Multilingual Literacy 9781800410701

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Multilingual Literacy

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Founding Editor: Viv Edwards, University of Reading, UK Series Editors: Phan Le Ha, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA and Joel Windle, Monash University, Australia. Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of identity and power, community and culture. What are the implications for language education of new ‘semiotic economies’ and communications technologies? Of complex blendings of cultural and linguistic diversity in communities and institutions? Of new cultural, regional and national identities and practices? The New Perspectives on Language and Education series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. New proposals, particularly for edited volumes, are expected to acknowledge and include perspectives from the Global South. Contributions from scholars from the Global South will be particularly sought out and welcomed, as well as those from marginalized communities within the Global North. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION: 85

Multilingual Literacy

Edited by Esther Odilia Breuer, Eva Lindgren, Anat Stavans and Elke Van Steendam

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/BREUER0695 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Breuer, Esther Odilia – editor. | Lindgren, Eva, editor. | Sṭavans, Anat, editor. | Steendam, Elke van, editor. Title: Multilingual Literacy/edited by Esther Odilia Breuer, Eva Lindgren, Anat Stavans, Elke Van Steendam. Description: Bristol, UK; Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: ‘This book highlights multilingual literacy practices inside classrooms as well as the importance of multilingual literacy outside of educational contexts. It provides a springboard for developing opportunities for learning and identity-building for all, across different settings’ – Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039933 | ISBN 9781800410688 (paperback) | ISBN 9781800410695 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800410701 (pdf) | ISBN 9781800410718 (epub) | ISBN 9781800410725 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Literacy – Developing countries. | Multilingual education – Developing countries. | Multilingualism – Developing countries. Classification: LCC LC161.M85 2021|DDC 370.117/509724 – dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039933 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-069-5 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-068-8 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2021 Esther Odilia Breuer, Eva Lindgren, Anat Stavans, Elke Van Steendam and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/ or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Riverside Publishing Solutions. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by NBN.

Contents

Contributors

vii

1 Multiple Approaches to Understanding and Working with Multilingual (Multi-)Literacy Esther Odilia Breuer and Elke Van Steendam

1

Part 1: Issues, Methods and Insights into Multilingual Literacy 2 Linguistic and Social Diversity, Literacy and Access to Higher Education Tiane Donahue 3 Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German: A Proposal for Developing and Applying an Instrument for Selecting Suitable Research Participants  Monika Angela Budde and Franziska Prüsmann 4 ‘I Should Really Interpret Word by Word for You’: Researcher, Interpreter and Interviewee Negotiating Roles, Responsibilities and Meanings in Two Multilingual Literacy Research Interviews Annika Norlund Shaswar

21

40

63

Part 2: Formal Education Framework: Multilingual Literacy in Classroom Practices 5 Paving a New Way to Literacy Development in Multilingual Children: A DMM Perspective  Ulrike Jessner, Emese Malzer-Papp and Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl 6 ‘He Just Does Not Write Enough For It’ – Literacy Practices Among Polish Adolescents in Ireland Malgorzata Machowska-Kosciak

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97

123

vi Contents

7

Construction of Identities in Diverse Classrooms: Writing Identity Texts in Grade Five  Åsa Wedin

145

Part 3: Formal Education Framework: Technology-Driven Multilingual Literacy in School 8

Developing Multiliteracies in Online Multilingual Interactions: The Example of Chat-Room Conversations in Romance Languages  165 Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer

9

Promoting Multilingualism and Multiliteracies through Storytelling: A Case Study on the Use of the App iTEO in Preschools in Luxembourg Claudine Kirsch

187

Part 4: Non-Formal Education: Multilingual Literacy at Home, in the Community and in Cyberspace 10 Multilingual Preschoolers’ Word Learning from Parent-Child Shared Reading of Informational and Narrative Books Deborah Bergman Deitcher, Helen Johnson and Dorit Aram

213

11 Multilingual Literacy: The Use of Emojis in Written Communication233 Anat Stavans, Maya Tahar Eden and Lior Azar 12 Building the Multilingual Literacy Bridge Anat Stavans and Eva Lindgren

260

Index

287

Contributors

Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl is a member of the DyME research team at Innsbruck University, a teacher and teacher trainer. She was a member of various international project teams operating in the field of multilingualism and whole school development. Her main research interests are (early) multilingual development and multilingual awareness in language learners, language management and maintenance strategies and inclusive teaching practices. She is further involved in curriculum planning and school development processes at a number of schools in the area. Dorit Aram is a full professor and the head of the Early Childhood Research Lab at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on parenting and the nature of adult-child interactions. She mainly studies literacy activities (joint writing and shared book reading) and explores their implications on children’s early literacy and socioemotional development. Deborah Bergman Deitcher is a Lecturer and Academic Supervisor in the International BA for Liberal Arts program at Tel Aviv University. Her research concentrates on shared adult–child reading interactions, focusing the on nature of these interactions and their implications for children’s early literacy and socioemotional development. Dr. Bergman Deitcher is particularly interested in the importance of different book genres and how they impact shared reading interactions. Esther Odilia Breuer is the Head of the Centre for Writing Competency at the University of Cologne. She teaches cognitive linguistics and neurolinguistics as well as writing research. In her research, she focuses on foreign language writing processes as well as on the neurological processes in writing. Points of special interest at the moment are writing with dyslexia as well as writing at an older age. Monika A. Budde works as a Professor of German Didactics. Her research fields are: Pedagogical concepts of multilingualism in multicultural language teaching classes; Subject Specific Language Teaching; Language Awareness; German as a Second Language and Curriculum development in Second vii

viii Contributors

Language Learning. Her current projects are ‘MALWE’: (Mehrsprachigkeit in DaF- und DaZ-Lehr-Lernkontexten wahrnehmen, aufgreifen und nutzen – Acknowledging, Building on and Leveraging Multilingualism in German as a Foreign Language (DaF) and German as a Second Language (DaZ) Teaching and Learning Contexts); and ‘Fach-ProSa’ (Fachspezifische Professionalisierung zur Sprachförderung-Fostering of Cognitive Academic Language Acquisition in Teacher Training). Her Academic Teaching Interests are: Multilingualism in German Classrooms; Learner Autonomy in university classrooms (Projects: LeLeFo; MoKuLab). Tiane Donahue is Associate Professor of Linguistics, past Director of the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, USA, and member of the Théodile-CIREL research laboratory at l’Université de Lille, France. She teaches writing and works cross-culturally and cross-disciplinarily with research groups in the United States and Europe on questions including: university student writing across cultures; international research and cross-disciplinary influence; accuracy in accountings of the spread of English; studies of the losses and gains entailed in globalization of research and writing; research methods that work across humanistic and social science modes; traditional corpus linguistic analyses and their contribution to current big data and digital humanities questions; studies of writing knowledge adaptation across modes and contexts.  Ulrike Jessner is Professor at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and the University of Pannonia, Veszprem (Hungary) where she acts as founding member of the International Doctoral School of Multilingualism. She has published widely in the field of multilingualism with a special focus on the acquisition of English in multilingual contexts. She is the co-author of A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (with Philip Herdina in 2002) which pioneered DSCT in language acquisition research, the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Multilingualism and the book series Trends in Applied Linguistics (Mouton de Gruyter). She is also a Founding Member and Past President of the International Association of Multilingualism. Lately she has been engaged with research in the trilingual Ladin kindergartens in South Tyrol. Helen L. Johnson is Professor of Child Development and Educational Psychology in the Department of Elementary & Early Childhood Education at Queens College and the Doctoral Program in Educational Psychology, Graduate Center, City University of New York. She teaches courses in child development, language development, family literacy, instructional issues and educational research. She is the director of Transitions to Teaching, a program designed to promote success for teacher education students from underserved populations. Her

Contributors ix

publications have focused on the development of children in adverse circumstances, language learning in diverse populations, culturally sensitive pedagogy and academic resilience in urban college students. Claudine Kirsch is Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, and Vice-Head of the Institute for Research on Multilingualism. Her research areas include language learning and teaching, multilingualism, multiliteracies, early childhood, family language policies and collaboration between parents and educators. She teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Eva Lindgren is a Professor of Language Teaching and Learning at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests include curriculum, multilingualism, and literacy with a particular focus on writing, revision during writing, and writing development across languages. Other lines of research include participatory research designs exploring writing as a democratic tool. Malgorzata Machowska-Kosciak is a Post-doctoral Researcher in the Centre for Human Rights and Citizenship Education and a lecturer in School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies, Dublin City University, Ireland. Her research focuses on the social, psychological and cultural challenges faced by young people from diverse backgrounds, their complex identity negotiations and the power relations inherent in society. Emese Malzer-Papp is a member of the DyME research group at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) where she works as a researcher and lecturer. She is currently working as a trainer for in-service teacher training as well as a language and literacy trainer for children, youngsters and adults of migrant and non-migrant backgrounds. The diversity of age and language mix offers her the opportunity to study the influence of multilingualism on the cognitive and metacognitive abilities of multilinguals. Her research interest focuses on language acquisition and development in early language learners. Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer is Associate Professor in the Department of Education, at the University of Hamburg (Germany). She is also a member of CIDTFF (Research Center for Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education, Portugal). Among her research interests are: multilingual and intercultural interaction, pluralistic approaches to teaching and learning of foreign languages, heritage language education and visual methods in research on multilingualism. She was a research member of different international projects and she currently coordinates

x Contributors

the Erasmus Plus Project ‘LoCALL – LOcal Linguistic Landscapes for global language education in the school context’. Annika Norlund Shaswar is a Senior Lecturer in Language Teaching and Learning at the Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. She is a coordinator of the research network Literacy in educational contexts (LITUM). Her research centers on multilingual literacy, basic literacy education in linguistically heterogeneous contexts, second language development of adults and digital literacy practices. Franziska Prüsmann works as a Research Assistant in German Didactics at the University of Vechta. Her research focuses on multilingualism and language heterogeneity, empirical research on school teaching and learning contexts (qualitative research methods) as well as text assessments. In her empirical dissertation she describes the process of assessing texts written by multilingual learners with German as an additional language in detail. Anat Stavans is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics in the English Department and former Director of the Research Authority at Beit Berl Academic College. Her research focuses on developmental and educational linguistics, trilingual acquisition and development, and cross-cultural and cross-linguistic literacy development. She is a consultant to several international agencies and institutions on multilingualism and multiliteracy; she was appointed to the COST Actions ‘The New Speakers of Europe’, ‘European Literacy Network’; she is currently the Principal Investigator of the study ‘Predictors of text quality in written expository texts: a developmental study’.  Elke Van Steendam is a Professor at the Faculty of Arts of KULeuven where she mainly teaches Proficiency in English courses and methodology to (Applied) linguistics students. Her research focuses on first and foreign language writing with a special interest in writing and reading processes, writing instruction, feedback and collaborative writing. Åsa Wedin Professor in Educational Work, PhD in Bilingualism, Dalarna University (Academy of Humanities and Media) Wedin’s main research interests are in multilingualism and literacy in education. She has carried out research in Tanzania, on literacy practices in primary school, and in Sweden on literacy and interactional patterns in classrooms and on conditions for multilingual students’ learning. She has published extensively, both varied publications in the research field and publications for teacher education.

1 Multiple Approaches to Understanding and Working with Multilingual (Multi-)Literacy Esther Odilia Breuer and Elke Van Steendam

Interlingual and intercultural communication is a phenomenon that has taken place from the very beginning of mankind. If it had not been for humans’ inherent urge to travel, to settle in and to adapt to new geographical as well as social-cultural contexts, a continent like Europe would not have been able to develop and harness the many different cultures that interact with and enrich each other, as it does today. In this constant process of migration, multilingualism has always played an important role. Yet, participants in the process did not have the ambition of acquiring languages at expert linguistic levels – an ambition (quite frequently) cherished by learners in educational and administrative evaluation systems today (Lambert, 1975). People found individual ways of interpreting and/or getting ideas across with the help of signs and gestures and by borrowing words and other forms of communication from the other languages very flexibly. When one realised that the other language provided more adequate vocabulary for a specific idea, one borrowed a word and adapted it in phonology and grammar to one’s own language (Attila, 2017). This is still visible in the high number of loan words from Latin or Greek in European languages, and nowadays it is popular to take over English expressions, sometimes even if terms are already at hand in one’s first language(s) (L1) in order to show that one is up to date. In this process, the original semantics and grammatical notion of the word might be changed, as happened, for example, in German with pseudo English words like ‘Handy’ for mobile phone, or ‘Public Viewing’ for watching football on screen(s) in open places (Finamore, 1998; Pöllmann, 2012). In other words, interaction between languages is actively taking place in various contexts, thus illustrating that ‘the idea that monolingualism is the human norm is a myth’ (Thomason, 2001: 31). 1

2  Multilingual Literacy

Multilingualism also plays a crucial role in literacy. Today, people utilise the medium of written language more than ever, not only in business and education, but also in private contexts and for routine life activities. Reading and writing (in different languages) have become exceedingly more crucial skills for people if they want to participate in social activities (Corral-Robles et al., 2017). Literate exchange in this process may not be reduced to writing and reading words, but it ‘involves constructing and navigating multiplicity, manipulating and critiquing information and representations in multiple media, and using diverse technologies (print, visual, digital) in composing multimodal texts’ (Archer & Breuer, 2015: 1). In many cases, it is a means not only of transporting information, but also of building and expressing one’s identity. These processes make elaborate use of cultural as well as autobiographical factors, they are very individual, and it is important to encourage and foster them by promoting multilingual (multi-)literacy elaborately. Some possibilities and considerations are introduced in this book. Since the terms of multilingualism as well as of (multi-)literacy are defined differently across the academic fields (see Donahue, this volume), we will briefly describe in the introduction how these broad and widely discussed concepts are understood by the authors in this book, before giving a concise overview of what is presented in the different parts and chapters. 1.1 Multilingualism

The last few decades have witnessed a radical change in how linguistic, social, political, business and pedagogical studies as well as administration view multilingual communication. Initially considered to be merely the degree of language proficiency someone had acquired in expressing themselves in another language than their first, second, third or fourth language, competencies were evaluated exclusively by comparing them to a native speaker’s level of proficiency. Hence, teachers have tended to focus on linguistic errors produced during multilingual speech or text production, thereby perhaps unintentionally hindering the opportunities that lie in the language learner’s burgeoning network for constructing meaning. Likewise, linguists and sociologists have drawn attention to the extent to which multilingual communication does not always meet the expectations from the L1 community, not to question or discredit multilinguals’ efforts, but rather to understand the processes behind language acquisition in order to develop methods that help to improve L2/L3 speakers’ performance in the target language. The purpose of enhancing language competencies is, of course, a sensible one, as multilinguals often still experience disadvantages because of linguistic errors or because of behaviour that differs from the

Multiple Approaches to Understanding and Working with Multilingual (Multi-)Literacy  3

expectations in the L1 culture’s standards (Cummins, 1981). However, the developed and executed standardised ways in which languages have been mediated to different groups of learners (e.g. migrants, children growing up in another language) have been deemed to be highly ‘inefficient in meeting the linguistic needs of this population’ (Randolph, 2017: 275). In the educational contexts language learners have only rarely been understood as people who have already formed a fundament of complex linguistic, cultural and social systems in which they can communicate without effort and which could be used for facilitating the language learning process. Instead, first language skills and knowledge have been considered to be interfering factors in the processes of learning a new language and ‘assimilating’ to another culture. Using the first language(s), therefore, was sometimes shunned in education, and every element that did not fit the social or cultural standards of the target community was banned. One of the consequences of this ‘subtractive’ (Lambert, 1975) monolingual view on multilingualism has been that heritage languages in many countries are not taught in obligatory classes at school. Children out of these communities often do not acquire literacy in their own first language. Because of this, they experience more difficulty in learning to read and write on a high level, and quite frequently, the feedback they get on their performance in the target language again focuses on the ‘negative’ aspects. This is even the case when teachers themselves do not consciously perceive themselves as evaluating the learners’ performance in the subtractive manner (Fairclough, 2005). Negative feedback, however, understandably does not add to the pupils’ motivation to participate in class. A consequence of this is that they feel (like) outsiders (Cummins, 1981; Gomolla, 2012), and their lack of engagement at school confirms teachers’ and society’s expectations. This vicious circle underlines the proposition that language and its evaluation are central factors to the concepts of power (Fairclough, 2015). The negative feelings associated with school have a longterm effect on the future perspectives of the multilingual pupils, as is demonstrated in the higher education context: we find a comparatively high dropout rate of students with an L2 background, which is frequently not the effect of the L2 students’ inability to think logically, but rather the result of the manifested (and mostly unreasonable) lack of self-confidence and the belief that they are not able to meet the demands made of them, caused by their experiences of not being evaluated fairly at school (cf. Burger & Groß, 2016; Fairclough, 2015). Using the evaluation of language correctness and culturally ‘correct’ approaches to tasks and settings as indicators for – among others – intelligence and adaptability to social settings, as was and is done in the subtractive approach, impedes the chances and large possibilities inherent in multilingualism. Parents’ ‘belief that in becoming bilingual

4  Multilingual Literacy

or bicultural one dulls his [= a child’s] cognitive powers and dilutes his identity’ (Lambert, 1975: 11) led parents living in L2 contexts to raise their children not in their own first languages but to provide exclusively the community’s (= the major) language to their children. The intension was to give them the best possible future options, but this strategy did not succeed. To the contrary, people with this kind of ‘pseudomonolingual’ background often face the problem of feeling lost between the cultures they could mutually belong to (see below). In the last decades, the awareness of the weaknesses of the subtractive approach has grown not only in the field of science, but also in applied pedagogy, educational politics and among the general public. People understand that intercultural exchange with people from different linguistic backgrounds in the globalised world is a gain for all participants, and this understanding calls for a change in working with multilingualism (Grosjean, 2010). One important step in doing this is to understand multilinguals not as the ‘sum’ of two and/or more languages, but as a unique entity. Even on the purely linguistic level, tests show that languages in multilinguals do not exist next to each other, but that all languages an individual has ever learned form a productive network. When creating messages, the conceptual structure activates the whole network inside the brain – parts of it being on a higher level of activity, parts of it on a lower level, depending on different factors (vocabulary size, but also context and topic) (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 1986, 2008). Errors in performance are then no signs of low language competencies, but rather a visualisation of how languages ‘cooperate’ in the process of generating meaning, using the whole network for dealing with these demands (Breuer, 2015; Cook, 1995; de Bot, 1992; de Bot et al., 2007; Van Dijk, 2003). Breuer (2015), for example, showed that students who wrote academic papers in English as a foreign language used their L1 linguistic network very actively to maintain fluency in the writing process. The participants frequently made subconscious use of L1 grammar, L1 orthographic rules and/or an L1 understanding of the academic genre. Although this method resulted in texts that contained a considerable number of linguistic errors, the L1 supported the students in using writing for thinking, generating ideas and finding ways to get the message across to the readers (Breuer, 2016; Galbrath, 1999, 2009; Menary, 2007). That they did not resort to the L1 for support in writing relatively simple English texts, which they also had to do, stresses that using the complete linguistic network can be an efficient method of dealing with higher cognitive demands imposed by more difficult tasks (e.g. Poulisee & Bongaerts, 1994; Van Weijen, 2008; Wolfersberger, 2003). As is also shown in other chapters in this volume, the results underline that censoring the ‘intrusion’ of languages other than the target one can have negative effects on linguistic and cognitive performance as well as a negative impact on creating a voice of one’s own.

Multiple Approaches to Understanding and Working with Multilingual (Multi-)Literacy  5

In this book, we therefore understand a multilingual person as a very complex and multi-faceted unique identity (cf. Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015). Education should support multilingual people and allow them to dwell on their dense and elaborate network of possibilities for communicating, and for generating an identity that is based in the multilingual contexts. The specific linguistic and cultural bases included in this process may be very diverse. Still, multilingual persons who are given the chance to decide for themselves which aspects of which language and culture to incorporate and how to adapt and connect them makes them create an identity they are proud to present. Only if this is possible they are able to present the richness and potential that is offered to and offered by them. The first language forms the basis for the further development in the linguistic as well as cultural and social systems. Education (formal as well as informal) therefore should not suppress it but needs to encourage that it is adequately developed (Cummins, 1979; see Machowska-Kosciak, this volume). When multilingual persons are provided with a variety of words, grammatical codes, genres, narratives, cultural offers etc. in their first language their prospects to learn more languages grow, and they are able to settle themselves into their various communities. An interesting approach of how to make active use of (such) linguistic networks in an unguided (and often scorned) form is interlanguaging as is done by a number of young L2-speakers. By consciously adding L1 elements to the community’s major language, they (subconsciously) accept and use their linguistic potential for creating and stressing the flexibility of their identities and the fact that it is neither necessary nor constructive to ban all linguistic and cultural specificities of the language and culture they are brought up in at home, but to combine those with the ones of the country they live in. In Germany, for example, Turkish-German youths developed the ‘Kanak Sprak’ (=kanak-language; ‘Kanake’ having been used as a humiliating word for a foreign person, ‘Sprak’ is a non-formal/dialect word for ‘Sprache’). Kanak Sprak sounds like a Turkish-German mixture, that is playing with linguistic features imputed to L1-Turkish young people. Their language makes visible that its users experience a loss of identity in that they are ‘the Germans’ when visiting their Turkish relatives, and ‘the Turkish’ in their German (home-)context. The artificial interlanguage that they developed to demonstrate this loss of identity works according to the same principles as learner’s interlanguages. They include ‘some of the characteristics of [the learner’s] first language, some of the second language they are in the process of learning, and some features that are a natural part of nearly all language-learning experience’ (Rafoth, 2015: 71). It is telling that this way of (sarcastically) simulating linguistic problems which are either expected from L2 speakers or on which they

6  Multilingual Literacy

received negative feedback by teachers or other L1-speakers, was taken up as a form of protest by some groups of L1 German youths in order to demonstrate their own feeling of being outsiders in the German society, for instance due to disadvantages they experience and perceive because of their educational backgrounds. Multilinguals thus introduced an interesting approach (of how) to use multilingualism productively in order to create an identity – also to monolinguals (Cornelsen, 2017). The mock of the subtraction view taken by the speakers of these interlanguages supports the same position that the authors in this book represent: multilingualism does not impede development but offers chances and possibilities for communication and for creating and strengthening identity and self-esteem, which can only work if we abandon and discard the subtractive approach and understand multilingualism as more than the acquisition of another language. Multilingualism stands for the capacity to act in different linguistic, social and cultural contexts – no matter the level of accuracy: it is a ‘multi-competence’ that we should all strive to acquire (Cook, 1992). A multilingual person is not only better at getting their message across by making use of their linguistic potential, they may also be better at successfully reacting and adopting to different situations and to different contexts. Since multilinguals have competencies in a variety of linguistic systems, in diverse forms of communication and know as well as understand the views different cultures might take of various problems and situations, they have the ability to flexibly adjust their behaviour to the needs of the circumstances. They evaluate what the situation asks for by analysing different factors in the communication (words, tone, mimic, gestures, background etc.) and react accordingly. 1.2 Literacy

It is clear that language is one of the central points in multilingualism. The extent to which it influences our way of thinking is widely discussed in different schools (e.g. Bakhtin, 1986; Jackendoff, 2007; Oksaar, 2003; Vygotsky, 1962). Although many cognitive processes take place without the active use of language but use all kinds of information stored in long-term memory, language and the governing of language have an influence on thinking especially in abstract thought. Both become dominant when people work with their own thoughts and the thoughts of others in the field of literacy, which has traditionally been understood as the ability to read and write (in one’s mother tongue) (cf. Barton, 2007). To this very day, literacy is quite frequently associated with a print-based, formalised, monolingual and monolithic ability of ‘encoding and decoding written language’ (Stavans & Hoffman, 2015: 255). Also the UNESCO definition of literacy according to which literacy is ‘the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and

