Language use and literacy practices in multilingual refugee-background families from Burma and Afghanistan

• In Event: Elevating Refugee-Background Communities’ Ways of Knowing, Doing, Being, and Becoming: Canadian and U.S. Perspectives

Abstract

This presentation reports the findings from two qualitative research studies with Burmese and Afghan families who are multilingual refugee-background learners in the United States. Drawing upon literacy as a social practice (Street, 1984, 1995), both studies explored these families’ literacy practices. Street (1984, 1995) defined literacy as a social practice that views literacy beyond only phonics-based skills. This view emphasizes individuals’ ways of using literacy for different social purposes in their everyday lives. This sociocultural theoretical lens enabled me to explore how the participants viewed their home languages and engaged in literacy for various social purposes in home contexts. The Burmese families speak Burmese, Arabic, a limited amount of Thai, and English. The Afghan families speak Dari, Farsi, and English. Qualitative data sources included interviews, field notes, audio recordings of conversations, and artifacts. Once I started the process of data collection, I also began the preliminary data analysis. After I finished the entire process of data collection, I delved into focused data analysis, which included coding, categorizing, and identifying patterns. Specifically, I first coded each data set separately and then identified common themes by reviewing all the data sources across both studies.

The data analysis across both studies allowed me to gain insights into the participants’ attitudes and values linked to their home language maintenance, literacy practices, and social factors that influenced their language use in the host country. For example, all the parents across both studies expressed their high expectations and actions of helping their children sustain their home languages (e.g., Burmese, Arabic, Farsi, Dari), but they found it not easy to teach them these home languages as the young generations were exposed to English monolingual schooling settings in the host country. The findings also indicated another pattern: all the families engaged in various bilingual/multilingual texts at home even though there were differences regarding language use. For example, the Afghan families said that they used Dari to read news, magazines, and digital texts in relation to their home country, children’s schooling, and entertainment. The Burmese families’ narratives indicated that they used Burmese to take notes for their daily activities and used Arabic for religious practices. Together, the families used more than one language to engage in literacy practices for social purposes in their daily lives. To these families, literacy is not a skill they had to acquire for taking tests in schooling settings. Instead, they have established their multilingual literacy practices as their families’ cultural assets. These findings highlight these families’ multilingual identities, which have been marginalized from the dominant discourse. The findings also informed recommendations such as calling more attention to refugee-background families’ multilingual identities through asset-based approaches and illuminating how the educational practices need remedy and repair.

Author

• Aijuan Cun, University of New Mexico