnography in which I explored the language and literacy practices of 12 recently refugees from Asian and African countries in a multiethnic low-income refugee-background neighborhood in a northeastern U.S. city. Informed by socio-spatial theory (Lefevbre, 1991; Soja, 1996), the sociocultural-practice paradigm of literacy (Barton et al., 2000; Heath, 1983; Street, 1995), and the social semiotic approach to language and literacy (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Halliday, 1978; van Leeuwen, 2005), this ethnographic case study illuminates the language and literacy practices embedded in daily activities of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese families.
Given the situated nature of family literacy, this multi-sited ethnographic study combined ethnographic and participatory methods to examine family literacy practices in two refugee-background Nepali-speaking Bhutanese households in a major refugee-receiving northeastern U.S. state. The two families were selected as key participants by purposive sampling (Merriam, 2002). The parents were in the age-group of 36-64 years and their highest level of education was between middle school and some college; they lived together with their children. Data sources consisted of observations, fieldnotes, semi-structured interviews with parents and children, and participatory visual communications such as drawings and photos. I was both an insider to the Bhutanese community as an instructor in this community’s adult ESL program and immigrant background and transnational experiences; however, I am an outsider in this community because I will never know what the refugee experience is like.
Findings from this study reveal that language and literacy practices in the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese families were a meaning-making process and contingent on different social spaces of home, school, and community. These practices constructed additional opportunities for parents and children to perceive and perform multilingual and multiliteracy practices depending on their situated space and places. This study illustrates that language and literacy practices in the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese homes were in response to their multilingual and multicultural identities, transnational migration, and technological use. Moreover, it sheds light on more informed language and literacy representations which provide critical awareness to help the public understand the diverse linguistic and cultural practices, as well as perspectives of multilinguals.

Author

• Xia Chao, Duquesne University
  Presenting Author