Multiple Approaches to Understanding and Working with Multilingual (Multi-)Literacy  7

compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts’ departs from predominantly printed and written materials. However, even in this (reduced) view of seeing literacy as working with words written down, one has to keep in mind that literacy is more than information encoded in graphemes. In mono- as well as in multilingual contexts, we have to deal with texts in multiple forms using ‘standards and norms specifying what is expected and considered appropriate in a particular type of written discourse’ (Schneider, 2012: 1027). Different situations ask for different forms of literate actions and forms (Swales, 2004) and it is important for individuals to acquire and use a ‘repertoire of situationally appropriate responses to recurrent situations’ (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995: ix). Readers of academic texts, for example, expect very dense and logically structured texts and are appalled by texts with no clear statement or with a missing or only a vague connection between abstract, introduction, main part and conclusion (Maingueneau, 2002). The same readers would be annoyed if they read a crime novel and got the information about the murder and the culprit presented in a logical, chronological order. When we write professional emails, we need to be clear, straightforward, rather formal but much more concise than in the academic context (Breuer & Allsobrook, 2019), and when we write messages in private chats, we use emojis, emoticons and other forms of visual tags for transporting meaning (see Stavans et al., this volume). Different forms of texts also pose different cognitive demands on readers and writers. How individuals perceive these demands may vary elaborately: for an academic writer, composing appropriate texts for a tabloid paper might be very demanding and vice versa because wording, tone, topics, writer-reader relationship, the target-groups etc. are not common to them. In a multilingual context, the cognitive demands of producing and understanding texts are extra high. Again, it is not (solely) the linguistic factor that plays a crucial role. It is also culture, social conventions, forms of communication, of argumentation etc. that are relevant for successful reading and writing in multilingual contexts. The principles of the target community and their way of interpreting genres might sometimes infringe on the principles of one’s native community’s positions. Forms and in parts even the goals of the academic genre, for instance, vary exceedingly even in such a small geographical area as Europe (Galtung, 1981; Kaplan, 1966; Thielmann, 2009): While in one culture, the most important goal for writers is to convince the reader of their ideas (‘knowledge selling’), it is important in other cultures to let readers participate in the way the ideas were developed by the writers (‘knowledge telling’) (Swales & Feak, 1994; Yakhontova, 2002). The readers’ task in the first setting is to grab and evaluate the central ideas presented in the texts, in the second setting, it is the readers’

8  Multilingual Literacy

task to follow the (in parts elaborate, and branched) paths of thinking the authors went, to test this mental journey and to make out wrong or U-turns. These meta-differences are manifested in, for example, structure, choice of content, style and forms of referencing. Both (and other) ways of argumentation are sensible and should be evaluated as being equally matched across the globe (cf. Hunma, 2016). However, the acceptance of different approaches to the academic genre is low; in academic journals, mono-cultural standards are applied, and the missing flexibility of academic readers in approaching texts from other cultures (beside the criticism of linguistic factors when writing in the lingua franca English) leads to articles being rejected in international journals, although the editors explicitly state that texts from contexts other than L1 English contexts are more than welcome (cf. Armstrong, 2011; Mur Dueñas, 2014). Academics sometimes give up putting too much effort into writing texts in the lingua franca English, which will not be appreciated for other than content reasons. As a consequence, findings and knowledge of experts may never reach the international readership. This also takes place in other contexts, such as in professional development. In this view, it is important to shift the mono- to a multi-perspective in our approach to language and literacy. The multi-perspective does not halt at different genres and ways of forming texts. The picture of literacy as writing down and reading written words respectively has changed drastically in the past decades. The increasingly more globalised, rapidly evolving and superdiverse world as well as the ‘digital turn’ (cf. Mills, 2010; Ronan, 2015) with its new and continuously evolving digital communication channels, has challenged the more traditional view on literacy as a monolithic, fixed, stable, individual entity with a focus on reading and writing words. Literacy has been defined anew (although not necessarily at school or at university where teachers and lecturers often evaluate texting, Instagram etc. not as ‘real’ literate actions). In the new paradigm, literacy is interpreted as multiliteracy. Multiliteracy incorporates, among others, multimodal text production and reception, including ‘different semiotic dimensions of representation’ (Archer & Breuer, 2016: 1), like oral, audio, visual, interactive elements and a combination of all possibilities. Similar to multilingualism, this shift of paradigm is actually not new since texts (and writing systems) have always drawn immensely on pictures and visual elements to get meaning across (e.g. old bibles or children’s books). Viewing literacy exclusively as dealing with graphemic representations of phonology has thus been another very subtractive view taken over in education. In the second half of the last century and most prominent with the New Literacy and New Literacies movement sparked off by the New London School in the nineties (1996), a more flexible, multiperspective, dynamic view on literacy has been taken up

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again. This perspective understands literacy as being socially constructed through various forms of interactions which are in a constant flux. Image, gesture, gaze, speech and posture, which are visual forms of communication, are included in this view on literacy as are written words and formulated sentences. The inclusion takes a step away from the ‘deficit view’ (Hunma, 2016: 169) that was and often still is taken when evaluating texts exclusively by applying texting conventions. The result of the latter’s emphasis on words and orthography may hinder students, for example, from applying critical and innovative thinking in educational and other settings. It gives them the feeling that focusing purely on applying the taught textual principles is the only path to take, while content or formulating one’s own ideas is not central to literacy. Literacy thus has not offered any chances of expressing and creating identity to writers and readers (similarly to the subtractive view taken on multilingualism). As stated above, writing conventions are grounded in specific languages and specific ideologies. This also becomes visible in the way we deal with multimodal elements. What, how, and with which implements teachers and pupils draw in the classroom, for example, is grounded in the conventions of the culture in which it is located (Kress, 2009; Simpson, 2016), and so is our interpretation of the products, and with this the feedback given to multilingual writers with different background cultures and ideologies to the created visuals. The challenge for society and education is, therefore, to incorporate and to create spaces (cf. Lyngfelt, 2017) where learners can draw on and fully exploit their multilingual multiteracies both inside and outside of the classroom. In the ideal case, learners are invited to draw on their full repertoire of the linguistic and literacy systems they have at their disposal in and outside of the classroom (cf. Cummins’ (2000) model for classroom education), and pedagogues should invite creativity and include multimodality in literacy in their teaching approaches (Wedin, this volume). If done properly, not only the students learn from the teachers but the teachers also learn from the students about different ways of expressing themselves for example with the help of new media. Students may use pictures, music, mime or any other form of multiliterate technologies, making them often the experts in this context. For students from ethnic minorities whose languages do not have a high social status, a form of inclusive and interactive teaching would help them to use literacy for giving themselves a voice, strengthening their identity and with this, enhancing their social standing and their future perspectives. For exploiting students’ multilingual multiliteracies and cultural identities, formalised, institutionalised education embodied by teachers, should embrace learners’ home environment and their community (see Kirsch, this volume; Bergman Deitcher et al., this volume). As learning and education are a joined responsibility, formal education instances should

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comprise parents, home environment, peers and other social communities in which the students participate. It is at the crossing of the formal and non-formal education systems where individuals breed their literacies in diverse ways for different communicative purposes in the classroom, at home, in the community, in different media and even across geographic boundaries. As Ronan (2015: 234) puts it: ‘[o]ne way to bridge ... out-ofschool literacy with school-based conventions of reading and writing is to identify [and create] an alternative space for learning, where both school and home practices intersect to create new literacy hybrids and transformative learning practices’. A setting can be created in which, for example, the internet can offer a space – a ‘new digital, textual landscape’ (Davies, 2006: 62; Melo-Pfeifer, this volume) that includes various online (e.g. Facebook) and offline realities (home, school, sports clubs …), and which can invite participants from other geographical and cultural contexts, thus creating a platform for expressing oneself. It would work as a precious space for all to learn from each other. 1.3 The Book

Approaching multilingual literacy in a variety of forms and contexts as well as outlining its richness is the venture taken in this book. The volume consists of four parts that focus on different aspects important for dealing with multilingual literacy. Part 1 takes a look at the meta-level of multilingual literacy: an overview on theoretical views and their distinction, as well as descriptions of which aspects we as scientists need to keep in mind when analysing the processes and the individuals’ actions, cautioning us not to forget that we ourselves are part of ideologically and culturally coined communities. Additionally, the part outlines some of the challenges inherent to research on multilingual multiliteracy and provides researchers and teachers alike with approaches, guidelines and instruments to conduct such research. Parts 2 and 3 describe and evaluate projects that were set up to foster multilingual literacy in the educational context, taking a look at different ages and various educational contexts. In Part 2, it is shown how projects were done in non-digitalised settings, as well as which problems multilingual readers and writers might meet in the educational contexts. Part 3 then further elaborates on the advantages and challenges of applying new technologies in the educational context. Finally, the chapters in Part 4 analyse the literate interactions of multilinguals outside the classroom and how those influence the acquisition of language and literacy competencies. Also the limits of the proposed universality of multimodal elements for multilingual communication will be presented. In the following, the chapters will be outlined in more detail. In Chapter 2 Donahue introduces the readers to the terminology and theoretical frameworks used in the context of research on multilingual

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literacy. Five prominent linguistic models in the context of multilingual diversity are outlined: the models of plurilinguism, of translingualism, of metrolingualism, of cosmopolitanism and of heteroglossia. All of these models discuss linguistic diversity, focusing on different aspects. The different approaches clarify that our view on multilingualism has an impact on how we approach teaching literacy and evaluate the production and the reception of texts in multilingual contexts. Social activism and social justice also depend on the view taken. If teachers and society consider literacy as an empowering factor, it is crucial that this is considered in teaching multilingual literacy, thus stressing the opportunities of learning from each other. If literacy of multilingual students in its diverse forms is considered a danger for inappropriate language use rather than as an opportunity, we all miss the chance of broadening our understanding of different fields. It is, therefore, crucial not only for multilingual students and adults but also for the wider society to change our ways of teaching literacy, and for doing more research on the challenges as well as on the chances of multilingual literacy in different contexts. As becomes apparent from quite a few chapters in the volume and an increasingly growing body of research, educational approaches taking advantage of immigrant learners’ writing and reading skills and learning strategies they acquired in their country of origin are very promising (cf. Brizić, 2006; Ezhova-Heer, 2011; Knapp, 1997). Following theories on cross-linguistic influence and interdependencies in the language acquisition process, ideally second language education builds on migrant learners’ textual competence and foreign language skills already in place and transfers these to learning the second language. To investigate if and how this could be done in a German context, the Language Awareness – Identifying Multilinguals’ Potential (LAWA) study presented by Budde and Prüsmann in Chapter 3 was set up. To select a group of ‘suitable’ immigrant learners with a specific level of textual competence and linguistic ability for the study the researchers developed an instrument to have learners verbalise abstract concepts and reflect on their problemsolving. By analysing data from a small sample of learners and by homing in on one learner in particular the authors explain how they tapped into immigrant learners’ language-related learning ability and textual competence. The study illustrates the need for developing and testing new instruments for research into multilingual literacy in general and the potential of the LAWA-questionnaire in particular. Another interesting view on the research of multilingual literacy and the methodological challenges it poses is presented by Norlund Shaswar in Chapter 4. In the chapter, the author presents a fine-grained analysis of the communication in interviews between a researcher, an interpreter and an interviewee. Norlund Shaswar illustrates how the interpreter takes the role of a co-researcher, co-constructing meaning

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for the researcher who does not master the interviewee’s language. However, involving interpreters as co-researchers would mean involving them deeply in the research process, which is difficult in a small-scale study with limited funding. The analysis of the interviews shows that the interpreter’s role in the meaning-making process is substantial, and in many ways not constructive, since he mainly considers himself a collaborator to the interviewee rather than to the researcher-interviewer. He interprets the researcher’s culturally and theoretically influenced view on literacy negatively, transmitting an image of the researcher as a person not to be trusted to the interviewee. Only after the interviewee gets to know the researcher (and the researcher’s language) better, and meets her more than once without the interpreter, does the relationship and consequently, also the interviews become productive and goaloriented. Norlund Shaswar illustrates how an interpreter’s cultural views can have a significant impact on the outcome of studies and provides the reader with guidelines on how to engage the interpreter as co-researcher in small-scale qualitative studies on multiliteracy and to keep cultural misunderstandings and tension in the triadic interviewer-interpreterinterviewee to a minimum. One way to approach teaching multilingual literacy is by adopting a Dynamic Systems and Complexity Theory (DSCT)-perspective, stressing its dynamic, non-linear, adaptive and interdependent nature. In Part 2, Jessner, Malzer-Papp and Allgäuer-Hackl (Chapter 5) propose this approach for working with children in Austrian kindergartens and elementary schools whose first language is not the official language German. The children in their study have different multilingual profiles, depending on the number of first languages they have acquired and the age at which they acquire(d) a second or third language. The DSCT-approach foregrounds the specific environment of these multilingual children (growing up with several languages), which quite frequently results in mutually interactive influences on a linguistic and cognitive level. Such a transformative and holistic approach embracing multilingualism and multicompetence is in the authors’ point of view crucial for the development of new educational approaches, in a preschool context and beyond. Not only does the chapter provide readers – experts and non-experts alike – with a framework to approach multilingualism in (preschool) education from but it also offers an insight into multilingual literacy and diversity in Austria, which is not that different from the situation in other European countries which were faced with several migration waves the past two decades. Registers, genres, and speech acts often function in one’s native culture differently from how they are formed and produced in a second language (L2) target language. The understanding of literacy, therefore, has an effect on how people perceive themselves as well as on the way in which they are perceived by the community with and in which they

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interact, and it can influence a person’s aptness to take active part in the literary practice of the L2-community. Machowska-Kosciak (Chapter 6) showcases how multilingual literacy can affect the negotiation of identity in writing, more specifically the expression of the writers’ emotions. In a long-term study, the researcher analysed how a Polish immigrant in Ireland was taught to communicate in the written form in a variety of contexts in his first and in his second language English. Socialisation in the Polish community sometimes proved to be at odds with the target community’s values, identities and social positions. The Polish immigrant presented in this case study, for example, is criticised at school for not writing enough. The teacher criticising him fails to see that this evaluation may be due to the fact that the writer feels he is not able to express his emotions in the target language as fluently as in his first language. The inability to express oneself is not so much the effect of insufficient practice but rather the result of cross-cultural settings that dictate how one expresses oneself in the written text. Multilingual literacy, therefore, needs to be analysed and taught, keeping the social components of written texts in mind, otherwise problems in intercultural communication might be mistaken for linguistic weaknesses, whereas they may, in fact, reflect a limited openness to diverse cultural approaches on especially the teachers’ side. That giving multilingual learners the opportunity to draw upon their multilingual background and the different languages they know is productive also emerges from a study by Wedin (Chapter 7). The researcher conducted a study in a predominantly multilingual school where multilingual pupils wrote identity texts to make their unique personality visible to (the) readers. In their texts, the pupils were successful in constructing their own identity. Additionally, the feedback given to them (by teachers and readers) as well as the public reading of their texts helped the pupils to provide their fellow-students, teachers and family with an insight into how they saw themselves and wanted to be seen by others. Being able to use their first language in the L2-context enabled the students to express their thoughts and emotions in writing. It gave them the opportunity to act as linguistic experts in their L1 to many of their fellow-pupils as well as their teachers. Creative writing was thus used not only to express oneself but also to change the way in which students perceived themselves and how they were perceived by others – a very motivating and promising approach to teaching and supporting multilingual writers. Part 3 turns to digital literacy, and how it can be utilised in the educational context for developing literacy competencies. A specific form of digital literacy is presented by Melo-Pfeifer in Chapter 8. She set up a chat-room in which students with different Romance language backgrounds communicated with each other on various topics. The study aimed at analysing how intercomprehension in languages of

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the same linguistic family worked, and at investigating to which extent the students made an intertwined use of the plurilingual repertoires and the semiotic resources for co-constructing meaning. The author found that the participants performed in a rather monolingual and monoglossic manner. Although the context was explicitly open to the integration of multilinguality, the participants subconsciously decided to leave out this option. Nevertheless, students were increasingly more motivated and positive towards literacy and the (intercultural) exchange about it, they discussed various aspects about literate conventions and learned from each other about language, the perception of multimodal elements, etc. The chat-room conversation thus showed that literacy is not a stable system but that it is dynamic, based on collaboration and activity in (multi)literate communication. Kirsch (Chapter 9) also exemplifies how digital tools can be employed for fostering multilingual literate exchange. Children in a Luxemburg preschool worked with an app for storytelling, bookreading, writing and phonemic awareness. They were supported in developing a broad vocabulary, grammatical and narrative structures and styles. Doing this with digital devices strengthened flexibility, interaction and the connection of formal and informal education. Working with the app provided the children with the motivating opportunity of learning productively and instead of doing this in a monoglossic way, they made use of their complete network of language(s), (literate) experiences and modalities. The positive feedback which they received inside the group and from their audience, in turn, helped them to boost their self-esteem. This way, multilingual multiliteracy worked as a successful tool for creating their identity. The opportunities books and reading books together outside of the educational context offer are also outlined in Bergman Deitcher, Johnson and Aram’s Chapter (10) in the final part of this volume. Children and parents read informational and narrative texts together in a bilingual context. The authors examined whether the genre of the book had an effect on the communication about it, as well as on vocabulary learning, and whether L1 competency had an effect on learning other languages. The findings showed that the genre indeed had an impact on the communication about texts, in that children and parents worked cooperatively on understanding the informative texts and on discussing various elements of the texts more elaborately than in the narratives. The results also stress that adequate knowledge of the first language helps to learn various languages. The digital literacy tools used were very helpful in these processes because the texts became multimodal and could be presented in informal settings, especially when these settings evoked positive feelings. In Chapter 11, Stavans, Eden and Azar study the sociocultural aspects in understanding and applying emojis in different contexts.

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This visual ‘language’ is used actively in different forms of digital communication – especially by young people. It is often supposed that these signs are universal, providing readers and writers in a multilingual environment with a language that is uniformly understood. Testing the lexical as well as the grammatical functions people attributed to emojis, the authors found, however, that their interpretation varies exceedingly between the participants especially in the definition of grammatical functions. Differences in how people worked with emojis and how they translated texts consisting purely of emojis were often grounded not only in linguistic background but also in factors like age. The results thus underline that there is much more to multilingual multiliteracy than being competent in reading and writing L2 words. Multilingual literacy always includes social, educational and cultural contexts which have an impact on these processes: we are far away from creating a universal language that is unambiguous and easily to be acquired. However, maybe such a language would not be as glorious as it might seem at first sight because it would cut down a variety in perspectives and the possibilities of multilingual exchange. In the coda (Chapter 12), Stavans and Lindgren summarise the findings collected in this volume, stressing how multilingual literacy can become a bridge between individuals, countries and cultures. The chapters in the book and the strategies and methods proposed by the authors might work as ‘bricks’ for building this bridge in a stable and long-lasting way. Although there is a general agreement of opening up linguistic, pedagogical, political, and cultural views on multilingualism and on (multi)literacy, in real life – in formal as well as in informal contexts – we still perceive that the way of evaluating and using the potential of multilingual multiliteracy for communication (and also for different fields of research) in its broad depths is still long. We have just started to ‘scratch the shell’, and it is important not to over-eagerly decide on one specific approach. The broadness of lines presented in this book, with their different theoretical as well as pragmatic understanding could in the ideal case work as a springboard for developing methods of multivocal spaces with maximal opportunities of learning and identitybuilding for all in different settings. References Abutalebi, J. and Green, D. (2007) Bilingual language production: The neurocognition of language representation and control. Journal of Neurolinguistics 20, 242–275. Archer, A. and Breuer, E.O. (2015) Methodological and pedagogical approaches to multimodality in writing. In A. Archer and E.O. Breuer (eds) Multimodality in Writing. The State of the Art in Theory, Methodology and Pedagogy (pp. 1–16). Leiden: Brill. (Studies in Writing: G. Rijlaarsdam and T. Olive, series eds.)

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Archer, A. and Breuer, E.O. (2016) A multimodal response to changing communication landscapes in higher education. In A Archer and E.O. Breuer (eds) Multimodality in Higher Education (pp. 1–17). Leiden: Brill. (Studies in Writing: R. Fidalgo and T. Olive, series eds.) Armstrong, T. (2011) Reader-friendliness and feedback: German-L1 scholars’ perceptions of writing for publication in English. Journal of Academic Writing 1 (1), 153–164. Attila, B. (2017) Lexical borrowing, categorization and mental representation. Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Philologica 9 (3), 53–61. Bakhtin, M. 1986 [1979] The problem of speech genres. In C. Emerson and M. Holquist (eds) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (pp. 60–102). Austin: University of Texas Press. Barton, D. (2007) Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Berkenkotter, C. and Huckin, T.N. (1995) Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Commu­ nication: Cognition, Culture, Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Breuer, E.O. (2015) First Language versus Foreign Language: Fluency, Errors and Revision Processes in Foreign Language Academic Writing. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Breuer, E. (2016) Effects of planning and language on the construction of meaning. Double Helix 4, 1–19. See http://qudoublehelixjournal.org/index.php/dh/article/view/91/291 (accessed March 2020). Breuer, E.O. and Allsobrook, P. (2019) Genres and interdiscursivity in professional writing: Problems for engineers and health professionals. In I. Schrijver and M. Leitjen (eds) Hermes – Journal of Language and Communication in Business 59 (1) (Special Edition), 15–33. Brizić, K. (2006) The secret life of languages. Origin-specific differences in L1/L2 acquisition by immigrant children. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (INJAL) 16 (3), 339–362. Burger, R. and Groß, M. (2016) Gerechtigkeit und Studienabbruch. Die Rolle der wahrgenommenen Fairness von Benotungsverfahren bei der Entstehung der Abbruchsintentionen [The role of perceived fairness in assessment as origin of the will to break off]. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaften 19 (3) [Journal of Educational Studies], 625–647. Cook, V. (1992) Evidence for multi-competence. Language Learning 42 (4), 557–591. Cook, V. (1995) Multi-Competence and the learning of many languages. Language, Culture and Curriculum 8 (2), 93–98. Cornelsen, E.L. (2017) Ein ‘Untergrund-Kodex’ in der deutschen multilingualen Gesellschaft: Kanak Sprak [An ‘Underground-Code’ in the German Multilingual Society: Kanak Sprak]. Zeitschrift für interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht 22 (1) [Journal of Intercultural Language Teaching], 19–25. Corral-Robles, S., Madrid, D. and González-Gijón, G. (2017) Cultural diversity and its implications for second language writing. International Journal of Diversity in Education 17 (1), 1–19. Cummins, J. (1979) Linguistic interdependence and educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research 49 (2), 222–251. Cummins, J. (1981) The role of primary language development in promoting professional success for language minority students. In J. Cummins (ed.) Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework (pp. 3–49). Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center, California State University. Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Davies, J. (2006) Escaping to the borderlands: An exploration of the internet as a cultural space for teenaged Wiccan girls. In K. Pahl and J. Rowsell (eds) Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice (pp. 57–71). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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De Bot, K. (1992) A bilingual production model: Levelt’s Speaking model adapted. Applied Linguistics 13 (1), 1–24. De Bot, K., Lowie, W. and Verspoor, M. (2007) A dynamic systems theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 10 (1), 7–21. Ezhova-Heer, I. (2011) Untersuchungen zur Förderung der Schreibkompetenz der zugewanderten Kinder und Jugendlichen aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion. [Investigations on promoting writing skills of immigrant children and young people from the former Soviet Union.] In R.S. Baur and B. Hufeisen (eds) ‘Vieles ist sehr ähnlich’. Individuelle und gesellschaftliche Mehrsprachigkeit als bildungspolitische Aufgabe [‘A lot is very similar.’ Individual and Social Multilinguality as a task for Educational Policy] (pp. 113–135). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Fairclough, M. (2005) Spanish and Heritage Language Education in the United States. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Fairclough, N. (2015) Language and Power (3rd edn). London: Routledge. Finamore, J.F. (1998) Etymology and word histories. The Classical Journal 93 (3), 285–289. Galbraith, D. (1999) Writing as a knowledge-constituting process. In M. Torrance and D. Galbraith (eds) Knowing What to Write: Conceptual Processes in Text Production (pp. 139–159). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Galbraith, D. (2009) Cognitive models of writing. GFL Journal 2–3, 7–22. Galtung, J. (1981) Structure, culture, and intellectual style: An essay comparing Saxonic, Teutonic, Gallic and Nipponic approaches. Social Science Information 20 (6), 817–856. Gomolla, M. (2012) Leistungsbeurteilung in der Schule: Zwischen Selektion und Förderung, Gerechtigkeitsanspruch und Diskriminierung. In S. Fürstenaus and M. Gomolla (eds) Migration und schulischer Wandel: Leistungsbeurteilung (pp. 25–50). Wiesbaden: Springer. Green, D.W. (1986) Control, activation, and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language 27 (2), 210–223. Green, D.W. (2008) Bilingual aphasia: Adapted language networks and their control. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 28, 25–48. Grosjean, F. (2010) Bilingual. Life and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hunma, A. (2016) Reclaiming the authorial self in academic writing through image theatre. In A. Archer and E.O. Breuer (eds) Multimodality in Higher Education (pp. 167–191). Leiden: Brill. (Studies in Writing: R. Fidalgo and T. Olive, series eds.) Jackendoff, R. (2007) Language, Consciousness, Culture. Essays on Mental Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kaplan, R.B. (1966) Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning 16 (1), 1–20. Knapp, W. (1997) Schriftliches Erzählen in der Zweitsprache [Written Narration in the Second Language]. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Kress, J. (2009) What is mode? In J. Jewitt (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (pp. 54–67). London: Routledge. Lambert, W.E. (1975) Culture and language as factors in learning and education. In E. Wolfgang (ed.) Education of Immigrant Students (pp. 55–83). Toronto: Ontarian Institute of Studies in Education. Lyngfelt, A. (2017) Creation of multivocal spaces by the use of narratives in multilingual classrooms. Submitted for publication in Nordic Journal of Literacy Research, 14 p. Maingueneau, D. (2002) Analysis of an academic genre. Discourse Studies 4 (3), 319–342. Menary, R. (2007) Writing as thinking. Language Sciences 29, 621–632. Mills, K. (2010) A review of the ‘digital turn’ in the new literacy studies. Review of Educational Research 80 (2), 246–271. Mur Dueñas, P. (2014) ‘The main contribution of this study is...’: An analysis of statements of contribution in English published research articles and L2 manuscripts. Journal of Writing Research 5 (3), 271–283.

