Young Children Enacting Resistance in/Through Translingual Writing About Their Names

• In Event: Mobilizing Literacy While Living in the Margins: Writing, Talking, and Reading the World

Abstract

Children’s names play a critical role in literacy learning. However, children who are linguistically and/or racially minoritized often experience the changing or mispronunciation of their names in schools. In this study, we examined how a linguistically diverse group of second graders composed poetry about their names. Drawing theories of translingual writing (Canagarajah, 2013), we used qualitative methods to document how children wrote across languages to enact resistance against name changings and mispronunciations. We also describe how some children reinscribed dominant discourses through their writing, asserting preferences for names associated with whiteness. This study suggests that children can skillfully draw on the breadth of their communicative repertoires to enact resistance in/through writing. It also underscores the complexities associated with such work.

Authors

• Emily Machado, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Paul Hartman, Chicago Public Schools