Decolonizing Language and Literacy Research through Reconstructive Discourse Analysis

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Over the past few decades, language and literacy researchers in the English-speaking world have created a number of pluralized concepts that aim to expand our understanding of literacy and language use. These concepts include multiliteracies, multimodality, plurilingualism, and translanguaging among others. The research trends that represent these concepts often frame them as cutting-edge research. Nevertheless, non-Western communities have long engaged with these pluri, multi, and trans forms of literacy. The monolingual print-based literacy that is often critiqued by these research movements is the result of Western positivist, colonial, and neoliberal educational structures, which overlook the multidimensional literacy practices already existing in other parts of the world (Gagne et al., 2022). Pluri, multi, and trans literacy movements, thus, should not be regarded as Western inventions, but as attempts to remedy the ills of Western conceptualizations. Societies in the East, for instance, have long histories of translingual and multimodal linguistic practices. In this panel, we argue that to have more reliable and authentic conceptualizations of pluri, multi, and trans literacies, it is important to incorporate non-Western discourses about the same practices. Hence, we propose the use of Reconstructive Discourse Analysis as a methodology to revisit pluralized Western concepts in language and literacy research through the lens of Eastern discourses about the same phenomena. The first presenter of the panel will provide an explanation about Reconstructive Discourse Analysis as a decolonial research approach that aims to reconstruct Western conceptualizations about language and literacy education by incorporating non-western epistemologies in conversations in English-speaking academia.

The second presenter will speak about how Western researchers have actively eroded the contribution of other communities to “trendy” Western debates. She will present the concept of “multiliteracies” and illustrate how the dynamics of Western academia have erased the Iranian context from discussions surrounding multiple literacies, rebranding it as “a pedagogy of multiliteracies” (New London Group, 1996), through a four-stage process. The first stage, “Discovery of Raw Data,” involves imposing a western name on the already existing literacy practices in Iran. The second stage, “Theory Abstraction,” isolates and generalizes the concept of multiple literacies, stripping it from the Iranian context. The third stage, “Presentation as Western Discovery,” portrays multiliteracies as a Western invention, framing it as a response to Western circumstances and ignoring its Iranian origins. The fourth stage, termed “Digital Incorporation,” describes how multiple literacies became incorporated into and inseparable from conversations about digital literacy. Through these phases the Iranian contribution has been erased from the field.

As an example methodological reaction to systematic erosions of this nature, the third presenter will apply Reconstructive Discourse Analysis to de-westernize the concept “translanguaging” by delving into two Chinese concepts that denote “translanguaging”: “通九蕃语” (tōng jiǔ fān yǔ) and “解六蕃译” (jiě liù fān yì). These concepts were used over 1000 years ago, describing how the Sogdians, a Central Asian Iranian people, mastered various languages and worked as interpreters for the Tang government in diplomatic activities and foreign trade along the Silk Roads (Frankopan, 2015). By exploring these unique Chinese perspectives on interlingual connections, not discussed in the West, the third presenter will highlight the differences between the Chinese concepts and translanguaging from Western translanguaging theory, and how these differences can enrich the current Western discourses. In the spirit of the conference theme, we propose the use of Reconstructive Discourse Analysis as a means of protesting the erasure of Non-Western contexts and perspectives in the field of language and literacy research.

Sub Unit

• Cultural Contexts of Education and Human Potential SIG

Organizer

• Sitong Wang, McGill University

Chair

• Amir Kalan, McGill University

Individual Presentations

• Decolonizing Language and Literacy Research: Reconstructive Discourse Analysis for Pluralized Concepts - Amir Kalan, McGill University

• Tracing the Erasure of the Iranian Context in Multiliteracies Discourse - Renee Davy

• Decolonizing Translanguaging: Empowering Marginalized Discourse through Reconstructive Analysis - Sitong Wang, McGill University