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Oksaar, E. (2003) Zweitspracherwerb. Wege zur Mehrsprachigkeit und zur interkulturellen Verständigung [Second Language Acquisition: Ways to Multilinguality and Intercultural Communication]. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Pöllmann, M. (2012) Handy, Castingshow und Public Viewing: Pseudoanglizismen als Internationalismen: ein Vergleich in vier Sprachen [Handy, Castingshow and Public Viewing: Pseudo Anglicisms as Internationalisms: A Comparison in Four Languages]. Frankfurt: Lang. Poulisse, N. and Bongaerts, T. (1994) First language use in second language production. Applied Linguistics 15 (1), 36–57. Randolph Jr., L.J. (2017) Heritage language learners in mixed Spanish classes: Subtractive practices and perceptions of Spanish high school teachers. Hispania 100 (2), 274–288. Rafoth, B.A. (2015) Multilingual Writers and Writing Centers. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Ronan, B. (2015) Multimodality and social interaction: Learners’ online writing practices. In A. Archer and E.O. Breuer (eds) Multimodality in Writing. The State of the Art in Theory, Methodology and Pedagogy (pp. 231–251). Leiden: Brill. (Studies in Writing: R. Fidalgo and T. Olive, series eds.) Schneider, K.P. (2012) Appropriate behaviour across varieties of English. Journal of Pragmatics 44, 1022–1037. Simpson, Z. (2016) Drawn writing: The role of written text in civil engineering drawing. In A. Archer and E.O. Breuer (eds) Multimodality in Higher Education (pp. 241–255). Leiden: Brill. (Studies in Writing: R. Fidalgo and T. Olive, series eds.) Stavans, A. and Hoffmann, C. (2015) Multilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. and Feak, C.B. (1994) Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills: A Course for Nonnative Speakers of English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Swales, J. (2004) Research Genres. Exploration and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thielmann, W. (2009) Deutsche und englische Wissenschaftssprache im Vergleich: Hinführen – Verknüpfen– Benennen [A Comparison of the German and English Acacemic Language: Introducing – Linking – Denoting]. Heidelberg: Synchronwissenschaftsverlag der Autoren. Thomason, S.G. (2001) Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press. Van Dijk, M.W.G. (2003) Child Language Cuts Capers: Variability and Ambiguity in Early Child Development. Groningen: University of Groningen. Van Weijen, D. (2008) Writing Processes, Text, Quality, and Task Effects: Empirical Studies in First and Second Language Writing. Utrecht: LOT. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Thought and Language. Edited and Translated by E. Hanfmann and G. de Vakar. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Wolfersberger, M. (2003) L1 to L2 writing process and strategy transfer: A look at lower proficiency writers. TESL EJ 7(2). See http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/ volume7/ej26/ej26a6/ (accessed March 2020). Yakhontova, T. (2002) ‘Selling’ or ‘Telling’? The issue of cultural variation in research genre. In J. Flowerdew (ed.) Academic Discourse (pp. 216–232). Harlow: Pearson Education.

2 Linguistic and Social Diversity, Literacy and Access to Higher Education Tiane Donahue

This chapter presents a conceptual overview of linguistic models of diversity as manifested in literate activity, and of their relationship to social justice and access to higher education, rather than a report on a study. It is also not an argument for any of the perspectives presented, but rather an effort to open up questions and futures. I’ll begin with a brief overview of the current ‘superdiverse’ European context, then offer brief descriptions of five linguistic models currently in play that try to account for language diversity in higher education writing and speaking, specifically in writing classrooms and writing experiences, then link these to questions of social justice and activism and finally discuss how these phenomena are currently studied and what I believe future research needs to look like and to take up. The questions raised lead us to ask how postsecondary literacies connect to linguistic models that foster social justice and activism. While the focus is on higher education, the issues raised here can more broadly apply to school education in ways taken up in many of this volume’s chapter; if literacy development is not successful in earlier schooling, after all, then university studies become a moot point. 2.1 Context

Linguistic and social diversity are current European realities; they are the ground on which the COST Action IS1401 – European Literacy Network from which this collection is inspired stands. Research about this diversity is intended to provide evidence-based support for literacy practices in a context rich with linguistic diversity. Of course, that diversity and richness can be modeled in many different ways, as can what we find to be general across languages and linguistic conditions vs individual or specific to a particular language. I will take these questions up by exploring some recent US interests and seeing how they interact (or not) with European interests. 21

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Many scholars present the current context in which language practices and literacies develop as one of superdiversity or hypermobility (though certainly some aspects of this mobility have been around for centuries – what is new is the attention being given …). Stephen Vertovec (2006) defines superdiversity as ‘a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants’ leading to ‘a level and kind of complexity surpassing anything the country [the UK] has previously experienced’ (Vertovec, 2006: 1024). As an example of this superdiverse phenomenon, Li and Juffermans (2011) studied DutchChinese youth of approximately teenager years who encounter both diversity within their Chineseness and the need to function within a larger Asian identity in relation to Dutch/European-ness. These complex experiences are everywhere. Jan Blommaert also introduces ‘superdiversity’ as ‘diversity within diversity, or a transformation of the organization of diversity within globalizing environments brought about by rapid increases in mobility, instabilities inherent in the new economic order, and technologies like the Internet’ (2012: 103). For Vertovec (2006), the situation is even more complex: minorities have ‘multilayered experiences within unequal power structures’ (Vertovec, 2006: 1039); implying differing statuses within minority groups of shared ethnic or national origin. These stratified rights and conditions influence super-diversity – and social mobility – internally. Both Vertovec and Blommaert are focused on European conditions of social and economic diversity, and the attendant linguistic diversity. Writing scholars everywhere might see superdiversity as intergroup linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, and political ‘contact’ in hyperdrive, multiplying and fragmenting on a daily basis for many people, in person and virtually, in real time and asynchronously. Transnational experiences (any experience working across national lines) for Vertovec foster certain kinds of competencies: analysis, creativity, linguistic proficiency (in the sense of acquiring language skill), intercultural cue reading and message reception, codeswitching (a speaker’s or writer’s mixing of different languages within an utterance) (Vertovec, 2006: 70–71). Every one of these is vitally important to literacy development and literate proficiency (see Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). Analysis is often figured as the heart of academic writing; creativity is among the higher levels of literate ability on taxonomies such as Bloom’s; understanding production and reception of messages in writing in multiple contexts, or comfort with choosing when to use which register are time-honored literacy practices. The superdiversity concept is clearly grounded in an urban, UK context. But it serves as a heuristic for understanding the kinds of contact that are entailed in mobilities that drive the evolving nature of

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a society. In terms of language and writing, the idea of superdiversity helps us to see the language-specific ways that globalization and mobility can impact writing classrooms, writing instruction, writing research and our choices about what to value, what to teach and how to support writing faculty. Here my reference point is what I know in the United States, but I believe these phenomena are more broadly true. Certainly, second language writing teaching and scholarship have worked long and hard to highlight these challenges and to support multilingual pupils and students in these ranges of populations. Language diversity has been increasingly broadly acknowledged in its relation to literacy development, though these questions can look quite different in different institutions. Alongside the developing frame of ‘superdiversity’ is the evolving sense of plurality and plurilinguality in language practices (see Breuer & Van Steendam and Melo-Pfeifer, this volume), sometimes studied in language teaching, which is of course directly relevant to literacy, though not always given due recognition. The two research domains, unfortunately, interact far less than we might hope. While we focus on literacy, language instruction and language practices are intertwined with literacy. In addition, we can develop understandings in diverse contexts about what is shared and what is different across contexts. Geneviève Zarate’s (2003) exploration of intercultural competencies, plurilingualism, and identity focuses on the gaps in the Common European Frame of Reference for language policy and language teaching, noting in particular that learners should not be separated into the ‘foreigner’ and the ‘native’ but be seen as equal partners (competent learners), and that we don’t yet understand what is transversal across languages and what might be specific to a language. We might consider the kinds of arguments made by Paul Teyssier, in Comprendre les langues romanes, about the improved possibilities of intercomprehension if we were to identify across shared-root languages the few structural differences compared to the deep similarities. This kind of work, seeking out the transversal and the specific, can directly impact the intersection of languages and literacies. In a similar vein, Claire Kramsch’s arguments for language education build on the premise that ‘globalization has changed the conditions under which foreign languages (FLs) are taught, learned, and used. It has destabilized the codes, norms, and conventions that FL educators relied upon…’ (2014: 296). Kramsch outlines the key factors in this change as ‘axes of modernity’: order vs disorder in language use; purity vs impurity; normality vs abnormality. She systematically exposes the way we are moving from the first axis to the second in language use. So, for Kramsch, we now embrace disorder, heterogeneity and non-standardization. For literacy, the implications are far reaching. If these same axes are the ones in play, literacy becomes about these same dynamics rather than about

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confirming an orderly status quo, standardizing acceptable literacies or expecting multilingual and multimodal processes and products. 2.2 Linguistic Models in Relation to Literacy

As Breuer and Van Steendam note (Introduction, this volume), when we engage as a globalized community in mobile lives and practices, our languages and literacies are wholly implicated. Superdiversity, whether social or economic, creates a fluid and dynamic environment. That environment fosters new kinds of literate competence. Molina (2011), and before her Cook (1992), propose ‘multicompetence’ as an appropriate model for this literate competence, one that demands literacy knowledge be adaptable across situations and domains (see also Breuer & Van Steendam and Jessner et al., this volume). If we take Zarate’s more standard understanding of competence, the ‘the set of knowledges, abilities, and dispositions that allow [a writer] to act’, as the broader definition, multicompetence engages a dynamic movement across multiple knowledges, abilities and dispositions. Multicompetent speakers and writers with their linguistic diversity and internal heterogeneity point to linguistic diversity as the ‘normal state of affairs’ (Blackledge & Creese, 2014); the linguistically unmarked case. Around the world this becomes ‘the statistically demonstrable norm [emphasis mine]’ (Horner et al., 2011; see also Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). This norm, of course, shapes writing in particular ways. Several language and communication models have begun to engage these demands. They do provoke another question: can these models integrate our existing contrastive knowledge from our various English for Academic Purposes, L1-L2, Second Language Writing, or contrastive linguistics, rhetoric and discourse analyses, or are they a paradigm shift? That is not a question I will try to answer definitively in this chapter, but I believe it is worth keeping in mind as we move ahead, in particular in relation to other chapters in this volume. A cluster of models for language practice in literate activity includes translingualism, cosmopolitanism, metropolitanism, plurilingualism and heteroglossia. These models are considered alternatives to the more widespread and earlier multilingual model, either expanding it or redirecting it. Each has been widely developed in the scholarly literature, some for decades, others for some 15 or 20 years now or quite recently. Here, I will briefly summarize the main contours and cite some of the key lines of scholarship for each model. The very brief descriptions here of each model cannot do justice to their depth and complexity, as well as to the available scholarship about them. The models have at their heart a shared need to embrace new ways to encounter, manage, and produce linguistic and discursive complexity in the literate activity of academic writing. I do note that readers are likely already deeply

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aware of the diversity embedded in these models and the various understandings. The question is, which model might work for which priorities and disciplinary worldviews, and, how might each inform work on literacy(ies). But they all ask us to reconsider the way(s) language(s) work, the essence (?) of language(s) in our world today, and they are all rooted in a call to change attitudes (as G. Zarate asks us to do in developing intercultural competence) towards diversity in language use in both spoken and written forms. That change is, ultimately, what links these models and their implications to social justice and activism. 2.2.1 Plurilinguisme

As a development closest to the more traditional multilingual models, but clearly intended to move beyond them, this model is specifically European. Modern languages scholarship and European Union policy work both foreground the importance of knowing and working across multiple languages in speech and writing. The ground on which the ‘pluri’ has stood, then, is a multilingual ground, with the view of languages as discrete entities and learners as acquiring each independently even if simultaneously (see also Kirsch, this volume). But more recently, ‘pluri’ has begun representing other dynamic linguistic movements. Molina, Kramsch, Zarate and others have suggested that traditional multilingual models should be replaced by more fluid ones. For example, ‘ecologies of language’ (Molina) might better call out ‘rethinking of the strategies that make for successful communication in multilingual settings’ (2011: 1244). That is, in a plurilinguistic ecology model, emphasis is on ‘… more than the mere coexistence of languages […] the transcultural circulation of values across borders, the negotiation of identities, the inversion, even inventions, of meanings, often concealed by a common illusion of effective communication’ (Zarate et al., 2008 cited in Cook 2009: 249). We begin to value the way multilinguals ‘operate between languages’ (Kramsch, 2009a: 249) rather than the degree to which they master a given language. We no longer look to competence as associated with each language and the goal as ‘additionist’ (Molina, 2011) but rather to multiplying linguistic abilities that draw across languages, even as one or the other is not perfected. For literate activity in higher education, this means that a text or discursive product should not be judged on its linguistic ‘accuracy’ in a particular language but on its success in communicating to its intended audience via myriad linguistic choices; it also suggests that intended audiences for which we prepare students should be themselves imagined as multilingual, and working across languages should be not only valued but ultimately expected.

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Even so, plurilinguisme is still ‘pluri’ rather than the ‘trans’ in translingualim that we will explore next, and so each language in question is a discrete entity and ultimately demands to be acquired and employed in writing and speech on its own terms as well. 2.2.2 Translingualism

This model has grown out of, and from, several overlapping strands of thought, including translanguaging and multilingualism, but is different from them. The ‘trans’ in translingualism is explicitly meant to move beyond the implications of a ‘multi’ or ‘pluri’ prefix. Scholars in applied linguistics, modern language education and writing studies1 have developed it to encompass various language practices of bi- and multi-lingual speakers and writers in ever-increasingly complex social and institutional contexts, and to change the understanding of language itself as it functions in those contexts. In US writing scholarship, more recently it has come to include a set of assumptions, outlined here by Canagarajah (2011): … for multilinguals, languages are part of a repertoire that is accessed for their communicative purposes; languages are not discrete and separated, but form an integrated system for them; multilingual competence emerges out of local practices where multiple languages are negotiated for communication; competence doesn’t consist of separate competencies for each language, but a multicompetence that functions symbiotically for the different languages in one’s repertoire; and, for these reasons, proficiency for multilinguals is focused on repertoire building – i.e. developing abilities in the different functions served by different languages – rather than total mastery of each and every language. (Canagarajah, 2011: 1)

Note that Canagarajah is talking about multilinguals, here, as the population for whom translingualism matters (see also Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). In this model, the attitude of language users, their orientation (Libby; Horner; Lee) to diversity in written and spoken language use, is what matters. ‘The translingual model foregrounds prioritizing “what the writers are doing with language and why” over whether language use is standard (Horner et al., 2011: 305); considers all languages in the presence of other languages (Pennycook) and internally heterogeneous; and explains ‘communicative competence’ as the transformative ability to merge language resources (Molina 2011: 1245), a mixed, meshed, negotiating re-use accompanied by a mindset of flexibility and de-centering (Canagarajah)’ (Donahue, 2016). In fact, even an apparently monolingual speaker or writer could be translingual.

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2.2.3 Metrolingualism

In an approach designed to emphasize the degree to which, as proposed by Otsuji and Pennycook (2010), the borders of languages are in essence socially and ideologically constructed and what we really know of language(s) is gleaned by studying users’ practices with linguistic-discursive resources (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010: 241), metrolingualism also pushes us away from the ‘multi’/’pluralizing models of language. These are considered stuck in an understanding of languages as discrete codes and autonomous language systems. The metrolingualism model: describes the way in which people of different and mixed backgrounds use, play with, and negotiate identities through language; it does not assume connections between language, culture, ethnicity, nationality, or geography but rather seeks [at a meta-level, then] to explore how such relations are produced, resisted, defied, or rearranged; its focus is not on discrete language systems but on languages as emergent from contexts of interaction. (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010: 246)

Note the emphasis here on resisting language as automatically bound with culture, ethnicity, and geography (hence, ‘metro’-lingual) and the push to understand the agency of the language(s) used in everyday relations. These developments are paralleled by work such as Bojana Petric’s (2013) calling us to rethink and unpack carefully the meaning of ‘culture’ in academic writing research, given how much it inflects these dynamics. The connection to academic writing is made here partly via exploring the relationship between everyday literacies that are often linguistically and discursively heterogenous and fluid, and academic literacies that are often more narrow, circumscribed and unforgiving. Metrolingual studies have looked at language users in many contexts, not limited to traditional metropoli, central larger-population areas. They are also distinguished from some other models by their focus on both stability and fluidity; Otsuji and Pennycook (2010) note that ‘fixed categories are also mobilized as an aspect of hybridity’ (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010: 244). That is, linguistic flexibility exists because of and in relation to stability, not as an entire way of functioning. The net effect of this understanding is that the model does not romanticize hybridity and fluidity; it accepts them as part of the larger picture of language use and function. In literate activity in higher education, this means that writers both work with and invent with the normed expectations of literacy practices and products; linguistic and discursive hybridity are not automatically prized nor automatically penalized. Rather, academic writers in a metrolingual model make informed choices in the contexts of interaction described earlier.

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2.2.4 Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism has been introduced more recently, though as You (2016) reminds us, it is an ancient term and frame, as a way to study and account for English in particular in multilingual world contexts. It works to help us disentangle from nationalistic and monolingual ideologies. A cosmopolitan model of English, You’s focus, is ‘English as it is actually used by individuals across the globe, each with differences inflected by his or her pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and/or discourse structure’ (You, 2016: 10). It traces these same aspects in other languages, which resituates English translinguistically and transdiscursively (You, 2016: 10). It is this aspect that highlights English’s complexity and pushes us to work on literacies at the meta-level. This kind of function is exactly what French functional linguists have studied and foregrounded since the 1960s (cf. François, Salazar-Orvig). Cosmopolitanism, like metrolingualism, both ‘acknowledges’ – that is, recognizes – boundaries rather than erasing them, and confronts them and questions them in the 21st century (You, 2016). That powerful questioning ‘challenges us to acknowledge but also to go beyond the interests of people who traditionally claim entitlement (emphasis mine) to a language’ (You, 2016: 6). In so doing, it broadens understanding of ‘ownership’ or ‘natural/first right’ to English (though we could see this in other language histories as well of course), suggesting that the socioeconomically class-driven response of a standard has little to stand on. This model, for You, invites all users of written and spoken English to openly communicate across difference and to see every linguistic encounter as an opportunity to reflect (2016: 6, 9). For literacy, then, this implies a constant and productive reflection on linguistic choices as a writing or speech act evolves. One attraction of cosmopolitanism is its focus on humanist and moral principles. For You (2016), people are ‘first and foremost members of the human race and as such are morally obligated to those outside their categories’ (the constructed categories of race, class, nation…) (You, 2016: 6). Language activity, and specifically cosmopolitan English, should be a way to navigate globalization, to ‘engage strangers through creative meaning-making’ (You, 2016: 9), not a way to impose normed standards, develop curriculum, or establish institutional policy. If we do embrace this creative meaning-making as the center, we must accept diverse linguistic styles (see also Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). The typical educational context, however, is not terribly accepting of these styles and this creativity as the center. It is clear that the scholarly celebration of, or even simply establishment of, linguistic heterogeneity and diversity, conflicts with most teachers’ on-the-ground work and their sense of what is expected of them in the classroom, whether dictated by policy or standardized curricula or driven by teachers’

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beliefs. For cosmopolitan English, the institutional structures and the normed versions of written and spoken language are interwoven with questions of class, race, and gender (You, 2016: 10), and so, cannot be left unaddressed. The first four models introduce new terms or new takes on terms for our linguistics, didactics, education or writing studies interests. The fifth model is grounded in an older linguistics, literary and writing studies development: Bakhtinian heteroglossia. UK scholars Blackledge and Creese (2014), seeking to ‘better understand the diversity of linguistic practice in late modern societies’ (Blackledge & Creese, 2014: 3), turn to Bakhtin. Heteroglossia is particularly useful for studying what Bakhtin calls dialogic written language with its features of multidisciplinary, multivoiced, intralingual diversity and intralanguage variation (Blackledge et al., 2013: 194). A heteroglossic, dialogic model easily accommodates multiple languages and easily accounts for them as a language user’s merged repertoire, though these were not specifically Bakhtin’s concern. Brazilian scholars Formohsino et al. (2016) emphasize this same point in their discussion of ‘polyphonic bi/multilingualism’ For them, we must move ‘beyond subtractive and additive practices’ (the same subtractive or additive version Molina criticizes; see also Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume) and towards educational practices that create ‘spontaneous and fruitful crossing over or entanglement of languages [that becomes] the new ecology’. In terms of actual interactions, they suggest engaging students in translation work that can develop their ability to engage translingually at school. Much of what Blackledge and Creese (2014) propose in terms of heteroglossia is a way to operationalize what Blommaert and Rampton (2011) have proposed, to ‘analytically … focus on the variable ways in which linguistic features with identifiable social and cultural associations get clustered together whenever people communicate’. Blommaert suggests that what matters is not actually multiplicity or plurality but complexity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011, 2013: 3). If we focus on complexity, then translingual or plurilingual are less relevant as specific models, and the complexity of language in literate practice overrides the interest in languages as discrete. Another useful Bakhtinian principle for modelling 21st century multilingualism is what he describes as ‘tension-filled interaction’ in heteroglossic contexts. This tension is social, and is inherent to language activity. Bakhtin’s multivoicedness actually models ‘linguistic diversity as normal’. Using this Bakhtinian model has the clear advantage of returning to thinking that has already been well-established in deep scholarship. A heteroglossic model also helps to emphasize the politics and ideologies underlying various language stances, ‘engag[ing] with the ways in which different linguistic forms, either within or between what we typically call “languages”, are connected with particular ideological

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positions and world views’ (Blackledge & Creese, 2014). Those positions and worldviews inflect powerfully the expectations around teaching and learning university writing. 2.3 Why Does All This Matter? Literacy, Language and Social Justice

As Donahue (2018: 31) has noted, ‘a “trans” or pluri- or metro- or cosmopole- or, perhaps best, a heteroglossic understanding of academic writing, while each of these perspectives is definitely different, models in some way writing in and across all languages, writing as related to languaging, and writing as embodying translingual, plurilingual, heteroglossic, or cosmopolitan concepts’. That writing is, in higher education, the key to both academic success and the success in the world which education is meant to allow. The nature of academic writing in a superdiverse world is, according to these models, changing, though its norms do not change as quickly as communicative expectations ‘out in the world’ do (as Machowska-Kosciak, this volume, also suggests). Another way to observe this might be in contrasting literacy more broadly with literacy in its more narrowly focused academic university forms.2 These models are raising questions about how to think about and work with university students in the superdiverse contexts we all face and encounter. While each model is distinct, as we have seen, all share a resistance to both monolingualism and traditional multilingualism in our understanding of student writing and writing classrooms. Specifically, these models carry implications for questions of social activism and social justice in literacy practices. There are at least two kinds of social justice connected to these broader questions that I will now explore: literacy as enabling social justice and literacy as access and activism in itself. The social justice embedded in literacy itself takes shape in a translingual frame differently. It establishes the divergence between: • ‘literacy as access’ to power, a longstanding perspective that supports literacy of any kind, in any form, as automatically empowering (see, in this volume, Wedin’s point about students’ empowerment when they can be linguistic experts in their L1 as an example of the traditionally unexpected nature of some literacy strategies); • ‘literacy as heteroglossic’ which raises key social justice questions differently: whose power are we discussing? Why, how? Which kinds of literacy and language use lead to power or advancement? Just as some literacies are more valued, so are some languages; multilingualism itself is not equally celebrated in any configuration. This aspect contributes to helping us see the tension between the teaching or the normative domains of language practices and literacies,

