‘Expanding English’: Negotiating Creator Identities with Critical Multimodal Literacies in Secondary English Language Arts

• In Event: Language and Literacies

Abstract

This case study of a secondary, English language arts (ELA) unit on social justice explored how adolescent students made meaning and negotiated identities through a critical multimodal literacies approach emphasizing the role of criticality, multimodality, and identity in meaning-making and literacy activities. The author collected observational fieldnotes, individual and project group interviews, and multimodal artifacts such as student-produced video essays and utilized classroom discourse analysis and multimodal discourse analysis approaches. Analysis revealed that students enacted identities as composers of complex arguments through layered semiotic choices in their video essays; in doing so, they positioned themselves as creators and artists within and beyond the ELA context, challenging schooling narratives, and grappled with existential questions about what it means to be human.

Author

• Talia A. Howard Hanna, University of Texas at San Antonio