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and the research about practices on the ground that describes and often celebrates heterogeneity and linguistic diversity. In teaching in the United States, we have long defaulted to linguistic domains that are ‘ideologically aligned to support privilege’ (Garcia, 2016). After all, even Harvard in the 1700s developed approaches to exclude competent immigrants via testing writing and language ability. In addition, translingual scholars underline the fact that we do not yet know much about whether, and how, to actually teach translingual practices in order to resist that exclusion or support of privilege. As Canagarajah (2011) notes, we also need to better understand how students negotiate institutional and classroom demands and whether translingual approaches indeed lead to social and educational success, whether multicompetence helps or hinders them. Consider, for example, the language diversity that shocks versus the one that is celebrated or at least acceptable: what accounts for the difference? As noted earlier, the changing global context – and the literacies changing with it – are making school writing, school literacies more and more insular to the school context. And finally, consider that of course most often the linguistic differences not celebrated in school contexts associate with lower socioeconomic status. These factors all complicate the sometimestoo-rapid call for using any of the ‘trans’/pluri/metro models to inform writing instruction; there is a gap between what the research about this diversity suggests and what writing classrooms can support. I am not suggesting we should not engage with needed change, only that simply calling for it does not make it so. Formosinho et al. (2016) note that if literacy and language are the path to opening up social, cognitive and emotional potential, then broad acceptance of linguistic and discursive diversity within those is the only way to social justice. A ‘subtractive schooling’ approach, they note, entails the loss of heritage, culture and linguistic capital. Exclusion can also be linked to the degree of value of the language in question – California might offer prestigious ‘bilingual education’ in French while relegating Spanish-speaking migrant children to remedial bilingual classes, for example. Less-known languages or ‘peripheral heritage languages’ remain low value, again reminding us that not all translingual practices are equal. And of course we know well that not all literacies are equal. In particular, for our purposes here, monolingual, decontextualized literacies (of the kind favored in school/university) are generally more valued outside of ‘creative’ contexts. Another social justice aspect is in terms of the literacies specifically that grant access to higher education, with tension between normative expectations and activist stances. Translingualism or cosmopolitanism can be seen as activism – that is, activist support of these practices in order to support change in the discursive structures that dominate current academic norms and expectations. It is also an activist

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understanding of the degree to which everyday educational contexts exclude certain literacies and languages. Emphasizing the ordinariness of translingualism or heteroglossia is necessary to any version of normalizing these practices in higher education literacy; the more it remains ‘different’ or is treated as ‘superior’ the less our sense of norms will change. Finally, it is activism via enabling better access to higher education by emphasizing the translingual and transcultural skills students need to ‘operate effectively at an international professional level’ (Molina, 2011). The underlying tension might be between more ‘pragmatic’ positions that support preparing student writers for the norms and conventions that, like it or not, make up the academic world and the more idealist (here, we could again say activist) positions that support celebrating diversity and working to change the norms within educational contexts that are already changing outside those contexts. Lee (2017) notes in particular that unless the way we assess success in university writing changes, we do not achieve social justice via teaching or embracing translingual literacies. The criterion of ‘effectiveness’ of literate actions and products is key; the hierarchy that leads to establishing the criterion is a form of social inequity. These discussions have contributed in part to a focus on access to higher education and to literate success in that context via multicompetence and flexibility, strategy and fluidity – a focus on design competence – rather than on acquiring stable sets of linguistic or literate conventions (see also Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). Design competence might even be seen as a way to talk about multicompetence, since ‘design’ draws on every aspect of communication and requires speakers and writers to make decisions in multiple areas. Consider, for example, the fact that multicompetence models suggest there are ‘rules of interpretation’ for each context in which we communicate and competent language users have ‘the adaptability to select those forms of accuracy and appropriateness’ for the context (Kramsch, 1998: 27). Fostering that adaptability is certainly a reasonable goal in our teaching, although the question of which context we target is key: if we claim to be preparing our students for the ‘academic context’ and teaching them ‘the rules of interpretation’ of that context, it might seem we are justified in teaching normed conventions as stable rules. However, arguments that no such context actually exists, and that within academia, disciplines, subdisciplines, cultures and institutional influences all interact to fragment and multiply any such contexts, suggest that this is an impossible project. That reality further complicates the challenge for teaching and the sense of our responsibility as teachers, even without multilingual questions. Add those into the mix and a new question arises: how acceptable will the rich heterogeneous language so celebrated in trans- or pluri- or metropolitan language practices be in each of these

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normed contexts? We do not yet have much empirical research offering concrete ways to identify ‘successful’ translinguistic practices. There is some research into business contexts in the world and the degree to which openness to uncertainty and a willingness to ‘let ambiguities pass’ even more than we already do in any linguistic exchange (Horner, 2016: 10) is central to success in real-world globalized situations. Others use ‘accommodation analyses’ (Ehrenreich cited in Archibald et al., 2011) to study and foreground the way speakers and writers accommodate and negotiate in their communication. It seems time to carry out these kinds of studies in higher education contexts with students in a range of disciplines and national or institutional settings. At the same time, many of the terms used to describe literacies and writers from these diverse contexts are binary and hierarchical – ‘native/ non-native’, interference, ‘first/second’ language. These binaries tend to make it harder to see the integrated work of multicompetence, work that might in fact be the new definition of success. That success might take place in what Claire Kramsch (2009b) calls the ‘third space’, a third culture and language that can move us beyond these binaries. She intentionally resists the existing binaries in language learning and argues for this ‘third space’ as a pedagogical approach that can be flexible and adaptable. Its purposes include ‘giv[ing] room to popular culture, to play and mischief, to “making do” with what one has and using imposed systems reflectively or in resistance and encourag[ing] critical interaction with dominant academic perspectives and materials’ (cited in Donahue, 2018: 36). While her focus is on language learning, these same practices and opportunities would foster new approaches for literacy instruction in relation to language diversity. We need evidence about whether the proponents of various ‘diversity’ models of literacy and language are right (‘right’?) about their claims and that has not been the primary focus of work in these models to date. We need empirical research focused on identifying the ‘success factors’ in play in a wide variety of meaning-making contexts, from low stakes to high stakes, from the everyday to the highly normed, from international business to local education and so on. The term ‘elite’ or the power associated with elite societal echelons is polysemic; the trajectory to success is not so traditionally clear anymore. While we may find these perspectives very interesting and potentially transformative, we need empirical research to support our activist or theoretical intentions. 2.4 What Are the Challenges to Research?

It is easy to say that we need empirical research, but considerably more difficult to adapt current research approaches to this dynamic linguistic context. Much like writing knowledge ‘transfer’, translingual practices involve the transformation of what is being written, so how

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do we study this in-motion language practice? Written text captures the practice but the underlying fluidity is still slippery. After all, if translingual practice is as shifting and dynamic as we claim, it might not be easy to capture in action. In addition, it can involve specific complications such as the one Shaswar (this volume) explores in terms of the role of translators during data collection. Translingual practice is also different in different contexts, such as education or creative activity. Literacy research objects to date have included internet communication, hip hop lyrics, street signage, indigenous literacy events, newspapers and so on. It is easier to study ‘resisting the hegemony’ in advertizing or in graffiti or street signs than in school settings, which ultimately raises the question of both context and purpose. So far, it has primarily, at least in the United States, been studied via: • Suresh Canagarajah’s ethnographies, which have provided great detail and dynamic beauty, but always via examples of that beautiful use. One of his most well-known cases is of one of his graduate students’ literacy autoethnographies and her work between Arabic and English. The celebration of these kinds of writing has been called, by some, linguistic tourism (Matsuda, 2014) or linguistic exceptionalism, that can value and highlight differences but miss similarities and even stereotype particular styles, or perhaps even more problematic, can elevate translingual work to a specialized status rather than making it simply part of the norm. • Case studies, by scholars such as Xiaoye You or Steve Fraiberg, of specific populations or contexts. For example, these studies have included Chinese students studying and writing at a particular US university, or a group of entrepreneurs in an Israeli startup interacting in speech, writing, and visual exchange, synchronously or asynchronously. • A combination of anecdote, survey, and standardized test scores. For example, Garcia (2016) studied students’ secondary education literacies via their performance on the California State Exit Exam, an extensive survey and collecting students’ stories. His work suggests that the kinds of linguistic marginalization the students experience has direct impact on their success and opportunities. • Studies of codeswitching or codemeshing (with the unfortunate disadvantage of starting from the premise that language is code); in writing studies research, these have been most often interpretive studies though some have been discourse analyses. • Studies of students’ linguistic repertoires in relation to their multimodal composing, studying their talk (via video analysis) and their text (via composing on paper, on screen, etc.) • Studying student writers’ identities (as they develop in the writing) and understanding how these are linked to their language practices; this has been done via focus groups, classroom observations, text analysis …

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• Studying literate practices in highly diverse multilingual locations such as Hong Kong, where Cantonese, English and Chinese literacies have been ‘mixing and matching for over a century’, as for example in Lee and Lin’s (2006) study of Hong Kong newspapers. • In this volume (Chapter 3), Budde and Prüsmann offer a new instrument for research into multilingual literacy, the LAWA questionnaire, that can perhaps be adapted across many contexts. 2.5 The Future

While research seems to be rapidly evolving, there is much to be done. Let me conclude with some questions about ways forward. How could ‘trans’ models be better studied? What should be studied? In particular, we can establish that in US scholarship there are simply not yet enough studies of translingualism in writing to be able to understand it, beyond as a conceptual model. Yet writing, as we have noted, is often subject to far more norming and standardizing in general, even if we can ask whether today that is changing, at least outside of schooling – and whether that renders schooling less relevant. Of course, text analysis is a time-honored approach to studying these language activities, whether via corpus linguistics, grounded theory coding, or other analytic methods. But there should be much more. Canagarajah, for example, suggests we must go beyond documenting instances of translingual practice (in speech and writing) to look at: • What strategies do translanguagers use to be heard and received (to create dialogue with readers)? • How do they make linguistic choices? (note that we have methods to draw on for this kind of question in previous sociolinguistic studies of codeswitchers and how they select the moments of ‘switch’). • How do interactions among different language users, including monolinguals, take place? We might wonder: • How might we better gather, synthesize and put into dialogue with each other the many current small or ethnographic or narrative studies? A meta-study, as it were, of these studies? • Along similar lines, how might we create cross-disciplinary teams to look at these questions? Where are the voices and methods of education, linguistics, didactics, poetics, comparative literature, modern languages, writing, speech? To truly understand the complex linguistic practices in play, we need teams to work on these issues, from multiple disciplines and countries, using multiple methods. • How might we study reception of translingual, metrolingual, heteroglossic writing? Can the dialogic approach framed years ago by

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•

•

•

•

Bakhtin be useful? Can methods of reading studies be helpful? (see also François, 2004). Might ‘big data’ offer new datasets? Writing scholars have used linguistic analysis – which can range from traditional corpus linguistics analysis to Bakhtinian linguistic analysis of utterances – for decades, analyzing college student writing in corpus-driven, computationally based ways. A less frequent focus has been on working across languages or on capturing translingual moves. Is this possible, when big data tools are designed to look for standard forms? That is, what is the potential for using tools that seek regularity for studying phenomena that work against regularity? How can computational analysis of extended corpora enable the study of translingual or cosmopolitan activity-in-process in ways not yet realized? Might advances in translation research and machine translation offer methodological or conceptual possibilities? Empirical translation studies are offering ‘identification of new textual and linguistic patterns in large amounts of translation data’ – what could that mean for studying translingual practices in academic texts? Nie et al. (2012) describing mining translingual data from texts in order to do automated ‘cross-language information retrieval’ – their purpose is to then improve machine translation but perhaps the method is useful to us. For example, Yang et al. (1998) consider how these tools can help us to understand the way we retrieve information as we work across languages. Laviosa et al. (2017) underscore in their similar work that these studies ‘illuminate both similarity and difference’ and allow us to ‘investigate in manageable form … many languages and cultures’. It seems trans- or metro- or pluri- research has not yet tapped into this domain. It is possible that new empirical research could help to address some of the deep underlying ideological issues with translingual, heteroglossic or metrolingual practice in higher education. Many scholars outside of writing studies doing translingual work actually suggest that translingualism is problematic in writing as compared to speech; that ‘texts are static products that contain self-evident meaning that can be extricated through detached reading’ (Canagarajah, 2011: 7) and thus should not need negotiating, and that high-stakes school writing is a place for standardized literacy conventions. Jerry Lee (2017), developing this line of reasoning, argues that we appear to be giving freedom and tools to writers when we encourage literate activities such as translingual practices, but in fact we could be preventing them the access we want them to gain. How might a research program help to answer these charges, on a basis other than ideological? And perhaps equally importantly, how might we study the linguistic features that actually play a role in success vs those we imagine play a role? Finally, are there new methods, or combinations of methods, we have not yet developed? What about other possibilities for studying something so slippery?

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There are certainly pedagogical practices to explore as well, though that is not my topic in this chapter. The question of which practices will best frame social justice or activism, which will take a productive critical stance towards current norms while equipping students with the literacies needed, should be at the heart of both our research interests and our pedagogical applications going forward around the globe. Notes (1) Translingualism is not ‘owned’ by these domains. Earlier work in comparative literature and literary studies predates current interest by writing studies, for example. (2) Indeed, our questions here are complicated by questions about ‘academic writing’ itself as more or less successfully integrate into real-world post-college needs.

References Archibald, A., Cogo, A. and Jenkins, J. (eds) (2011) Latest Trends in ELF Research. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres an Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (eds) (2014) Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy. Dordrecht: Springer. Blackledge, A., Creese, A. and Takhi, J. (2013) Beyond multilingualism: Heteroglossia in practice. In S. May (ed.) The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education (pp. 191–215). New York: Routledge. Blommaert, J. (2012) Citizenship, language, and superdiversity: Toward complexity. Paper 95 in Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies. Kings College London. Blommaert, J. and Rampton, B. (2011) Language and superdiversity. Diversities 13 (2), 1–22. Blommaert, J. and Rampton, B. (2013) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. Abington: Routledge. Breuer, E.O. and Van Steendam, E. (2021) Multiple approaches to understanding and working with multilingual (multi-)literacy. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 1–18). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Budde, M.A. and Prüsmann, F. (2021) Studying the learning of immigrant students with limited German: A proposal for developing and applying an instrument for selecting suitable research participants. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 40–62). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, S. (2011) Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. Applied Linguistics Review 2, 1–28. Cook, V. (1992) Evidence for multi-competence. Language Learning 42 (4), 557–591. Cook, V. (2009) Contemporary Applied Linguistics: Language Teaching and Learning. London: Continuum Publishing group. Donahue, C. (2008) Ecrire à L’université: Analyse Comparée, France-Etats Unis. Villeneuved’Ascq, France: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. Donahue, C. (2016) The trans in transnational-translingual: Rhetorical and linguistic flexibility as new norms. Composition Studies 44 (1), n.p. Donahue, C. (2018) Rhetorical and linguistic flexibility: Valuing heterogeneity in academic writing education. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, Practice (pp. 21–40). London: Routledge.

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Formosinho, M., Jesus, P. and Reis, C. (2016) Emancipatory and critical language education: a plea for translingual possible selves and worlds. Critical Studies in Education 1–19. François, F. (2004) Le Discours et Ses Entours. Paris: L’Harmattan. Horner, B. (2016) Rewriting Composition:  Terms  of Exchange. Carbondale: Southern Illinois. University Press.  Horner, B., Lu, M.Z., Royster, J.J. and Trimbur, J. (2011) Language difference in writing: Toward a translingual approach. College English 73, 303–321. Garcia, A. (2016) Linguistic justice and empowerment: toward translingual interpretive communities. Unpublished MA Thesis. California State University, Fresno. Jessner, U., Malzer-Papp, E. and Allgäuer-Hackl, E. (2021) Paving a new way to literacy development in multilingual children: A DMM perspective. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 97–122). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kirsch, C. (2021) Promoting multilingualism and multiliteracies through storytelling: a case-study on the use of the app iTEO in preschools in Luxembourg. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 187–210). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kramsch, C. (1998) The privilege of the intercultural speaker. In M. Byram and M. Fleming (eds) Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective (pp. 16–31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kramsch, C. (2009a) The Multilingual Subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kramsch, C. (2009b) Third culture and language education. In V. Cook and L. Wei (eds) Contemporary Applied Linguistics (pp. 233–254) London: Continuum. Kramsch, C. (2014) Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The Modern Language Journal 98 (1), 296–311. Laviosa, S., Pagano, A., Kemppanen, H. and Ji, M. (2017) Textual and Contextual Analysis in Empirical Translation Studies. Singapore: Springer. Lee, J. (2017) The Politics of Translingualism: After Englishes. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor and Francis.Lee, F. and Lin, A. (2006) Newspaper editorial discourse and the politics of self-censorship in Hong Kong. Discourse and Society 17 (3), 331–358. Li, J. and Juffermans, K. (2011) Multilingual Europe 2.0: Dutch-Chinese Youth Identities in the Era of Superdiversity. Paper 71, Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies. Belgium: University of Ghent. Machowska-Kosciak, M. (2021) ‘He just does not write enough for it’ – literacy practices among Polish adolescents in Ireland. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 123–144). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Matsuda, P.K. (2014) The lure of translingual writing. PMLA 129 (3), 478–83. Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2021) Developing multiliteracies in on-line multilingual interactions: The example of chat-room conversations in Romance Languages. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 165– 186). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Molina, C. (2011) Curricular insights into translingualism as a communicative competence. Journal of Language Teaching and Research 2 (6), 1244–1251. Nie, J., J., Gao, J. and Cao, G. (2012) Translingual mining from text data. In C. Aggarwal and C. Zhai (eds) Mining Text Data (pp. 323–359). Amsterdam: Springer. Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2010) Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity, and language in flux. International Journal of Multilingualism 7 (3), 240–254. Petric, B. (2013) Revisiting the Meaning of Culture. Keynote, European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing conference, Budapest, Hungary. Shaswar, A. (2021) ‘I should really interpret word by word for you’: Researcher, interpreter, and interviewee negotiating roles, responsibilities and meanings in two multilingual literacy research interviews. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 63–94). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Vertovec, S. (2006) The Emergence of Super-diversity in Britain. Working Paper 06-25, University of Oxford School of Anthropology. Wedin, Å. (2021) Construction of identities in diverse classrooms: Writing identity texts in grade five. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 145–162). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Yang, Y., Carbonell, J., Brown, R. and Frederking, R. (1998) Translingual information retrieval: learning from bilingual corpora. Artificial Intelligence 103 (1–2), 323–345. You, X. (2016) Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Zarate, G. (2003) Identities and plurilingualism: Preconditions for the recognition of intercultural competences. In M. Byram (ed.) Intercultural Competence (pp. 84–118). Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

3 Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German: A Proposal for Developing and Applying an Instrument for Selecting Suitable Research Participants Monika Angela Budde and Franziska Prüsmann

Immigrant learners can pose a particular challenge for schools and for educational research: while they often bring a great deal of potential with them, it often either goes unnoticed or has not yet come to light and thus cannot be exploited for their further schooling. To date, no comprehensive studies on previously existing language skills are in place for German-speaking countries. To learn more about the languagerelated abilities of these young people, the LAWA (Language Awareness – Mehrsprachige Fähigkeiten wahrnehmen) study developed a new datacollection format whose starting point entailed the selection of suitable learners: students who despite their rudimentary German skills are able to provide information using their own individual language-related capacity. The format involved a pre-selection questionnaire with questions about their prior schooling, along with a set of tasks used to measure cognitive performance, modified for the questionnaire. The evaluation of the data collected was used to select study participants who are willing and able to communicate their language- and learning-related abilities. By explaining their responses and sharing information, they provided important data and offered new perspectives for the further data collection phase of the project.

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3.1 Introduction

Immigrant learners who come from different countries bring a diversity of school-based competencies and language (learning) experiences with them when they arrive in their new schools in Germany: their learning cultures, their subject-specific knowledge, their learning abilities, their reading and writing skills, their languages and their language learning knowledge. In many cases, however, they are unable to leverage these skill sets because teachers are unaware of them and are thus unable to tap into them. Moreover, in the crucial early phase, learners and teachers have no common language of communication, which exacerbates the situation. In order to identify appropriate didactic starting points for teaching immigrant learners, it is important to investigate the abilities and potential they bring with them. A survey designed for this purpose must allow for the learners to provide us information about their learning and their abilities despite their rudimentary German skills. The Language Awareness – Identifying Multilinguals’ Potential (LAWA) study aimed to find out more about immigrant learners’ capabilities in order to take them as a starting point for language learning and school-based learning in general. The study focused on the reading and writing skills of immigrant learners who had already attended school in their countries of origin. Its objective was to gather data about these learners in order to take their individual prior schooling experience in their mother tongue and/or other languages learned at school into account. Previous studies have tended to use surveys and self-reports by adults to collect information about school (-leaving) certificates and employment in the countries of origin and assessment of their language skills (cf. Brücker et al., 2018). Studies have also been conducted in which child and adolescent immigrant learners use self-reports to provide information on their language use and assess their skills in additional languages (Ahrenholz & Maak, 2013). The research perspective and multilingual realities of the immigrants are not always related to each other (Hu, 2018) and the questions and categories are developed based on ideas about language learning under the conditions of conventional foreign language instruction (Byram & Parmenter, 2012; Shohamy, 2006). As such, the studies conducted in Europe demonstrate an objective for multilingualism in keeping with the Common European Reference Framework (Trim et al., 2001) and the multilingual skills of the immigrant learners can be described to only a limited extent in the existing studies. It is therefore expedient to deploy a research approach that enables a more precise, unbiased, uninfluenced and comprehensive view of the learner biography of the individuals. For us researchers this ambitious undertaking posed a methodological challenge from the very beginning that had to be carefully resolved:

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we needed to find participants who were capable of providing ­linguisticand language-related data that we were able to evaluate, even if we do not speak their language(s). Obviously, using tried and tested survey formats was not an option. Thus, the first step involved precise observation of the immigrant learners. To find out whether and how the immigrant learners describe their language learning and their approach to language and working with texts and explain and are willing to explain it, before we selected a suitable survey method, we needed to take a step back and address the following questions: (1) Who are these learners? (2) What can they tell us? (3) How do they go about telling us about it? In fact, addressing these questions permitted us researchers in the LAWA project to find a way to assess the learners’ capabilities. Using a pre-selection instrument was the crucial factor for finding suitable participants for additional data collection. We consider this new instrument in the form of a questionnaire to be the requisite basis for more in-depth surveys of language learner biographies and for this reason, we use it as the point of departure for our subsequent studies. At the same time, it can also be used in other studies as the basis for surveying participants’ language learning biographies. In this article, we focus on the questionnaire. 3.2 Immigrant Learners and Their Competencies 3.2.1 Who are these learners?

The learners have acquired school-related skills in various subjects (mathematics, the sciences, languages, music and art). They are familiar with the use of the cognitive-academic language conventions used in the school context. They have developed knowledge of and routines in classroom dialogue. They are used to learning from textbooks or educational texts. Studies relating to German as a Second Language (GSL) by Knapp (1997) and Brizić (2006) showed that these learners already possess written language and strategy-based skills that they can use for learning vocabulary and for producing texts. Ezhova-Heer (2011) pointed out that schools in Russia place great emphasis on developing strong writing skills, and that the learners she investigated after their immigration to Germany already demonstrated a high level of textual competence in Russian. Taking these skills into account in her intervention study was helpful for the learners to develop written German skills. Immigrant learners have often learned more than one language, be it the official national language that is not the same as their family language, or another common language, and/or foreign languages taught in school (see Donahue, this volume). Studies on migration conducted since 2014 show that many immigrant learners from the Middle East arrive in Germany with knowledge of English and of the Latin alphabet;

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   43

and that learners from the Balkans who come to Germany have often learned Russian in addition to their national language, as well as the Cyrillic alphabet. The situation with refugees from North Africa is very disparate: either they have a very high level of education with knowledge of one or two foreign languages or they arrive illiterate, without any schooling at all (see Berlin Institute for Population and Development, 2014). During their flight to Europe, the immigrants often become stranded in different countries until they find a place to stay (more) permanently. There they sometimes come into contact with other languages as well, either through official authorities or personal contact. All of these language contacts enhance their language abilities (e.g. code switching, translanguaging) and most of the young persons can be referred to as multilingual learners. While all immigrant learners have to master one common achievement − learning German − they all have different starting points: they start their learning against diverse linguistic, educational, cultural backdrops, different school systems and diverse and multifaceted acquisition conditions. 3.2.2 What can they tell us?

When it comes to educational research, our focus is on the students’ skills related to learning from and using written texts; in other words, in their capacity to engage with texts and with their textual competence. Textual competence is a key factor to success in school-based education. Textual competence refers to the ability to read and write in order to further process the subject matter of the teaching imparted orally and in writing (cf. Baur & Hufeisen, 2011; Portmann-Tselikas & SchmölzerEibinger, 2002; Schiefele et al., 2004). It is important to find out the extent to which immigrant learners are familiar with the learning formats commonly used in the German school system, as well as those used for learning from texts that they were introduced to in the schools in their countries of origin. It is helpful to know what reading-related skills have been developed, for instance, for gleaning specific information from a text, for further processing information and for using it to acquire more in-depth knowledge or learning. It could also be enlightening to find out whether it is possible to build on skills or knowledge about certain text functions and their specific formats and structures. In addition, it is revealing to learn about skills or methods the learners use to memorize content imparted through texts or that they use to write down content they have worked through and process it to meet a certain purpose or function (see Stavans et al., this volume). For continuing language acquisition, it is important to learn more about the immigrant learners’ foreign language skills, to identify

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starting points for continuing the foreign language acquisition and to specifically transfer the language-related capabilities that are already in place to learning German. Studies on controlled second language acquisition have proven that cross-linguistic influence can be conducive to language learning. Aspects of interdependence have already been addressed by Sharwood-Smith and Kellermann (1986) (cross-linguistic influence) and Dechert and Raupach (1989) (transfer). Research into the acquisition of German as a third (L3) or fourth (L4) language has shown interdependencies in the language acquisition processes (Hufeisen & Jessner, 2009; Hufeisen & Lindemann, 1998; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2016). It is thus helpful to know whether and in what way the foreign languages the immigrant learners have already learned affect their learning of German and whether lexical and language-structure knowledge about these languages can be transferred to German (see Jessner et al., this volume). 3.2.3 How can they go about telling us about it?

Efforts to select a suitable research method reflect the intention to appropriately survey and potentially study individual learners and focus on their skills from various angles. In order to obtain an overall picture that is as informative as possible, the methods must be interconnected and the evaluation of data must be very open and descriptive. In light of the individual learning backgrounds, obvious choices involve methods that start with the individual learners and identify their possibilities for helping them cope with the requirements of school. Solche lernerorientierten Methoden ermöglichen Aufschlüsse über den individuellen Lernprozess – nur hierdurch wird es möglich zu erschließen, was im Kopf eines Lernenden während des Lernens einer neuen Sprache vorgeht. Des Weiteren können spezifische Bereiche und Prozesse untersucht werden, wie z.B. welche Strategien eine Lernende beim Verstehen eines fremden Textes anwendet. Die Ursachen von Fehlern oder auch richtigen Äußerungen und Erschließungen können durch (strukturierte oder auch unstrukturierte) Interviews hinterfragt werden, um komplettere Aussagen über Produktions- und Verstehensprozesse zu ermöglichen bzw. schon erhobene Produktionsoder Rezeptionsdaten zu ergänzen. (Marx, 2004: 71–72) [Such learner-oriented methods allow us to obtain insights about the individual learning process. They are the only option for finding out what is crossing learners’ minds as they are learning a new language. In addition, they can permit us to study specific areas and processes, for instance, the strategies learners use to understand a text in a foreign language. Interviews (structured as well as unstructured) can be used to

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   45

ask about the sources of errors, but also about the reasons for the formulations of correct utterances and conclusions, in order to enable more complete statements about production and comprehension processes and to supplement already elicited data about production or reception. (Marx, 2004: 71–72)]

With this in mind, the LAWA study took the following contextual conditions into account for developing a suitable survey format: the learners’ different countries of origin, the existing languages and skills the learners have brought with them and which were yet so different and possibly comparable school-based knowledge about learning from texts. The LAWA study’s central question, which was to obtain a more precise picture about the learners with regard to their language- and learning-related competencies, gave rise to a format implemented in a two-step process. In the first step, a pre-selection questionnaire was used to identify suitable participants. In the second step, which entailed the main quality-oriented data-collection phase, each learner’s biographical language-learning data and language-related competencies were collected. In this second step, learners were to answer questions about the approach they use when working on a text in a German textbook and whether they apply knowledge from the foreign languages they had learned previously, as well as whether they consciously apply their approaches and their knowledge. In view of the focused learner group, it was particularly challenging to find participants who are suitable for the study. They had to meet three conditions: (1) They had to be willing and motivated to provide the desired information. (2) Their language skills had to be good enough to allow them to communicate about the subject matter asked about in the questionnaire. (3) They had to be cognitively able to perceive their mental activities and abstract issues, reflect on them and verbalize them. In addition, while adolescent school students are generally able to describe their own learning approach and behavior patterns and reflect on them, they do not necessarily have a great deal of practice in doing so. Therefore, they must also be prompted to analyze them on a deeper level (cf. Marx, 2004: 72; Trautmann, 2010). To this end, a pre-selection questionnaire was developed that was used before the main datacollection survey was initiated. The LAWA study format comprised four components: (1) Step 1: Pre-selection questionnaire • Questionnaire I: biographical data and cognitive test instrument; served as a preliminary screening for targeted selection of participants. (2) Step 2: Main data-collection phase • Questionnaire II: closed and open response format; elicited information about individual language learning, about foreign language instruction and about the learners’ subjective assessment

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of their language learning in schools they had previously attended and those they were currently attending. • Paper and pencil test: reading comprehension test with writing tasks; measured the capacity to read and work on a German information text (Level B1), serving as the basis for a subsequent interview. • Guided interview: questions oriented toward the participant’s reading and writing process; elicited statements about approaches for working on German texts in writing. The LAWA study was carried out from 2014 to 2016 with 12 students aged 12 to 17 from various countries of origin. In the overall evaluation of the data collected, the various data were considered in relation to each other and assessed (for a more detailed presentation of the project and initial outcomes, see Budde, 2016; Prüsmann, 2016). 3.3 Selecting Participants: Pre-selection Questionnaire

When selecting the participants, the pre-selection questionnaire (Questionnaire I) was very important for establishing the basis for the main data collection and was used as the starting point for the second step of the study. The pre-selection questionnaire was used to select participants who: (1) had prior experience with attending school and with language learning in their country of origin or another country (see Section 3.2 Who are these learners? What can they tell us?); (2) despite the language-related obstacles, were able and motivated to describe their approach to problem-solving (see Section 3.2 How do they go about telling us about it?). To ensure that the first selection criterion was met, we designed Part 1 of the pre-selection questionnaire, while for the second selection criterion, we drew up Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire. The two parts comprised five pages with different questions and work instructions and/or test problems that were arranged such that the students could write down their responses directly in the questionnaire. The subjects were allowed to take as much time as they needed to fill in the questionnaire. 3.3.1 Part 1 of the pre-selection questionnaire

The first part of the pre-selection questionnaire contained questions on selected biographical data focusing on the learners’ experience with school and the languages used. To this end, the learners were

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   47

asked to list the schools they had attended and how many school years they had completed, for example. They were then asked the following questions: • What subjects did you have in school? • Did you learn any foreign languages at school? • If so, which ones? When did you learn them? How long did you learn them? To make it easier for the participants to fill out the questionnaire, tables were provided for their responses. More in-depth questions, such as the methods used for their school-based learning, were not discussed at this point but were only addressed during the much more detailed main data collection phase. For pre-selecting the participants, only the learners’ starting context was taken into account. Three qualifying questions were used to ensure that the learners met the first selection criterion (experience with attending school and with language learning in their country of origin or another country): • Did the learner have any experience at all with attending school prior to attending school in Germany? • Was the learner not enrolled in school in Germany until after the first grade? • In addition to the learner’s first language, did the learner learn at least one foreign language at school? Using these questions allowed us to undertake a systematic evalu­ ation. If the answer to all three qualifying questions was yes, the learner met the selection criterion in the Part 1 of the questionnaire. 3.3.2 Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire

Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire consisted of cognitive tasks solved by the participants and follow-up tasks that instructed them to justify their own solutions. The research focus was on the learner’s competencies in handling cognitive tasks when they describe and present their mental actions. It was crucial to find a way for them to express themselves in order to depict their cognitive mental processes in terms of language, even if their German skills were only rudimentary. The only way for the participants to tell us more about their learning was if they had the appropriate abilities for paraphrasing and describing things. The LAWA study assumed that the participants’ personal characteristics identified in Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire

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were relatively stable. This means that the behavior observed in selected situations can also be transferred to other situations (cf. Ziegler & Bühner, 2012: 33). Thus, the study assumed that if selected participants have the capacity to describe their strategies for using language in a preselection questionnaire, they will also have the capacity to do so in the further data collection activities. When constructing the cognitive tasks, we geared the tasks toward the proven formats used in psychological diagnostic tests, such as those used in IQ tests. Missing number tasks, finding similar words and identifying analogies are all commonly used tasks for determining cognitive performance in certain areas (cf. Schmidt-Atzert & Amelang, 2012). Since the cognitive tasks in the pre-selection questionnaire were not meant to determine the participants’ IQ, but were the starting point for studying the strategies for using language after solving the tasks, we supplemented the format taken from the field of psychology to include additional requests for the participants to justify their own responses. Cognitive test tasks usual entail one correct solution. However – in contrast to the original IQ test – the basic aim of the preselection questionnaire was not to prescribe one response as a possible solution, but rather to examine whether the solution provided matched the subsequent justification. Our intention was therefore to determine whether the participants were able to word explanations whose content was logical. When drawing up the tasks, we always pursued the objective of designing them in a way that was as easy as possible for the participants to understand and cope with. For the learner, having to justify their decision in writing was very difficult: they had to be aware of their problem-solving strategies in order to be able to render this in speech, and they had to be able to make use of individual strategies for paraphrasing unknown words. In addition, they needed to have a certain level of concentration and motivation. Since the project’s research focus was on the learners’ reading and writing skills, the learners’ capacities for paraphrasing and reflection were also determined through reading and writing rather than through oral explanations. This part of the pre-questionnaire contained nine tasks, each of which the learners were to solve and explain in a solutionoriented manner. The nine individual tasks were assigned to three categories: Fill in the missing number in the sequence (1), Select the word that doesn’t fit (2) and Find the pattern (3). (1) Example of a task in the category Fill in the missing number in the sequence: the participant was told to complete the number sequence by adding the next three numbers in the sequence and to provide an explanation for why they had chosen these numbers. This task was intended to find out how the participants describe a mathematical

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   49

solution and determine how they use language to do so. A sample task is presented below: Complete the number sequence. 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, ___, ___, ___, Explain your solution. Why did you choose these numbers? In the pre-selection questionnaire, we used Arabic numerals, since they are used in many parts of the world to designate numbers. It was thus highly probable that the participants would be familiar with these numbers based on their experiences in their first and foreign languages. If the participants were able to read the numbers, they may have even been able to fill in the missing numbers without reading the directions and would not necessarily need to be able to understand the written directions. Depending on their school-based experience, the learners may have been familiar with the complete the number sequence task from their math classes. (2) Example of a task in the category Select the word that doesn’t fit: from four words, the participant was asked to select a word that did not fit the other words. Here too, the participants were asked to explain their response. The participants’ task was to find one or more similarities among the three terms that make it possible to eliminate the fourth term. The goal was to find out which categorization concept the learners would select and how they were able to communicate it. There was no prescribed solution for the task that would permit only one classification. The focus was on the way the term was selected and on explaining it. The following example illustrates the task: Which word doesn’t fit?  (Horseback) Riding

 Soccer

 Basketball

 Volleyball

Explain your solution. Why doesn’t the word fit? The words used in the task were selected based on the fact that, for each task, at least one or two of the words could be guessed based on the participants’ knowledge of other languages. This enabled the learners to develop strategies for making conclusions if they were unfamiliar with a word. In addition, most of the words were part of the basic vocabulary. (3) Example of a task in the category Find the pattern: a 2 × 2 square contains three squares each containing an arrow pointing in a certain direction, as well as one empty square. The participants were told to select an arrow from four arrows pointing in different directions that would best fit the empty square. They were then asked to

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explain their selection. The intention of this task was to find out how the learners would arrange the arrows in the overall structure and use the language skills available to them to explain their choice. The participants were able to create any pattern they chose to make, as long as it fit the written explanation. A sample task is presented below: Which arrow fits best in the empty square?

    

 

 



Explain your solution. Why did you choose the arrow? For this category, we decided to use arrows because they are not language dependent. Other alternatives, such as pictograms, may have been more difficult, for instance, they may not be familiar in all cultures or have different meanings, so that the task could lead to misunderstandings. Our intention for all three categories was therefore to determine whether the participants were able to word explanations whose content was logical. The actual quality of the wording, as well as the orthographic and grammatical correctness of the wording, were of secondary importance for the tasks, since they are not considered to be aspects that can be transferred from the source to the target language (cf. Grießhaber, 2010). To establish whether the learners met the second selection criterion (capacity and motivation despite the linguistic challenges, ability to describe their problem-solving approach), the following qualifying questions were relevant in the assessment process: • Do the explanations fit the answers provided? • Are the explanations understandable and logical? • Has the learner solved and explained all of the tasks? If the answer to all of the qualifying questions was ‘yes’, the selection criterion for Part 2 of the questionnaire was considered to be met. If all of the questions from Part 1 and Part 2 were answered with ‘yes’, the participant was selected to take part in the further data collection phase. Table 3.1 presents an overview of the structure and intention of the pre-selection questionnaire (Questionnaire I).

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   51

Table 3.1  Structure and intention of the pre-selection questionnaire Pre-selection questionnaire Survey:

Part 1: Biographical questions about the participant’s school- and language-related experience

Part 2: Logic tasks with requests for explanation

Intention:

Select learners who have prior experience with attending school and with language learning in their country of origin or another country

Select learners who are able and motivated to describe their approach to problemsolving

Assessment:

Questions: –– Did the learner (L.) have any experience at all with attending school prior to attending school in Germany? –– Was L. not enrolled in school in Germany until after the first grade? –– Did L. learn at least one foreign language at school in addition to L.’s first language?

Questions: –– Do the explanations fit the answers provided? –– Are the explanations understandable and logical? –– Has L. solved and explained all of the tasks?

3.4 Selected Results

We begin this section by presenting a selection of the students’ responses from Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire in order to illustrate the assessment process based on the following qualifying questions: Do the explanations fit the answers provided? Are the explanations understandable and logical? In the section below, we present students’ responses evaluated as positive and negative and then conclude by presenting the profile of one learner selected based on the results of the selection questionnaire. A brief outline of the participant’s biographical data from the selection questionnaire demonstrates the significance of this data as the basis for the main data collection phase. 3.4.1 Students’ responses

Figure 3.1 shows a student’s response from the category Fill in the missing number in the sequence that constituted a positive response to the qualifying questions.

Figure 3.1  Example from the category Fill in the missing number in the sequence

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The learner completed the number sequence with the numbers 18, 20 and 24. In so doing, she recognized the system in the number sequence, namely that 2 and 4 were added to the numbers alternatively. In order to use language to describe the mathematical solution, she used the mathematical term ‘plus’ in a sort of list: Each number once Plus 4 once Plus 2. In so doing, the learner succeeded in providing a suitable explanation for the numbers she entered to complete the sequence that we assessed to be comprehensible and logical. Figure 3.2 presents another student’s response from the same category for which all of the qualifying questions were answered with ‘yes’.

Figure 3.2  Example from the category Fill in the missing number in the sequence

This learner completed the number sequence with the numbers 12, 14 and 16. In order to explain the system she used to complete the sequence, she numbered the first three numbers with the first, the third, the second and described that these numbers were calculated plus two. She described fact that all of the other numbers had to be increased by 2 with the words that is logical. This example shows that the participant was able to present her mathematical solution fittingly, understandably and logically using strategies for using language (numbering the numerals). Figure 3.3 shows a student’s response from the category Fill in the missing number in the sequence that constituted a negative response to the qualifying questions.

Figure 3.3  Example from the category Fill in the missing number in the sequence

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   53

This learner completed the number sequence with the numbers 14, 19? (number illegible), 21. To explain his answer, he wrote: because I can [do] math. This participant did not succeed in describing the way he completed the number sequence or using language to do so. The reason for choosing these three numbers remains unclear. Instead, he justified his answer by stating that he can [do] math. It is possible that the learner was overwhelmed by the mathematical tasks and the request to explain his choices or that he was unwilling or not motivated to solve the task. Regardless of the possible reasons, the learner’s explanation was assessed as not matching the answer provided and not logical. One possible solution could have involved completing the number sequence with the numbers 16, 22 and 29. This would entail adding each number to the previous addend plus one. Figure 3.4 presents an example of positive responses to the qualifying questions from the Select the word that doesn’t fit category.

Figure 3.4  Example from the category Select the word that doesn’t fit

In this example, a learner has selected the word Dog as not fitting the words Mother, Sister and Grandma. She described female as one of the common features of the words. She also recognized the common biological or grammatical gender of the words. Furthermore, she described Mother, Sister, Grandma as people and Dog as an animal, distinct from them. The wording of the solution was assessed as fitting, comprehensible and logical. Figure 3.5 presents a different student’s solution to the same task that also constitutes an affirmation of the qualifying questions.

Figure 3.5  Example from the category Select the word that doesn’t fit

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Just as the learner described above, this participant chose Dog as the word that did not fit. In explaining his choice, this student also described the words Mother, Sister and Grandma as belonging to the category person, to which the word Dog does not belong. In addition to describing the way he distinguished among the terms, this learner also described how the word Dog in fact fits the other words, stating that a dog is also part of the family. In putting this in words, he drew on his English vocabulary, using the expression part of rather than the German ‘Teil von’. The response and the explanation presented by the participants demonstrate his ability to put his thoughts into words in an understandable and logical manner. Figure 3.6 presents another student’s response from the same category for which all of the qualifying questions were also answered with ‘yes’.

Figure 3.6  Example from the category Select the word that doesn’t fit

This learner selected the word Riding as not fitting the other three words in the set of four words. She justified her selection by explaining that Soccer, Basketball and Volleyball were a game with a ball. She thus recognized the common element; all three words are types of ball games. The fact that she was of the opinion that riding did not belong to the other words was expressed with Riding nothing. She also recognized that all of the words could be assigned to the category of sports. The participant succeeded in communicating her strategy for categorizing the words to match her answer, doing so comprehensibly and logically. Figure 3.7 shows a student’s response from the category Select the word that doesn’t fit that constituted a negative response to the questions.

Figure 3.7  Example from the category Select the word that doesn’t fit

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   55

In this learner’s solution, the word Soccer is considered not to fit the other words. To this end, he wrote that the words did not fit together. By writing this response, he did communicate that words did not fit; however, he did not provide a content-related reason for this. It is unclear whether the learner did not understand the task or the different words or whether he was not motivated to tackle the task. His explanations were assessed as not fitting the answer, as not comprehensible and not logical. Figure 3.8 presents an example of positive responses to the questions from the Select the word that doesn’t fit category.

Figure 3.8  Example from the category Find the pattern

This learner selected an arrow that points to the lower right, exactly as the three arrows already in the figure. The learner justified her selection with the fact that the arrows are the same. While this answer is very short, it sums up exactly why this arrow fits into the overall structure. It means that the participant succeeded in finding an explanation that fit her selection and that she put this into words in a comprehensible and logical manner. Figure 3.9 presents another student’s response from the same category for which all of the qualifying questions were also answered with ‘yes’.

Figure 3.9  Example from the category Find the pattern

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In this task, the arrow already in place on the upper left points to the center, while the arrows on the upper right and lower left point outside the box. For the empty box, the learner selected an arrow that also pointed outward. She justified her selection of the arrow by explaining that three arrows point in directions where they want to. One of them, however, goes at this point. With this point, the participant most likely is referring to the center. The decision to select an arrow that is pointing toward the lower right matches the explanation provided by the learner that takes the overall structure into account. The learner has also used the words available to her to word the explanation comprehensibly and logically. Figure 3.10 presents an example of negative responses to the questions from the Find the pattern category.

Figure 3.10  Example from the category Find the pattern

In contrast to the previous learner, this learner selected an arrow pointing to the lower left for the same task. To explain her choice, she wrote that the arrow fits the other arrows. It is clear that when making the selection, the arrow has to fit the other arrows. However, this ‘fit’ is also valid for any other arrow selected, which means that the learner’s explanation does not justify why she chose exactly this particular arrow. While it can be assumed that the learner had the overall structure of the arrows in mind, she was either unable or unwilling to express this in words. For this reason, her response was assessed as not productive or logical. The examples presented above show a wide range of responses and explanations given by the participants in the LAWA study. If during the assessment process all of the qualifying questions for a learner were answered with ‘yes’, the learner was selected to participate in the further surveys. We will use the example of learner Ayla (name replaced by a pseudonym) below to present the further procedure.

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   57

3.4.2 Participant Ayla

For each participant selected based on the pre-selection questionnaire, a table was prepared with the biographical data from Part 1 of the questionnaire. Table 3.2 presents the overview for the participant Ayla. Table 3.2  Overview of the biographical data for the participant Ayla Participant Ayla, 16 years old Origin:

Middle East

Experience with school:

Three different schools in her country of origin (grades 1-9/10)

Subjects:

Different natural and social sciences, arts, physical education, religion

Subjects (languages):

Origin language (9/10 years), English (9/10 years), French (3/4 years)

Stay in Germany:

1 year

Current schooling:

Grade 10, gymnasium (university-track secondary school), languages German, German as a Second Language, Spanish

Learner Ayla was 16 years old at the time the survey was conducted. Her country of origin is located in the Middle East, where she attended three different schools for nine years. She arrived in Germany in her 10th year of schooling. At her school there, she had classes in different natural and social sciences, arts and in physical education and religion. In addition, starting in first grade, she had language instruction in her language of origin and in English. She learned French for over three years. Ayla has now lived in Germany for one year and is a student in the 10th grade at a gymnasium, where she has regular German and English classes as well as separate German as a Second Language classes. She no longer has French classes in school and is now learning Spanish as a new foreign language instead. These data about Ayla confirm that she met the biographical prerequisites for participating in the LAWA study. She already had experience with school in her country of origin, was enrolled in school in Germany after the first grade and had already acquired at least one foreign language in a school-based setting (cf. Section 3.3, qualifying questions in Part 1 of the pre-selection questionnaire). In addition to verifying whether the learners were suitable to be participants in the main data collection phase of the LAWA study, the biographical data also served as a database that could be used for further work with the respective learners. Example: The pre-selection questionnaire revealed that Ayla had had English classes since the first grade. For the LAWA project, it was also interesting to find out how many hours the language instruction comprised and what learning formats were used. In order to obtain more information on this, Ayla’s English classes became the focus of the main data collection surveys.

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The biographical data from the pre-selection questionnaire used as a basis for research were to be used in the main data collection surveys to obtain more in-depth knowledge about the individual school-based context and the cognitive capacities during work with texts. • How is first-language instruction designed in the country of origin? • What learning formats are the learners familiar with from foreign language X classes? • What strategies are used for working with texts? • Where can knowledge and experience from previous language classes be helpful for the process of learning German/in German classes? • etc. We can obtain such insights only by using a detailed description of the selected participants that they have provided themselves, like Ayla’s, in which in addition to purely quantitative data (duration, number of classes, etc.) they can report on the quality (learning habits, learning formats and methods), how they experienced them and what they use today. We assumed that by interviewing these selected learners, it would be possible to gain insights about these questions, since these participants had certain strategies for using language and competencies for reflection available to them at the time of the survey and were also prepared to reveal more about their learning (positive responses to the qualifying questions in Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire). 3.5 Methodological Reflection

By using the pre-selection questionnaire as a survey instrument, we endeavored to find an open approach to learners’ language learningrelated skills without having to commit ourselves to established assessment standards for traditional school-based foreign language learning. To obtain insights into the approaches used by learners for meeting language-related challenges, learners must be prepared and able to provide information about them. At the same time, the survey format must be open for us to be able to apprehend learners’ new and unknown paths. The lack of such formats to date prompted us to develop this questionnaire specifically for this purpose. 3.5.1 Level of the pre-selection questionnaire

The objective of Part 1 of the pre-selection questionnaire was to select learners who already have experience with attending school and with language learning in their country of origin or another country. To this end, we designed both closed questions with tables with answers provided as well as open questions. Using the qualifying questions

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   59

(cf. Section 3.3), we verified whether the candidates had desired experience with school and languages. The qualifying questions could be answered with and unequivocal ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for all participating learners. As soon as it was established that a participant did not have previous experience with school or had already been enrolled in school in Germany in the first grade or did not have any experience learning a foreign language, the learner was eliminated from selection for the main data collection phase. The objective of Part 2 of the pre-selection questionnaire was to select learners who are able and motivated to describe their approach to problem solving. To this end, they were asked to solve cognitive tasks and explain their solution in a response. Using the questions (cf. Section 3.3), we verified whether the candidates had the ability to paraphrase and describe the content and also express this in writing. Since no standardized solutions are available with this approach, we had to verify whether the qualifying questions could be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for each response and for each associated explanation. For the first and second qualifying question, there is a certain amount of scope for interpretation. Thus, theoretically, some students’ solutions could be assessed as both suitable or unsuitable, depending on the individual perspective of the individual doing the assessment. In order to limit this scope in the assessment, at least to some extent, all of the students’ responses were evaluated by several researchers, with each individual performing the assessment receiving and introduction with sample responses from the pilot study. This meant that all of the selection results were confirmed by more than one person. 3.5.2 Level of the LAWA study/further surveys

In order to verify whether the pre-selection questionnaire served its purpose in terms of its intention, namely, to specifically select participants to study their existing competencies and experience with school, we need to consider the LAWA study as a whole. Based on the pre-selection questionnaire, 12 participants were selected who all took part in the main data collection phase. The analysis of the results showed that all 12 participants were both willing and able to use their capacity for description and reflection determined in the pre-selection questionnaire in the main surveys as well. Despite the learners’ rudimentary German skills, these skills permitted in-depth insights into their school-based and learning-related starting situation and their cognitive abilities in working with texts. Our use of the pre-selection questionnaire to select 12 learners who were able to provide us with important information does not mean that other participants who were not selected were not also able to do so. The pre-selection questionnaire cannot and is not intended to be used

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for analyzing linguistic competency. Instead, it is meant to demonstrate the interconnection between the ability to use language to paraphrase, of reflective capacities and of motivation and willingness to deal with questions and tasks, related to the learners who have already had experience with school and language learning prior to attending school in Germany. The selection of these 12 participants is not representative. For it to be representative, a statistical analysis would have to be conducted. However, the results show that creative and unconventional approaches can help to find participants who are willing and able to communicate more about their learning, their competencies for working with texts and about their language learning strategies. The specifics of this particularly heterogenic group of learners require a careful selection of the young people in order to approximate this group as a whole. In so doing, it is particularly important to view the individual learners carefully and with particular attention (see Norlund Shaswar, this volume). The pre-selection questionnaire serves as an approach for the first step in the process of developing didactic models for research, namely the step of selecting participants for investigating existing skills and starting conditions. The desired insights can be obtained only by using such in-depth, individualized survey formats. After all – and this is also true for other studies in this research area – the only way for us to learn more about the previous qualities of language learning is to systematically select the learners. The selection criteria may be related to language skills that cannot be represented by already defined formats for foreign language learning. For example, they may be related to language learning methods and approaches that evolve through the interaction of knowledge and competency areas of several languages. They may relate to language learning habits that develop individually and have become entrenched in the individual learner and are very difficult to change. To study this in greater detail and incorporate the findings into teaching methods, this first research-oriented step is also important for studies with larger test person populations that work with standardized tests or questionnaires in their main surveys. After all, in this context too, if we wish to describe participants’ language learning-related abilities, they also have to be willing and able to understand, respond to and explain the questions and tasks. In designing an appropriate instrument, taking a step back, namely by posing the questions Who are these learners? What can they tell us? How can they tell us? has proved to be a step that takes us forward. References Ahrenholz, B. and Maak, D. (2013) Zur Situation von Schülerinnen und Schülern mit nicht-deutscher Herkunftssprache in Thüringen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Seiteneinsteigern. Abschlussbericht zum Projekt „Mehrsprachigkeit an Thüringer

Studying the Learning of Immigrant Students with Limited German   61

Schulen (MaTS)’, durchgeführt im Auftrage des TMBWK. [On the situation of school students with non-German language of origin in Thuringia]. Jena: Friedrich-SchillerUniversität Jena. Baur, R.S. and Hufeisen, B. (eds) (2011) „Vieles ist sehr ähnlich“. Individuelle und gesellschaftliche Mehrsprachigkeit als bildungspolitische Aufgabe [“A great deal is similar”. Individual and social plurilingualism as a responsibility of educational policy]. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Berlin Institute for Population and Development (2014) Neue Potenziale. Zur Lage der Integration in Deutschland [New potential. On Germany’s integration situation]. See http://www.berlin-institut.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Neue_Potenziale/Neue_ Potenziale_online.pdf (accessed February 2018). Brizić, K. (2006) The secret life of languages. Origin-specific differences in L1/L2 acquisition by immigrant children. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (INJAL) 16 (3), 339–362. Brücker, H., Rother, N. and Schupp, N. (eds) (2018) IAB-BAMF-SOEP-Befragung von Geflüchteten 2016: Studiendesign, Feldergebnisse sowie Analysen zu schulischer wie beruflicher Qualifikation, Sprachkenntnissen sowie kognitiven Potenzialen. Forschungsbericht 30 [2018 IAB-BAMF-SOEP 2016 survey of refugees: Study design, field results and analyses on school-based and vocational training, language skills and cognitive potentials. Research report 30]. Nürnberg: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge. Budde, M.A. (2016) Sprachreflexion im Umgang mit Texten bei mehrsprachigen Lernenden [Multilingual learners’ language reflection when working with texts]. Der Deutschunterricht 6, 45–55. Byram, M. and Parmenter, L. (2012) The Common European Framework of Reference: The Globalization of Language Education Policy. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dechert, H. and Raupach, M. (eds) (1989) Transfer in Language Production. Norwood NJ: Ablex. Donahue, T. (2021) Linguistic and social diversity, literacy and access to higher education. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 21–39). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ezhova-Heer, I. (2011) Untersuchungen zur Förderung der Schreibkompetenz der zugewanderten Kinder und Jugendlichen aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion [Investigations on promoting writing skills of immigrant children and young people from the former Soviet Union]. In R.S. Baur and B. Hufeisen (eds) „Vieles ist sehr ähnlich.“ Individuelle und gesellschaftliche Mehrsprachigkeit als bildungspolitische Aufgabe [“There are a lot of similarities.” Individual and social multilingualism as a duty of educational policy”] (pp. 113–135). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Grießhaber, W. (2010) Schreiben in der Zweitsprache Deutsch [Writing in German as one’s second language]. Deutsch als Zweitsprache [German as a second language] (pp. 228– 238). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Hu, A. (2018) Plurilinguale Identitäten? Entwicklungen in der Theoriebildung und empirische Forschungsergebnisse zur Mehrsprachigkeit an Schulen [Plurilingual identities? Developments in theory development and empirical research results on plurilingualism in schools]. Language Education and Multilingualism LEM 1/2018, 66–84. Hufeisen, B. and Jessner, U. (2009) Learning and teaching multiple languages. In K. Knapp and B. Seidlhofer (eds) Handbook of foreign language communication and learning (pp. 109–137). Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (1998) Tertiärsprachen. Theorien, Modelle, Methoden [Tertiary languages. Theories, models, methods]. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Linguistik. Jessner, U., Malzer-Papp, E. and Allgäuer-Hackl, E. (2021) Paving a new way to literacy development in multilingual children: A DMM perspective. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren,

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A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 97–122). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Knapp, W. (1997) Schriftliches Erzählen in der Zweitsprache. [Producing written narratives in one’s second language]. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Marx, N. (2004) Forschungsmethoden zur Mehrsprachigkeit und zum multiplen Spracherwerb [Research methods on plurilingualism and multiple language acquisition]. In B. Hufeisen & N. Marx (eds) Beim Schwedischlernen sind Englisch und Deutsch ganz hilfsvoll. L3-Spezifika 1993 und Forschungen zum multiplen Spracherwerb im Jahre 2002 [English and German are quite helpful for learning Swedish. L3 specifics in 1993 and research on multiple language acquisition in 2002] (pp. 97–121). Forum Angewandte Linguistik (FaL), 44, Berlin, New York et al: Peter Lang. Norlund Shaswar, A. (2021) ‘I should really interpret word by word for you’: Researcher, interpreter, and interviewee negotiating roles, responsibilities, and meanings in two multilingual literacy research interviews. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 63–94). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Portmann-Tselikas, P.R. and Schmölzer-Ebinger, S. (eds) (2002) Textkompetenz [Textual competence]. Innsbruck et al.: Studienverlag. Prüsmann, F. (2016) Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: SeiteneinsteigerInnen und ihre kognitiven Fähigkeiten bei der Textarbeit – das LAWA-Projekt [A look behind the scenes: Students entering the German school system from another country and their cognitive capacities during work with texts – the LAWA project]. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht 21(2), 57–67. See http://tujournals.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/ index.php/zif/ (accessed February 2018). Rinnert, C. and Kobayashi, H. (2016) Multicompetence and multilingual writing. In R.M. Manchón and P.K. Matsuda (eds) Handbook of Second and Foreign Language Writing (pp. 365–386). New York: de Gruyter. Schiefele, U., Artelt, C., Schneider, W. and Stanat, P. (eds) (2004) Struktur, Entwicklung und Förderung von Lesekompetenz: Vertiefende Analysen im Rahmen von PISA 2000 [Structure, development and promotion of reading skills: In-depth analyses in the framework of PISA 2000]. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Schmidt-Atzert, L. and Amelang, M. (2012) Psychologische Diagnostik [Psychological diagnostic testing]. Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer. Sharwood Smith, M. and Kellerman, E. (1986) Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition: An introduction. In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 1–9). New York: Pergamon Press. Shohamy, E. (2006) Language Policies: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches. London: Routledge. Stavans, A., Eden, M.T., Azar, L. (2021) Multilingual literacy: The use of emojis in written communication. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 233–259). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Trautmann, T. (2010) Interviews mit Kindern. Grundlagen, Techniken, Besonderheiten, Beispiele [Interviewing children. Principles, techniques, special features, examples]. Wiesbaden: Verlag der Sozialwissenschaften. Trim, J.L.M., Quetz, J., Schieß, R. and Schneider, G. (eds) (2001) Gemeinsamer europäischer Referenzrahmen für Sprachen. Lernen, lehren, beurteilen; Niveau A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 [Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Learn, teach, assess; Levels A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2]. Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes; Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany; Austria. Berlin: Langenscheidt. Ziegler, M. and Bühner, M. (2012) Grundlagen der Psychologischen Diagnostik [Principles of psychological diagnostic testing]. Wiesbaden: Verlag der Sozialwissenschaften.

4 ‘I Should Really Interpret Word by Word for You’: Researcher, Interpreter and Interviewee Negotiating Roles, Responsibilities and Meanings in Two Multilingual Literacy Research Interviews Annika Norlund Shaswar

Interpreters’ roles and responsibilities in multilingual research is a theme that has attracted attention in literacy studies and beyond. Several researchers have recommended that interpreters should be involved as co-researchers given their central position in co-constructing meaning. However, the complexities of involving interpreters as co-researchers in multilingual literacy research need to be explored. This chapter aims to give such a contribution with a focus on small-scale multilingual literacy research, starting from a study on multilingual and digital literacy practices of adult immigrants in Sweden. The following questions are discussed: (1) How are the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter negotiated in the interview excerpts, how do these roles and responsibilities affect the construction of meaning and how can they be conceptualised? (2) What possibilities are there for involving the interpreter as a coresearcher in smaller multilingual literacy studies with limited funding? 63

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In the exploration of the interpreter’s roles and responsibilities in the interview extracts, Goffman’s participation framework is used. The analysis shows how the interpreter is actively co-constructing interview data together with the researcher and interviewee and how misunderstandings in the interaction have a detrimental influence on the researcher’s possibilities for understanding the literacy practices of the interviewee. 4.1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the roles and responsibilities of interpreters in multilingual literacy research interviews, and it explores the conceptualisation of the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter and his or her involvement in the co-construction of meaning in the interviews. An aim is also to contribute viable solutions for involving an interpreter as a co-researcher in small-scale studies in multilingual research and beyond where the budget is limited. The data explored in the chapter consist of excerpts from two multilingual cross-­ cultural research interviews where an interpreter was brought in as a mediator because the interviewee and the researcher did not speak the same language. The interviews were performed in the context of a small study on digital literacy practices in multilingual contexts in everyday life and in the educational domain of Swedish for immigrants (Svenska för invandrare, SFI). From now on, the study will be referred to as the DigiPrac study (Digital literacy practices study). SFI is a language programme that aims to provide basic knowledge of Swedish to adult immigrants living in Sweden. The DigiPrac study focuses on adult second-language learners who lack or have very limited formal schooling. The purpose of the study is to determine how multilingual and digital literacy practices in the everyday lives of adult second-language learners can be mobilised in order to enhance their second language and literacy learning in the educational domain of SFI (cf. Jessner et al., this volume). Data collection consists of a combination of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with learners as well as teachers. In order to analyse the consequences of the interpreter’s involvement in the research process, I have selected interview excerpts where the interaction between interviewee, interpreter and researcher is somehow problematic, e.g. in that it results in misunderstandings. The exploration of miscommunication and misunderstandings in these interviews can hopefully be of use foremost for researchers who are researching multilingual literacy, but also in studies of other themes in multilingual cross-cultural contexts. I also discuss and problematise implications for literacy research of the notion of the interpreter as a co-researcher in a

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cross-cultural research study. The aim of this chapter is thus to answer the following questions: (1) How are the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter negotiated in the interview excerpts, how do these roles and responsibilities affect the construction of meaning and how can they be conceptualised? (2) What possibilities are there for involving the interpreter as a coresearcher in smaller multilingual literacy studies with limited funding? 4.2 Background of the Study and the Interview Data

In Section 4.2, I describe the research basis of the DigiPrac study, present the context of the two interviews, give a summary of the interactions in the interviews, and provide an analysis of the interviewee’s understanding of the interview situation. The background description has two aims. First, it is meant to give the reader an insight into factors influencing the interaction and the negotiation of roles between all three participants in the interviews. Second, it aims to give the reader an idea of how the actions and decisions made by the researcher and the interviewee affect the interpreter’s actions in the interviews. 4.2.1 Research basis of the Digital Literacy practices study

The overarching aim of the DigiPrac study is to research the flows, overlaps, and contrasts between multilingual and digital literacy practices in adult second-language learners’ everyday lives and their literacy practices in the educational domain of SFI. As mentioned above, this educational domain provides second language education in Swedish (including instruction in speaking, reading and writing in Swedish) for adult immigrants living in Sweden. SFI also provides basic literacy education for those adult immigrants who are not yet functionally literate even in their native language (SNAE, 2018). The learners who participate in the DigiPrac study are taking part in this basic literacy education. The DigiPrac study explores the learners’ digital literacy practices in multilingual contexts in their everyday lives, including their life course to date, in their present life and in their imagined future. It also explores their literacy practices in their basic literacy education in SFI. Further, the study researches the teachers’ digital literacy practices associated with the teaching. The study has a focus on multilingual perspectives, and it is interested in the full range of the participants’ linguistic repertoire (see, for example, García & Li Wei, 2014; Paulsrud et al., 2017). Thus, their linguistic repertoire is seen as a resource that not only

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offers possibilities for their learning of Swedish, but also is fundamental for their ongoing identity construction (cf. Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). In the study, the understandings of literacy are influenced by the research fields of New Literacy Studies (Barton, 2007) and Critical Literacy (Janks, 2010) and by a meeting of the fields of socioculturally grounded literacy research and research on translanguaging (Donahue, this volume; Hornberger & Link, 2012). Literacy is seen as closely linked to power. Basic literacy education has the potential of empowering students by giving them access to critical literacy (Franker, 2011). Central concepts in the study are literacy practice, multilingual literacy practice and digital literacy practice. The concept of literacy practice denotes the habits, attitudes and common reading and writing patterns connected to certain situations (Barton & Hamilton, 1998: 6; Barton & Hamilton, 2000: 7; Hamilton, 2000: 16; Street, 1993: 12). Multilingual literacy practice, following Hornberger’s definition of biliteracy, refers to ‘any and all instances in which communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing’ (Hornberger, 1990: 213). Digital literacy practices denotes literacy practices where the participants are using digital literacies (Gilhooly & Lee, 2014: 389). The data collection of the DigiPrac study is based on ethnography. Participants in the study are two SFI teachers situated at two different SFI schools and the groups of second-language learners they are teaching. The interviews with learners and teachers focus on the literacy events observed in the classrooms as well as on the learners’ everyday literacy practices outside of the classroom. The interviews are recorded, and field notes are taken.

4.2.2 Data explored in this chapter

In the two interviews in focus in this chapter, the following three persons were interacting: a male Iranian interpreter, whom I will call Reza, a male Afghan SFI student, whom I will refer to as Qais, and me, a female Swedish researcher. Before the interviews, I had visited Qais’ class and informed him and the other students about the study. Due to limitations in the project budget I could not bring interpreters in all the students’ languages. I had brought interpreters in Somali and Arabic, but not in Persian, so the information I gave to Qais was in Swedish. Qais gave his written consent to participate in classroom observations and interviews. I booked the interpreter through a translation and interpreting agency, and I requested an authorised interpreter with experience of performing interpretation in qualitative research interviews. However,

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they could not offer me an authorised interpreter in Persian. I also gave the agency the information that the interview would be recorded so that the interpreter would be prepared for this. Qais’ mother tongue is Dari, but he is also fluent in Persian because he has lived in Iran. In addition, he speaks and understands some Swedish and a little English. In the interviews, he sometimes understood my questions, which were posed in Swedish, before Reza had translated them into Persian. On these occasions he sometimes answered in Swedish and sometimes in Persian. Reza interacted in Swedish as well as Persian in the interviews while I interacted exclusively in my mother tongue of Swedish. I do not speak Persian but understand some words of the language because I am fluent in the Kurdish language Sorani, an Iranian language that is related to Persian. I initiated the first interview with Qais ten minutes after I had finished an interview with one of his classmates, Alia. For both of the two interviews I had booked Reza for one hour. Before we commenced the interview, I had planned to give the interpreter a little time to read the interview guide and the information letter with information about the purpose and methods of the study. However, Alia arrived a little early, only a few minutes after Reza had arrived, so we had very little time. He devoted a few minutes to reading the information letter. He also hastily glanced through the interview guide, commenting that he was used to these kinds of interviews. I explained to him that I was not going to follow the interview guide strictly but maybe change the order of questions and ask further questions depending on the answers of the interviewee. During the process of transcribing and analysing the interviews, I have to an increasing extent understood how the interpreter’s roles and actions in the interviews affected the whole interview situation. I have realised that I should have devoted more time to meetings with the interpreter before the interviews. More on these reflections will be given in the discussion section. The first interview with Qais took place in an empty classroom in the school in which the SFI classes were held. During the interview we sat at a round table. I was facing Qais, and Reza was sitting to our side. I suggested this seating arrangement in order to improve the contact between myself and the interviewee during the interview. Reza objected that he as an interpreter ought to sit facing the client, but he accepted the arrangement that I wanted. The second interview with Qais was performed two and a half months after the first interview. Because the second interview was booked on a short notice, I had either to accept Reza – who was the only the available Persian-speaking interpreter – or cancel the interview. This interview also took place at the SFI school, but instead of sitting in a classroom we used an empty office. We had the same seating

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arrangements as in the first interview, with me and Qais facing each other and Reza sitting to one side. 4.2.3 Summary of the interactions in the interviews

In the beginning of the first interview, the interaction between Qais and me was somewhat hesitant, and during the first half of the interview the tension increased. One reason for the growing tension was that I initiated the interview by asking Qais background questions about his life in Afghanistan, not knowing that these questions touched on themes that were painful to him, for example, that he had not been allowed to go to school and that his wife and children had still not arrived in Sweden. The strained interaction also seemed partly to be caused by Qais’ earlier negative experiences of interview situations and partly by a serious misunderstanding that originated in the interaction between him, me and Reza. When the first half of the first interview had been conducted, Qais was angry and frustrated, and for a while I feared that he was going to withdraw his participation in the interview. But the atmosphere changed when I told him that I was impressed that he had learned to read and write in Swedish and in Persian in spite of his difficult circumstances. After this, Qais seemed to relax and the interview was finished in an unstrained atmosphere. In the second interview, the atmosphere was for a number of different reasons considerably more relaxed. One reason was that before the second interview I had performed observations in Qais’ classroom. This meant that we had met on a number of occasions. Having performed the classroom observation also meant that in the second interview I could pose questions about the literacy practices that I had seen Qais take part in. Consequently, we had some shared experiences, and this facilitated our interaction. Already having been interviewed by me once also meant that he knew what to expect from the situation. The interaction in the second interview was also facilitated by the fact that Qais had brought his iPad so that our conversation about the literacy practices where he used this digital artefact were more concrete and apprehensible. Further, in the second interview I knew which subjects were sensitive to Qais so that I could avoid them. 4.2.4 The interviewee’s understanding of the interview situation

The relation between the researcher and the interviewee influences the interpreter’s task in the interview. Here are two examples of the tension in the relation between me and Qais in the beginning of the first interview. Before I initiated the first interview with Qais, I asked him if I could audio record our interaction. He wanted me to explain the

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reason for my request, and he also wanted me to tell him about the research study. After these explanations, he still seemed hesitant to let me audio record the interview and said that he did not know if this was going to affect him in some way. Reza told him that the audio recording was not going to cause him any trouble, and then Qais consented. Halfway into the interview, I realised that a reason for Qais’ hesitation to let me audio record was his experiences of being interviewed by Swedish officials (See the first interview excerpt in Section 4.2). In addition to being asked questions by officials at the employment agency and the municipality, he had also been interviewed by the Swedish Migration Agency. His application for asylum had been refused a number of times, but now he had finally received a residence permit. In all these earlier situations, he had been in a vulnerable and exposed position and had not received any help. Accordingly, Qais saw close parallels between me and other Swedish persons who asked inquisitive questions about his background but who were not interested in helping him with his problems. A second situation where the power asymmetry played out was when I asked him about how he learned to use a mobile phone. As mentioned earlier, when he grew up in Afghanistan Qais was not given the possibility to go to school and to learn how to read and write. This put him at risk of being stigmatised. The interviews I performed with Qais made clear to me how important it is to be careful when asking questions about literacy practices to a person in such an insecure position. His reaction to my question about learning to use a mobile phone is an example of this. For this chapter, I have translated the interview excerpts into English. Interactions in Persian are presented in bold and italics, while interactions in Swedish are in normal type. A: Did you think that it was easy to learn to use it or was it difficult? R: Do you believe utilising or using it was difficult or easy? Q: ( Sounds angry) It was very difficult for me who hasn’t been to school, who doesn’t know much, who doesn’t know the language, it goes without saying that it’s difficult! R: For me as an illiterate, it was of course. Q: I t is a strange question that she is asking me! I ask her if she has been to school or not and if it is difficult for her, it goes without saying that it is difficult!

Qais lacked an understanding of the purpose of the research process, he and I had different cultural backgrounds, and in the first interview I had asked questions that touched on his painful experiences of not being given the possibility to go to school. To him, my question of whether it was easy or difficult to learn how to use a mobile phone was strange.

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4.2.5 Methods of data analysis

As mentioned previously, the languages spoken in the interviews were Persian and Swedish. I first transcribed the parts of the interviews that consisted of interactions in Swedish. Next, I selected a section of the audio recording of the first interview that I found especially interesting with respect to the negotiation of roles and the construction of meaning. I sent this section to a translation agency in order to have the interpreter’s and interviewee’s interaction in Persian translated into Swedish. In the analysis of the interview excerpts, I have applied Goffman’s (1981: 128) concept of ‘footing’. By footing, Goffman refers to the changing alignments or stances of speakers and listeners in situated social interactions (1981: 127). In changing footing, a participant goes from one mode of speaking and listening to another, showing herself or himself to be more or less responsible for ‘the content and progression of current interaction’ (Wadensjö, 2004: 113). Participation status is, in Wadensjö’s (2015: 301) interpretation, not only an analytical tool of use for the researcher, but also an asset accessible to interacting participants. Consequently, in a multilingual research interview, an interpreter can utilise different, and constantly changing, orientations in relation to the researcher and the interviewee and to the utterances produced in the interaction. This variation of footing implies that the interpreter is sometimes more and sometimes less responsible for ‘the content and progression of current interaction’ (Wadensjö, 2004: 113). A speaker can act as an animator, with little responsibility for the interaction, taking the role of ‘the talking machine, a body engaged in acoustic activity, or, if you will, an individual active in the role of utterance production’ (Goffman, 1981: 144). In this situation, the animator is only reporting what somebody else has said (Goffman, 1981: 151). A speaker can also take on a greater responsibility for the interaction by behaving as an author, ‘that is, someone who has selected the sentiments that are being expressed and the words in which they are encoded’ (Goffman, 1981: 144). The third option of the speaker is to act as a principal, ‘that is, someone whose position is established by the words that are spoken, someone whose beliefs have been told, someone who is committed to what the words say’ (Goffman, 1981: 244). Together the concepts of animator, author, and principal inform us of the ‘production format’ of what is uttered (Goffman, 1981: 145). In the analysis of Reza’s changing footing in the interviews, I have looked for moments in which he changes from reporting what Qais or I say to saying something himself. The linguistic aspect that initially guided me in this search was Reza’s variation in use of first or thirdperson pronouns in his translations. I have also in the analysis applied Goffman’s (2003) concept of face, which refers to ‘the positive social value a person effectively claims

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for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact’ (Goffman 2003: 7). Participants in an interaction can perform face-saving actions to save either the face of themselves or the person they are interacting with. 4.3 Background

In Section 4.3 I give a theoretical background that will set the scene for the exploration of the interview extracts in Section 4.4. 4.3.1 Epistemological and methodological questions in multilingual cross-cultural research

The use of interpreters in research interviews is common in multilingual cross-cultural research studies in various fields. Fifteen years ago, the methodological and epistemological implications of using interpreters in cross-cultural research was still given little attention by researchers (Shah, 2004: 550; Temple, 2002: 844; Temple & Edwards, 2002: 2). There was an abundance of technical advice on how to select and use an interpreter, but with a few exceptions (Edwards, 1998; Temple, 1997, 1999, 2002) there was little theoretical reflection on how interpreters influence the production and interpretation of data. This invisibility of interpreters in multilingual cross-cultural research contrasted with the increased reflexivity concerning the researchers’ own influence on the process and product of research. It was also in contrast to the development in translation studies where the role of the translator in the research process was in focus. Today, however, these questions have attracted attention by a small but growing number of researchers in different fields such as education research (Andrews, 2013), health research (Björk Brämberg & Dahlberg, 2013; Kokanovic & Furler, 2009; Temple, 2002), social psychiatry (Ingvarsdotter et al., 2010), sociology (Bradby, 2002), geography (Caretta, 2015) and anthropology (Borchgrevink, 2003). Because research paradigms are complex and extensive, numerous methodological and epistemological questions are addressed in these multilingual cross-cultural studies. However, some of the questions vary along a continuum where one terminal point is aligned to the research paradigm that is sometimes labelled as positivism. In this paradigm, interpreters are seen as a neutral and passive transmitters of messages produced by researchers and interviewees: ‘The interpreter is a conduit linking the interviewer with the interviewee and ideally is a neutral party who should not add or subtract from what the primary parties communicate to each other’ (Freed, 1988: 316). From this perspective, translation is an unproblematic process in the sense that there can

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be only one correct version of its end product. This means that the translation is either correctly or incorrectly carried out. At the other end of the continuum is the paradigm called social construction, and this is represented by researchers who follow the ‘reflexive turn’ in social research (e.g. Atkinson, 1990; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; Holstein & Gubrium, 1995; Stanley & Wise, 1983, 1993; van Maanen, 2011) and who call into question the traditional view of conducting research as a value-free process (Temple & Edwards, 2002: 5). Advocates of this paradigm contend that researchers, and consequently also interpreters, actively produce knowledge (Temple, 2002: 845). Understanding is seen as ‘an act of construction and creation’ (Maclean, 2007: 786). The notion that the interpreter together with the interviewee and the researcher form ‘a communicative pas-de-trois’ (Wadensjö, 2011: 14) belongs to this paradigm. From this perspective, researchers in multilingual interviews shape their understanding of the explored phenomena in a triadic process where the interpreter and the interviewee are also actively taking part (Andrews, 2013: 319; Wadensjö, 2004). In the discussion of methodological and epistemological questions, the power asymmetry in interviews has also attracted critical attention in multilingual cross-cultural research. Caretta (2015: 490) has described the relation between interviewee and researcher as ‘power-loaded’. In the research process, the researcher controls the production, analysis, and dissemination of the data. These processes are associated with a position of control over the interviewee. The Western researcher’s social knowledge has been the starting point of research, excluding the perspectives of the interviewee (Maclean, 2007: 786). 4.3.2 Roles and responsibilities of the interpreter

Parallel to and coexisting with the diverse perspectives on the epistemological and methodological questions described above, there are also different views on the role of the interpreter in multilingual research interviews (Ingvarsdotter et al., 2010: 35). On the one hand, there are researchers who strive to stay in full control during multilingual interviews and who see the interpreter as a neutral tool that acts as a ‘passive interface between subject and interpreter’ (Ingvarsdotter et al., 2010: 35). In such interviews the interpreter is instructed to translate verbatim. On the other hand, there are researchers who invite the interpreter to take the lead role in the interviews. Andrews (2013: 321), for example, made the decision to let the interpreter take a dominant role in the research interviews of her study. Accordingly, the interviews consisted of direct interaction between interpreter and interviewee. Many researchers place themselves somewhere on the continuum between these two extremes. However, they might find one of the terminal points more favourable than the other.

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4.3.2.1 The interpreter as translator of language and culture

Matters concerning linguistic interpretation in interviews are seen in qualitative research as intermingled with and interdependent on intercultural negotiations (Andrews, 2013: 319; Shah, 2004: 5, 52). Differences in cultural background between the research participants are believed to affect the interview situation, analysis of data, and research outcomes (Shah, 2004: 552, 558). The complexity of performing interviews is underlined by numerous researchers. A large number of interacting parameters are brought up, such as ethnicity, race, social status, age, personal experience, and gender (Burgess, 1991: 105; Mirza, 1995; Stanley & Wise, 2013), background, identity, (Foster, 1994; Mac an Ghaill, 1989), religion (Basit, 1997; Bhatti, 1995; Jacobson, 1998; Modood, 1997) and social class (Marshall & Rossman, 1989). In a multilingual cross-cultural research context, it is possible that these factors will be viewed and understood differently by the interacting parties, thus resulting in an even more complex interview situation. There might, for example, be differences regarding the norms and habits of speaking and behaving depending on parameters such as the age, gender, education, and social background of the interacting parties (Shah, 2004: 553). This increased complexity means that the researcher performing multilingual cross-cultural interviewing needs, in Andrews’ (2013: 320) words, ‘additional critical awareness’ in matters concerning culture (see also Bradby, 2002: 843; Kamler & Threadgold, 2003). In multilingual cross-cultural research interviews, the interpreter has been described as performing different ‘translation’ activities (Andrews, 2013: 323), taking the role of a mediator. In such activities, the linguistic and cultural aspects of translation are intermingled, for example, in the act of rephrasing interview questions based on the knowledge of the interviewee’s cultural background. In the position as a mediator, the interpreter’s translation of culture in multilingual cross-cultural research includes negotiating and mediating meaning (Andrews, 2013: 323–325). Temple (2002: 846) argues that in the process of producing an oral translation, interpreters translate from their own view on the world. Producing a translation is then understood as an active process rather than a transmission of a message from one language to another. When selection criteria are discussed for how to choose an interpreter for multilingual cross-cultural research interviews, a common piece of advice is to choose a person who has the same cultural background as the interviewee (e.g. Björk Brämberg & Dahlberg, 2013: 242). This advice is based on the view that a symbiotic relationship exists between language and social experience. Against this view, other researchers contend that the interpreter’s outlook on the matters researched in the interview cannot be extrapolated from his or her linguistic abilities and cultural background (Temple, 2002: 847). Neither is abilities in a specific language from this critical perspective equivalent to proficiency

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in acting as a cultural mediator (Temple, 2002: 851). In the process of constructing meaning, speakers of the same language can make different interpretations (Maclean, 2007: 786). 4.3.2.2 The interpreter as responsible for discourse management and translation

Wadensjö (2004, 2015: 116) pursues the line that in bi- or multilingual interactions, dialogue interpreters have two tasks: (i) discourse management, i.e. managing the organisation of the interaction, and (ii) translation of the interaction. The first task, discourse management, she describes as aiding the participants in co-ordinating their turn-­ ­ taking in the interpreted interaction (Wadensjö, 2015: 116). In performing discourse management, the interpreters’ activities can be ‘implicit’ or ‘explicit’ (Wadensjö, 2015: 117). There are two forms of ‘explicit coordinating moves’ – text oriented and interaction oriented. These moves are manifestly performed in order to coordinate the talk of the participants in the multilingual interaction. Explicit coordinating moves c­ onstitute different sorts of petitions (e.g. for orderly turn taking, clarification or for time to translate), meta-comments (on linguistic or other aspects) and requests to start or go on talking. The interpreter makes implicit coordinating moves, for example, by taking practically every second turn at talking, thus influencing the content and progression of the interaction by including or excluding different aspects (Wadensjö, 2015: 116). The second task of the interpreter, the ‘interpreting/translating’, results in different types of ‘renditions’. Wadensjö (2004: 107) also points out that the task of performing translation is usually dependent on the social organisation of the interaction and vice versa. Consequently the two tasks of discourse management and translation of content intermingle and are ‘mutually compatible’ (Wadensjö, 2015: 116) in the actions of the interpreter during bi- and multilingual engagements. 4.3.2.3 The interpreter as co-researcher

In multilingual cross-cultural studies belonging to the ‘reflexive turn’, it is argued that interpreters should be involved in the research as co-researchers (Andrews, 2013: 317; Bradby, 2002: 852; Temple & Edwards, 2002: 6). Temple and Edwards (2002: 3–6) contend that because interpreters are of critical importance to the end product of research, it is necessary that they have an actively participative and visible role in the research process. Interpreters, in the same way as researchers, have their own perspectives and opinions on the matters and themes treated in research interviews. Consequently, the research ‘becomes subject to “triple subjectivity” (by the interactions between research participant, researcher and interpreter)’ (Temple & Edwards,

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2002: 6). Temple and Edwards argue that the complexities of this three-way interaction require a search into the interpreter’s social location. In order to fully involve the interpreter in the study, the researcher needs to explain those theoretical concepts that the research interviews depart from (Bradby, 2002: 852). However, in addition to informing the interpreter of the theoretical framework of the research, reflexivity concerning the views of the interpreter on the themes of the research is also needed (Andrews, 2013; Temple & Edwards, 2002). A method worked out by Edwards involves treating the interpreter as an active participant in the study and as a ‘key informant’ (Temple & Edwards, 2002: 6). Edwards, in a similar way, performs interviews with the interpreter in order to make her or his social and political position more visible. Thus the researcher can reflect on how the interpreter’s views might influence the knowledge production of the study. It has also been pointed out that a factor affecting the interpreter is the risk of an increased experience of anxiety associated with cross-cultural interviews. When interviewer and interviewee are of different cultural backgrounds, they do not know what to expect in the interview situation and can experience ‘unpredictability, helplessness, a threat to self-esteem and a general feeling of “walking on ice” – all of which are stress producing and hamper understanding’ (Shah, 2004: 564). It has been described as probable that the highest degree of anxiety will be found in the interviewee because he or she knows less about the research process. In an interview situation where the interviewee experiences being marginalised – as being put in a sensitive or vulnerable position – he or she is likely to withhold information (Shah, 2004: 566). An especially vulnerable position is associated with being an adult immigrant who is not yet able to read and write because a lack of literacy skills is in many societies associated with underdevelopment, disease, poverty and lack of intelligence and knowledge (Wedin, 2004: 9; 2010: 50). To my knowledge this specific group of interviewees has not attracted much attention in methodological and theoretical reflections in multilingual cross-cultural research. Further, the complexities of mapping the views and perspectives of the interpreter have not been given sufficient attention in research on literacy in multilingual contexts. It is especially difficult to get a view of fundamental values, such as outlook on people, that affect the way the interpreter will interact with the interviewee. Will the interpreter show the interviewee respect in the interview situation? What are the options for smaller research studies where employing a multilingual co-researcher for the whole research project is not within budgetary limits? These are questions that will be addressed below in the analysis of the interview extracts.

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4.4 Results: Negotiation of Roles and Responsibilities in the Interviews

Next, I will explore extracts from the two transcribed interviews. I have ordered the extracts into the two roles of interpreters described by Wadensjö (2004, 2015): (i) translating the interaction and (ii) managing the organisation of interaction. However, as will be seen in the exploration of the interview extracts, these two roles are intermingled in the interpreter’s actions. The analysis of the extracts focuses on different roles and responsibilities that the interpreter takes on in the interviews and how these roles are negotiated and constructed in the interaction between all three participants. The central tool for analysing the interview extracts is Goffman’s (1981) concept of ‘footing’ and the changing stances of speakers and listeners. 4.4.1 Translating the interaction

Two interview extracts are explored in this section in order to illustrate how Reza’s role of translating the interaction is negotiated and performed and how construction of meaning is affected by this. First, I turn to an excerpt from the first interview where I asked Qais about his life in Afghanistan. I was interested in his experiences of literacy practices before he immigrated to Sweden and wanted to find out if there were occasions when not being able to read and write became a problem for him. In order to illustrate the complexity added by the multilingual interaction, this excerpt is presented in the original languages as well in the English translation. A: Men jag menar när du skulle (paus) I vardagslivet, alltså, behövde du läsa för att göra olika saker? När du skulle (paus) I di (paus) Var det situationer där du behövde läsa och det blev ett problem att du inte kunde det?

‫ میگوید موقعیتت اینطوری بود که احتیاج داشتی‬:R ‫درس بخوانی‬ A: Eller gick det bra ändå? ‫اما یکطوری شد که نتوانستی بخوانی خودش هم نمی‬:R ‫داند چی می خواهد بگوید‬

A: But I mean, when you were going to (pause) In everyday life, you know, did you need to read to do different things? When you were going to (pause) In your (pause) Were there situations where you needed to read and it was a problem that you couldn’t? R: She says: was it that you were in a situation where you needed to go to school A: Or was it all right anyway? R: But then something ­happened so that you couldn’t? She doesn’t know herself what it is that she wants to say.

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A: Eller var det andra som kunde hjälpa dig? ‫ اصال اصال اصال آنجا که آن زمانی که ما بودیم‬:Q ‫اصال طالب و اینها موقعیت به آدم به شخصا به ما‬ ‫نمیداد به ما که مردم هزاره هستیم‬ R: Ja men det var när vi var där alltså, situationen var så att vi fick inte chansen läsa eller gå i skolan på grund av ­talibanerna var där. Faktiskt. A: Nej jag förstår det. Jag förstår det. Det förstår jag. R: Vi var Hazara.

A: Or were there others who could help you? Q: (Sounds angry) Well well during the time we were there, the Talibans did not give us the Hazara people any chances at all. R: Yes, but it was when we were there, you know the ­situation was such that we did not get the chance to study or go to school because the Taliban were there. Actually. A: No, I understand that. I understand that. That I understand. R: We were Hazara.

The large number of re-starts and unfinished sentences in my first turn in the extract shows that I sensed that Qais was hesitant and reluctant in relation to my questions and that I found it difficult to formulate the questions in such a way that he would understand them and not be upset by them. The difficulties in communication between me and Qais were added to when Reza in his first turn translated my question of situations in everyday life where Qais needed to ‘läsa’, (i.e. read) and used ‫( درس بخوانی‬i.e. go to school or study). Here Reza’s act of translating the interaction had two consequences. First, my question of everyday situations when Qais needed to read, did not reach Qais. Second, a consequence of Reza’s translation was that Qais seemed to believe that I questioned why he had not gone to school. As mentioned above, he had painful memories of being deprived of the possibility to go to school and to learn to read and write when he grew up in Afghanistan. In addition, he had previous negative experiences of being interviewed in Sweden. Therefore, he was on his guard during the interview. He seemed to feel that he needed to defend himself against implicit accusations from me and sounded angry when he answered my questions. An additional complication in the interaction represented in the interview extract was Reza’s negative judgment of my questions and the way I asked them. This judgment he expressed in his turn ‘But then something happened so that you couldn’t? She doesn’t know herself what it is that she wants to say’. In the first sentence in this turn he took the stance of an animator who translated my question from Swedish into Persian. However, in the middle of the turn, Reza changed footing and took the stance of a principal who was himself responsible for the content of his utterance in relation to Qais. My interpretation is that by expressing his opinion Reza allied with Qais against me. The role

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that he took on can be described as defending Qais against what he saw as implicit criticism from me. It is possible that if I had explained more clearly to Reza before the interview that I was interested in the interviewee’s everyday literacy practices, Reza would have understood the purpose of my question and would not have allied against me like this at this point in the interview. Consequently, I and Qais had different views on the interview situation here, and these views were partly based on our cultural backgrounds and very different experiences and conceptualisations of literacy. My intention was not to ask about Qais’ lack of schooling but to find out about his experiences of literacy in everyday contexts. This interest started out from my view on literacy as socially and culturally based, which is why Qais’ earlier experiences of literacy were of interest to me. In this situation, when the intercultural differences between me and Qais made the interaction difficult, a cultural translator would have been needed. However, here Reza did not take the role of a translator of culture. Instead of bridging over the cultural distance between me and Qais, he widened it. This widened distance between me and Qais here affected the interview in the sense that my chances of exploring Qais’ experiences of dealing with multilingual literacy in his everyday life were diminished. Since Reza’s comment ‘She doesn’t know herself what it is that she wants to say’ was expressed in Persian I neither took any notice of nor understood what he said until nine months after the interview when I had had the interaction in this section of the interview translated from Persian into Swedish. Consequently, during the interview I did not react to the comment and there was no explicit negotiation between me, Reza, and Qais during the interview concerning the role Reza took by expressing his personal opinion. In the second interview, the interpreter’s role as a translator and cultural mediator was, in contrast to the first interview, openly negotiated. An example of such a negotiation can be seen in the interview extract below. We were discussing SFI lessons taking place in the so-called Language laboratory of the SFI school. In this room there were computers, books, newspapers, magazines, etc. I asked Qais if he and his classmates could make their own decisions on what to work with during the lessons in the Language laboratory. Qais answered that the teacher decided and that the students could not decide for themselves. In my next question to Qais, I asked if he thought that it was good that the teacher decided. From Qais’ answers to my questions, Reza drew the conclusion that I and Qais had different views on the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students. Therefore, he drew my attention to these differences: R: Yes, mmm, yes, well I apologise, but you know the question was a bit strange, you know. Of course

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A: Mmm. R: when you are in the classroom it is the teacher who A: Mmm. R: who decides. How you should do, but, eh (pause) okay. Q: IfR: H  e doesn’t understand, you know, how you think, you know. A: Yes, but I think no. Q: No. R: I know, you know, you can also decide A: Mmm (undistinguishable) Yes, but it is, you can think differently there. R: Yes, yes. Q: Mmm. R: Okay. It is it as I said, sometimes it might get a little strange (undistinguishable) A: Yes but that’s not a p … You know, you can just say what he says and that is fine. (pause) Mmm. Eh. (pause) Because I want, yes, I just want to know so.

In the first part of the interaction in this excerpt, Reza acted as an animator, voicing Qais’ view on the responsibilities of teachers and learners. However, in his next turn Reza changed footing and said, ‘He doesn’t understand, you know, how you think, you know’. Here he talked as an author or a principal, formulating his own view that Qais was unable to understand my perspective on teaching and learning. In taking the stance of an author or a principal, Reza seemed to align himself with me, the researcher, and my study. Connected to Reza’s changing of footing is his performance of an explicit coordinating move concerning the interaction in the interview, and in a larger perspective he initiated a negotiation of what research is and what the roles of interviewee, interpreter and researcher should be. An open negotiation of our roles followed between me and Reza. The understanding of the responsibilities of teachers and students is, from a sociocultural perspective on literacy, of considerable importance to the understanding of the literacy practices that take place in a specific educational context. In this sense, Reza brings to the fore differences between the perspectives of me and Qais that are of significance to the construction of meaning in the interview. However, Reza’s comment, in the presence of Qais, that Qais does not understand how I think, is problematic because it is face threatening (cf. Goffman, 2003) to Qais. In order to make the situation less threatening to him, I take two actions. Firstly, I say that ‘you can think differently there’ in order to open up for different views on the responsibilities of teachers and learners. Secondly, in my last turn in this excerpt, I ask Reza to ‘just say what he says’, i.e. to

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translate without making comments. My rationale for this request was that I wished to avoid situations that were face threatening to Qais. 4.4.2 Managing the organisation of the interaction

In this section, I explore interview extracts where the interpreter manages the organisation of the interactions in the interviews. I analyse how his actions are negotiated in the interview extracts and what consequences they have for the construction of meaning that takes place in the interviews. A few minutes after the interaction that is represented in the interview extract from the first interview above, Qais started describing his problems of finding accommodation and how he received no help from the authorities in spite of the fact that he had the legal right to such help. However, Reza believed that this subject was not relevant for me, the researcher. Q: The employment agency has sent for me and asked what I have done before and they ask me what I will do in the future. And then Emma interviewed me and asked me the same thing and now this lady also says the same thing to me. I have told everybody that I need accommodation and have asked if there is someone to help me, how come nobody helps me? R: T  his does not at all concern this woman, if you bring such things up. Q: I know, but isn’t it the law like this in this place? R: I told him that you have NOTHING to do with that actually. A: Okay. R: What he says about accommodation and a place to live and that too, but, and he saidA: No, but it isn’t important to this. I just want to (pause) Those are just a few background questions. R: I see. She says that my interview with you doesn’t have to do with these things, she just wants to ask you a few questions. A: Mmm, no, I have nothing to do with it, you are right about that. Q: ( Sounds upset) No, I have understood that this does not concern her, but I just want to have told her what it is like. R: Okay, ha. I know that this does not have to do with it. But I want to, I will say A: Okay. R: you know what I think or how I think. A: So you don’t want to talk about it? R: She says that you don’t want to talk about it anymore, do you? A: Mmm. We (pause) Then we can talk about other things.

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R: We can talk about other things now. Q: A  m I not supposed to to talk or what? Can’t one say what’s on one’s mind? R: I need to unburden my mind. A: Yes, I see.

In this section of the interview, a misunderstanding took place that had significant effects on the interaction between me and Qais and on the construction of meaning in the interview. This misunderstanding consequently was detrimental to my possibilities for mapping and analysing the literacy practices that the interviewee needed to deal with in facing the problems he met in his everyday life. When Reza said, ‘I told him that you have NOTHING to do with that actually’, my interpretation was that he was translating the words of Qais and that Qais was telling me that he was of the opinion that I had nothing to do with the matters I was asking him about. As mentioned earlier, the atmosphere in the first interview was tense, and I sensed that Qais was hesitant and uncertain about the whole interview situation. Consequently, my immediate reaction was to step back and agree that I had nothing to do with subjects that he did not want to talk about. But this was a misunderstanding. Reza was in fact expressing his own view that Qais was talking about matters that did not belong in a research interview. Reza had changed footing here, from acting as an animator to acting as an author or a principal. He was making an explicit coordinating move in order to organise the discourse. He could even be described as a gatekeeper here because as a consequence of his move and my misunderstanding important information about the sociocultural context of Qais’s multilingual and digital literacy practices in his everyday life was, after this situation, no longer accessible to me in the interview (cf. Wadensjö, 2015: 117 on interpreters as gatekeepers). The misunderstanding also had very negative consequences for Qais’ confidence in me. He had wanted to tell me about his experiences of not having a place to live. Now he reacted in frustration and anger when he thought that I was not interested in listening to what he wanted to tell me. Because I did not realise that the interpreter had expressed his own view on which themes were relevant in the interview, no negotiation of the role of the interpreter was initiated here. From the analysis of the extract, it is now clear to me that I and Reza had very different views on interviewing methodology. Reza believed that Qais should answer the questions, and that he should not divert into side issues in his answers. I, on the other hand, was interested in the living conditions of Qais, including matters that did not at first sight seem to be connected to literacy, because from my theoretical understanding all literacy practices are connected to specific situations and connected to needs, aims, and experiences in people’s lives (Barton, 2007; Norlund Shaswar, 2014). It became obvious when I analysed these data that before the first interview

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I should have described more clearly to Reza the theoretical and methodological starting points of the study. In the interviews there were also examples of situations when the interpreter’s move to organise the discourse of interaction was followed by an open negotiation of roles and responsibilities. Below is an interview extract from the second interview that exemplifies this. As described above, the atmosphere in the second interview was much more relaxed than in the first. In the second interview, I was also more familiar with and prepared for Reza’s way of initiating negotiations of our roles and responsibilities. Consequently, in the second interview there were open negotiations in which Reza, myself, and Qais took part. In the example below, I had just asked Qais about a digital literacy practice that he engaged in, namely how he had learned to use a bank application that he had on his mobile phone. I first asked how he had learned to use it and then if someone had showed him or if he had learned to use it himself. After hearing Qais’ answer in Persian and before translating it into Swedish, Reza made the following comment: R: Okay. Ha. That is not the question that, the answer that you wanted. A: But tell me anyway. R: Yeah. He has been to the employment agency. A: Yeah. R: Who wants to get, what’s it called, financial support. A: Mhm. Q: Yes. A: Okay. R: That wasn’t (undistinguishable) A: Yes, but that was a good answer.

In this interview situation, Reza drew the conclusion that Qais had not given me the answer that I was interested in, and he told me so. He saw it as his responsibility that Qais answered questions in the way that questions should, according to his view, be answered in a research interview. However, there are two problems associated with this coordinating move. Firstly, Reza’s view that in a research interview the interviewee must strictly answer the question that the researcher has asked was not in accordance with my view on a qualitative research interview. Secondly, by commenting on Qais’ answer in front of him, Reza threatened his face. My reaction to this when I said, ‘Yes, but that was a good answer’ makes clear that I and Reza had different views on how Qais should answer the questions. My answer was also a move to save Qais’ face. Ten minutes after this episode, the following interaction took place:

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R: Okay, yes (pause) yes, I should really interpret word for word for you. A: Yes do that. Do that. R: But this is, you know, is going to be totally, you know, research you know. A: No, but just say what he says. I just want to know what he says. R: Yes. But he thinks just talking, you know the phone is just a thing that you talk on. A: Mmm. Okay. But I want to know, you know. R: Yes, yes, of course. A: Exactly. Q: No problem, but you ask, I answer.

Here, Reza had realised that the progression of this interview did not correspond to his idea of a research interview. By suggesting that he should interpret ‘word for word’, he seems to want to separate himself from the responsibility for Qais’ answers to my questions. In the extract, I agreed to his suggestion. My rationale for agreeing was firstly my understanding that Reza’s and my view on how a research interview should be performed were not corresponding. Second, I wanted to prevent any further comments from Reza that would make Qais feel uncomfortable. 4.5 Discussion

In this section, I will first discuss the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter and how they are negotiated in the interview extracts. Second, I will analyse the connections between the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter and the construction of meaning in the interviews. These discussions will also focus on the conceptualisation of the roles and responsibilities of interpreters in multilingual literacy research. Third, I will describe and discuss the measures I have taken in the performance of subsequent multilingual interviews on literacy to prevent the kind of problems that appeared in the interviews with Qais. Finally, I will widen the discussion to look at more general aspects of involving interpreters as co-researchers in small-scale research studies, especially in literacy research. 4.5.1 What are the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter and how are these negotiated in the interviews?

In both interviews, Reza engaged in organising discourse. He made explicit coordinating moves where a negotiation of his roles and responsibilities was initiated. A difference in Reza’s negotiation of roles and responsibilities in the two interviews was that in the

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second interview there were open negotiations where he, I and Qais all participated. In contrast, there were no such open negotiations in the first interview, partly because of the tense and hesitant atmosphere that characterised the interaction. In the negotiation of Reza’s roles and responsibilities in the second interview, Reza suggested that he should from then on translate word for word. In that situation I agreed to his suggestion. I wanted to restrict and control his discourse management and translations because I had come to a similar conclusion as he namely that his decisions and actions did not correspond to my view on how a qualitative interview should be carried out. I wanted to make the decisions myself on whether the narratives of Qais were relevant to my research on literacy practices or not. However, this settlement with Reza was problematic because it does not correspond with my view on translation. The view of translation that the study starts out from can be described as social constructivist. I contend that the literal transmission of a message from one language to another is not possible. Despite expressing a will to remove himself from the responsibility for discourse management and only to translate ‘word for word’, Reza did not stop making decisions based on his frames of references because it would not have been possible to do so. I agree with Temple (2002: 846) that an interpreter, similar to a translator, is not a neutral mediator of a message, but has an active role in the production of research. This, I would add, is a fact independent of whether the interpreter is well acquainted with the researcher’s theoretical, epistemological, and methodological starting points or not. The interpreter is also actively constructing meaning in the interview, even if the researcher is trying to control and restrict the interpreter’s actions. The interpreter inevitably needs to make decisions during the translation, for example, when he or she needs to explain phenomena and concepts to the interviewee. And if the interpreter does not know what the researcher is interested in and how the researcher wants the interview to be carried out, the interpreter will make decisions that are not necessarily in favour of the research process. The process of co-constructing meaning in a multilingual interview on literacy will benefit considerably if the interpreter knows the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the study well so that he or she can act as a co-researcher who is given the freedom to make her or his own decisions in the interview situation. This would also have made the construction of meaning in the interviews with Qais more fruitful because it would have meant that Reza and I would have cooperated rather than worked against each other. In the researched interview extracts, Reza switched footing between acting as an animator – mediating the words of Qais – and acting as an author or principal – expressing his own views. When he acted as an animator, he took a more neutral middle position in the interaction

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between Qais and me. When he acted as an author or principal, he was more engaged and allied with Qais or me. In his footing as an author or principal, he on most occasions took responsibility for the performance of the research interview, trying to make sure that the interaction between me and Qais corresponded to his view of a research interview. However, in one of the interview extracts in the role as author or principal he expressed his personal dislike of my interview questions, thus allying with Qais against me. In interpretation studies, interpreters’ interchangeable use of reported and direct speech is a widely discussed subject (Wadensjö, 2015: 117), and it has been debated how and to what extent their interchangeable use of reported and direct speech in translations affects the nearness or distance between the primary parties of the interview. This aspect of interpreters’ roles in interviews is, as illustrated by the analysis of interview extracts above, of central importance to data collection in multilingual literacy studies and needs to be given attention in the conceptual discussion of this field. In the interview extracts explored in this chapter, the interpreter switches between first and third-person singular in his role as an animator, mediating the words of the interviewee. When he uses first-person singular, he is nearer to the interviewee, sometimes also mirroring his feelings by sounding angry when the interviewee sounds angry. When he uses the third person, he is more distant from the interviewee. However, an additional question related to this theme of proximity and distance to the primary parties also arises in the explored extracts, namely the risk of misunderstanding. Is the interpreter mediating the interviewee’s words or expressing his own opinions? When the interpreter interchangeably uses first-person singular to refer to himself in the role of an author or principal and sometimes to talk as an animator, conveying a message from the interviewee, the researcher must always be observant in order to prevent misunderstandings. When the relation between researcher and interviewee is tense, as in the first interview, the risk of misunderstandings is even greater. 4.5.2 How do the roles and responsibilities of the interpreter affect the construction of meaning in the interviews?

The construction of meaning is dependent on the roles and responsibilities taken by the participants in the interviews. Qais had no earlier experience of research interviews and did not know what to expect from the situation. His insecurity in the interview situation was partly a consequence of my decisions. This insecurity of Qais affected Reza’s roles and responsibilities as an interpreter. Meaning construction was also influenced by Reza’s directions to Qais on themes that were unsuitable for the interview and by his comments on Qais’ answers

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to my questions. In giving Qais directions on themes that were not fitting for the research, Reza’s role of managing the organisation of interaction can be understood as a role as a gatekeeper (cf. Wadensjö, 2015: 117). As a consequence of the misunderstanding that arose from this act of gatekeeping, Qais was less inclined to narrate to me about himself and his experiences of literacy. Thus there was a negative effect on my possibilities of understanding the contextual background of his multilingual and digital literacy practices situated in his everyday life. Further, when Reza in the action of translating the Swedish verb läsa used the Persian equivalent of go to school/study, this also hindered my possibilities for gaining access to Qais’ experiences of literacy in his everyday life. These examples of the complexity of construction of meaning in multilingual interviews illustrate the serious consequences for data collection in multilingual literacy research that miscommunication and misunderstandings can lead to. In a study on literacy from a sociocultural perspective, hindered access to the context of the participants’ literacy practices is a serious obstacle from a theoretical point of view. In order to explore a person’s literacy practices it is necessary to see the practices in relation to the situations where they take place (Barton, 2007; Ivanič et al., 2009; Norlund Shaswar, 2014). Reading, writing, and the use of digital media are always shaped by specific circumstances such as the languages and technologies used and the purposes, attitudes, and values of the interacting participants. For research studies that explore literacy practices based in people’s everyday lives, there is also a methodological reason for mapping out the context in which the practices are situated. People are often unaware of how they read, write, and use digital media as they engage in activities and chores in their day-to-day lives (Norlund Shaswar, 2012, 2014). A way of visualising everyday literacy practices that participants are unaware of is therefore to ask about the activities that the practices are part of. Finding out about Qais’ ways of handling his accommodation problems would therefore have been a fruitful way of mapping out the multilingual and digital literacy practices he engaged in in order to solve these problems. A further complicating factor in the DigiPrac study, which makes the contextual factors highly important, is the common categorisation in society of the participants, i.e. adult immigrants with no or limited schooling, as illiterate (SNAE, 2016). This categorisation is a stigma that contains a deficiency perspective of the students and renders invisible their experiences of reading and writing in multilingual contexts outside of formal education. Thus the students are prevented from realising that they do have valuable experiences of literacy and that they do take part in multilingual and digital literacy practices (cf. Budde & Prüsmann, this volume). An example of this from the interviews with Qais is that he said that he never used the laptop that he could borrow in the SFI

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classroom. However, when I performed classroom observation I saw that he did use the laptop quite often. One of the programmes that he used was a digital translation programme. Reza’s actions discussed above were to the detriment of meaning construction concerning Qais’ multilingual and digital literacy practices, but Reza was not solely responsible for the aspects of interaction that had negative consequences on the construction of meaning. I agree with Wadensjö (2011: 14) that the interview is a pas-de-trois where researcher, interpreter, and interviewee together co-construct meaning. Therefore, the misunderstandings and other aspects of miscommunications were constructed in the interaction where all three of us took part, and our different backgrounds and cultural baggage influenced the progress of interaction. In a conceptual discussion of the roles and responsibilities of interpreters it is therefore necessary also to include the roles and responsibilities of the researcher and interviewee. It is also important to remember that the power structures in the relationship between researcher, interpreter and interviewee mean that the researcher has a strong agency in the interaction. Consequently he or she is also to a large extent responsible for the progress of the co-construction of data. Goffman’s (1981: 127) concepts of footing and the changing alignments of interpreters as they act as animators, authors and principals are useful tools for visualising, problematising and understanding the co-construction of data in research on multilingual literacy. In the process of performing, transcribing, and analysing the interviews with Qais, I have realised that there were a number of steps that I could have taken to counteract the problems that arose. In the next section, I will describe the steps I have taken in subsequent interviews in the DigiPrac study. In connection to discussing these steps, I will widen the perspective and discuss the possibilities of involving interpreters as co-researchers in smaller research studies in multilingual contexts, primarily in literacy research. 4.5.3 What possibilities are there for involving the interpreter as a co-researcher in smaller research studies with limited funding?

In order to involve an interpreter in a small-scale research study focusing on literacy practices, the researcher needs to think through various aspects of the project. One such aspect is the interaction between the researcher and the interviewee. If this interaction is tense and complicated, the tasks of the interpreter in the interviews will be more difficult. In the subsequent data collection, I have therefore made some changes. I have made sure that the interpreter is familiar with the theoretical, epistemological, and methodological starting points of the study and that I know about his perspectives on the phenomena being studied in

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the research, i.e. adult students who cannot yet read and write and multilingual and digital literacy practices. In order to fully involve the interpreter in the study, the researcher needs to explain those theoretical concepts that the interviews depart from (Bradby, 2002: 852). Björk Brämberg and Dahlberg (2013) suggest that the interpreter should be given a thorough introduction to the research, but I would argue that this is no guarantee that the interview will work out well. What does ‘thoroughly introduced’ mean? It is hardly enough for the researcher and interpreter to meet ‘outside the informant’s home to review the research questions’ as they did in their study (Björk Brämberg & Dahlberg, 2013: 244). Aspects such as the personality and values of the interpreter are not possible to identify in this way. Finding out about somebody’s values in relation to persons belonging to a stigmatised group, such as adults who cannot yet read and write, is difficult and sensitive. Therefore, in addition to informing the interpreter of the theoretical framework of the research, reflexivity concerning the views of the interpreter on the themes of the research is needed. It is necessary to become acquainted with the interpreter, to find out about their personality and to see them in interaction with the interviewee in order to decide whether their values and beliefs are reflected in their way of interacting with and treating other people. Therefore, I have decided on a third solution for my subsequent data collection on literacy in multilingual contexts. I have made the decision to hire an experienced interpreter whom I already know well and trust. For other researchers who intend to perform multilingual cross-cultural interviews in cooperation with interpreters, and who have limited research funding, I would recommend firstly thinking through if there is somebody they know and trust who is a professional interpreter and whom they can employ for a limited time. If the researcher is not already familiar with a suitable interpreter, I would recommend using Temple and Edward’s (2002) methods of finding one and introducing her or him into the research project. Edwards performs interviews with the interpreter in order to make her or his social and political position more visible. Thus the researcher can reflect on how the interpreter’s views might influence the knowledge production of the study (Temple & Edwards, 2002: 6). Temple in a similar way asks the interpreter questions concerning their views on the researched phenomena in order to ‘tease out their intellectual biographies’ (Temple, 2002: 850). In the case of literacy research in multilingual contexts, this would mean trying to find out the reasons behind the interpreter’s perspectives on the social world in general and on multilingual literacy specifically. As Temple (2002: 853) points out, the method of mapping the interpreter’s intellectual biography is preferable in that it is not based on the perspective that speaking a certain language means having the same perspective on the world as other people speaking that language.

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Temple argues, ‘No one person can represent whole communities, and researchers need to recognize that translators and people employed because of their cultural or language expertise have perspectives of their own, which are woven into their social interactions’ (Temple, 2002: 85). Further, I have decided to use the same interpreter in all interviews. This is a viable option in qualitative small-scale studies, although it would be more problematic in a quantitative or large-scale study. For the DigiPrac study, it was so important to hire an interpreter who I am confident will perform the task well that in the rest of the interviews I have partly based the selection of interviewees on the linguistic competence of the interpreter. This means that for the remainder of the interviews I have selected participants who speak the languages in which my interpreter performes interpretation, namely Arabic and Turkmenian, or in Kurdish. In the latter case, I have performed the interviews myself, without an interpreter. There are many SFI students who speak one of these languages, so these selection criteria have not been a problem. Limiting the number of interpreters to only one has meant that the chances have increased for the interpreter to understand the methodological and epistemological points of departure of the project. It also has meant increasing my chances of understanding the perspectives of the interpreter on values that are of importance for the project. I have also changed the order of the interview questions so that the first interview is no longer initiated by background questions. When I asked Qais questions concerning, for example, his schooling and the living conditions of his family, this was problematic because these questions were connected to painful experiences of ethnic discrimination, poverty, and of being separated from his family by migration. Further, Qais did not see any connection between these aspects of his life and the themes I had informed him that the interviews would focus on, namely his use of digital artefacts. In the remainder of the data collection with other interviewees, I have therefore initiated the first interview by asking questions about the interviewees’ multilingual and digital literacy practices. Further, instead of directly posing questions concerning the sociocultural context of the interviewees’ literacy practices, I have intertwined these questions with the questions of their use of digital artefacts. I had only met Qais very briefly before the first interview. This meant that he did not know me and did not know what to expect from me. In my subsequent data collection in the DigiPrac study, I have therefore performed classroom observations before performing interviews with students. This has meant that in the interview situation, the interviewees have met me on a number of occasions and we have had the chance to become somewhat acquainted with each other before the interview. Performing classroom observations before the first interview has also meant that I have observed multilingual and digital literacy practices

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that the interviewee has participated in, and this has facilitated our communication. Instead of asking general questions about the parti­ cipants’ general habits of using digital artefacts, I have been able to ask about concrete literacy events I have observed in the classroom when the participant, for example, has used a digital translation program on her or his mobile phone. I have also chosen to perform the rest of the interviews in the study with two or three SFI students at a time so that they would feel safer and more secure in the interview situation. These measures have meant that in the remainder of the interviews performed in the DigiPrac study the interaction between the interviewees, the interpreter, and me has worked much more smoothly than in the interviews with Qais. The interview situation has been relaxed and there have been no serious misunderstandings. The interviewees have been much less reluctant to describe their experiences of digital and multilingual literacy practices. This has meant that in the interviews rich data have been constructed on the interviewees’ multilingual and digital literacy practices. 4.6 Conclusion

The actions of the interpreter in multilingual cross-cultural interviews are of critical importance to the final research product in studies on multilingual literacy. Therefore, involving the interpreter as a co-researcher is necessary. Here some general advice is given to researchers performing multilingual literacy research studies involving interpreters where the budget is limited. In order to be a co-researcher, the interpreter needs to be familiar with the theoretical, epistemological, and methodological starting points of the research. In addition, the researcher needs to be acquainted with the interpreter’s views on the researched phenomena and on values related to the research. The researcher also needs to ascertain that these perspectives and values of the interpreter parallel those of the research. A solution for smallscale multilingual literacy studies with a limited budget is to hire a professional interpreter whom the researcher already knows well, trusts, and whose outlook on people and literacy he or she is familiar with. If this is not possible, a viable alternative is to initiate the cooperation with projected interpreters by treating them as ‘key informants’, i.e. interviewing them about their values and views that are relevant to the project. In addition, in the case of performing interviews with persons who are not familiar with research interviews, it is of great benefit if researcher and interviewee can meet before the first interview. If observations are also included in the research design, it is a good idea to perform the observations before the first interview. Lastly, conceptualising interpreters as co-researchers in studies on multilingual literacy is a way of highlighting their decisive importance

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to the research process and visualising the need for a conceptual discussion that focuses on the theoretical, epistemological, and methodological complexities of involving interpreters in cross-cultural research interviews on multilingual literacy. References Andrews, J. (2013) ’It’s a very difficult question isn’t it’. Researcher, interpreter and research participant negotiating meanings in an education research interview. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 23 (3), 316–328. Atkinson, P. (1990) The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of Reality. London: Routledge. Barton, D. (2007) Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (1998) Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community. London: Routledge. Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (2000) Literacy practices. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton and R. Ivanič (eds) Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. (pp. 7–15). London and New York: Routledge. Basit, T. (1997) Eastern Values, Western Milieu: Identities and Aspirations of Adolescent Muslim Girls. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bhatti, G. (1995) A journey into the unknown: An ethnographic study of Asian children. In M. Griffiths and B. Troyna (eds) Antiracism, Culture and Social Justice in Education (pp. 61–76). Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Björk Brämberg E. and Dahlberg K. (2013) Interpreters in cross-cultural interviews: A three-way coconstruction of data. Qualitative Health Research 23 (2), 241–247. Borchgrevink, A. (2003) Silencing language: Of anthropologists and interpreters. Ethnography 4, 95–121. Bradby, H. (2002) Translating culture and language: A research note on multilingual settings. Sociology of Health & Illness 24 (6), 842–854. Breuer, E.O. and Van Steendam, E. (2021) Multiple approaches to understanding and working with multilingual (multi-)literacy. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 1–18). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Budde, M.A. and Prüsmann, F. (2021) Studying the learning of immigrant students with limited German: A proposal for developing and applying an instrument for selecting suitable research participants. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 40–62). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Burgess, R.G. (1991) In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research. London: Routledge. Caretta, M.A. (2015) Situated knowledge in cross-cultural, cross-language research: A collaborative reflexive analysis of researcher, assistant and participant subjectivities. Qualitative Research 15 (4), 489–505. Donahue, T. (2021) Linguistic and social diversity, literacy and access to higher education. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 21–39). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Edwards, R. (1998) A critical examination of the use of interpreters in the qualitative research process. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24 (1), 197–208. Foster, M. (1994) The power to know one thing is never the power to know all things. In A. Giltin (ed.) Power and Method: Political Activism and Educational Research. New York: Routledge. Franker, Q. (2011) Litteracitet och Visuella Texter. Studier om Lärare och Kortutbildade Deltagare i Sfi. [Literacies and Visual Texts. Studies on Teachers and Low Educated Learners in the Basic Swedish Language Programme for Adult Immigrants]. Stockholm: Stockholm University.

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vernacular literacies and classroom literacies among Kurds who study Swedish for immigrants (SFI)]. In A-C Edlund (ed.) Att Läsa och att Skriva. Två Vågor av Vardagligt Skriftbruk i Norden 1800–2000. (pp. 221–234). Umeå: Umeå University & Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundet. Norlund Shaswar, A. (2014) Skriftbruk i Vardagsliv och i SFI-utbildning: En Studie av Fem Kurdiska SFI-studerandes Skriftbrukshistoria och Skriftpraktiker. [Literacy in Everyday Life and in the Swedish for Immigrants Programme: The Literacy History and Literacy Practices of Five Kurdish L2 Learners of Swedish]. PhD thesis, Umeå University. Paulsrud, B., Rosén, J., Straszer, B. and Wedin, Å. (eds) (2017) New Perspectives on Translanguaging and Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Shah, S. (2004) The researcher/interviewer in intercultural context: A social intruder. In: British Educational Research Journal 30 (4), 549–575. SNAE (2018) Syllabus for municipal adult education in Swedish tuition for Immigrants (SFI). Seehttps://www.skolverket.se/download/18.4fc05a3f164131a7418ce9/1535097772538/ Kursplan%20sfi%20engelska.pdf. SNAE (2016) Grundläggande Litteracitet: Att Undervisa Vuxna med Svenska som Andraspråk. Kunskapsöversikt. [Basic Literacy: Teaching Adults with Swedish as a Second Language. Knowledge Overview] Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1983) Breaking out: Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1993) Breaking out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology. London: Routledge. Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (2013) Method, methodology and epistemology in feminist research processes. In L. Stanley (ed.) Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (2nd edn, pp. 20–60). London: Routledge. Street, B. (1993) Introduction. The new literacy studies. In B. Street (ed.) Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy (pp. 1–21). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Temple, B. (1997) Issues in translation and cross-cultural research. Sociology 31 (3), 607– 618. Temple, B. (1999) Diaspora, diaspora space and Polish women. Women’s Studies International Forum 22 (1), 17–24. Temple, B. (2002) Crossed wires: Interpreters, translators and bilingual workers in crosslanguage research. Qualitative Health Research 12 (6), 844–854. Temple, B. and Edwards, R. (2002) Interpreters/translators and cross-language research: Reflexivity and border crossings. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 1 (2), 1–22. van Maanen, J. (2011) Tales of the Fields: On Writing Ethnography (2nd edn). Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wadensjö, C. (2004) Dialogue interpreting: A monologising practice in a dialogically organised world. Target 16 (1), 105–124. Wadensjö, C. (2011) Interpreting in theory and practice: Reflections about an alleged gap. In C. Alvstad, E. Tiselius and A. Hild (eds) Methods and Strategies of Process Research: Integrative Approaches in Translation Studies (pp. 13–22). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Wadensjö, C. (2015) Discourse management. In F. Pöchhacker (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies. London & New York: Routledge. Wedin, Å. (2004) Literacy Practices in and out of School in Karagwe: The Case of Primary School Literacy Education in Rural Tanzania. PhD thesis, Stockholm University. Wedin, Å. (2010) Vägar till Svenskt Skriftspråk för Vuxna Andraspråksinlärare, Lund: Studentlitteratur. [Paths to Swedish Written Language for Adult Second Language Learners].

5 Paving a New Way to Literacy Development in Multilingual Children: A DMM Perspective Ulrike Jessner, Emese Malzer-Papp and Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl

The present contribution is informed by a dynamic systems and complexity theory (DSCT) perspective as introduced by Herdina and Jessner (2002) in their Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (DMM) and applied to multilingual development and multilingualism. The authors describe the DMM as a framework to understand and foster language and literacy development in multilinguals, relate theory to practice and hold that both the development and the assessment of multiple language and literacy competences must be approached from a multilingual rather than a monolingual, fractional perspective. The authors further discuss concepts connected with multilingual literacy development in general and (multilingual) literacy in children in particular. They connect DMM principles with language and literacy development in multilingual kindergarten and school settings, providing illustrations from research and practice. Good practice examples taken from the Austrian context conclude the chapter.

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Introduction

The aim of this chapter is twofold: (a) It provides a theoretical framework based on dynamic systems and complexity theoretical (DSCT) thinking to develop new educational approaches to multilingual (literacy) development. The chapter is informed by a DSCT perspective as introduced by Herdina and Jessner (2002) in their DMM. The DMM starts from the premise that both the development and the assessment of language and literacy competences must be approached from a multilingual rather than a monolingual perspective. Such a holistic perspective and approach is necessary to redefine the language and literacy development in all the languages in a pupil’s repertoire. (b) It traces prevailing and new approaches to language and literacy development in multilingual environments, with a special focus on the situation in Austria. The chapter starts off with a description of today’s challenges connected with societal and individual multilingualism and continues in section two with a discussion of literacy concepts and their altering nature as well as their connection to individual and societal developments. The third section presents the DMM perspective as a new path to approaching multilingualism research and practice by focusing on four main concepts related to multilingual (literacy) development which are characteristic of dynamic and complex systems: the importance of sensitivity to initial conditions, the emergence of new properties in the multilingual mind, the interdependence of a variety of factors involved and the cognitive and linguistic advantages connected with multilingual and multilingual literacy development. In Section four, the authors provide a short overview of the Austrian educational context and cite a few examples of holistic language and literacy teaching approaches to illustrate the theoretical considerations presented so far. The chapter closes with an outlook into opportunities and challenges in the field. 5.1 Multilingualism

Language contact has always been a feature of human development, but ongoing demographic and social changes suggest that this is happening on an unprecedented scale. The current flow of people across national borders and the rapid dissemination of digital technologies are reshaping

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the ways in which we communicate. Multilingualism and multilingual literacy are key topics in dealing with these changes and have to be seen as the new linguistic norm. Present-day multilingualism is considered an ‘ineluctable concomitant of all dimensions of globalization inextricably intertwined with all the major attributes of the dramatic social changes currently occurring in the world’ (Aronin & Bawardi, 2012: 16). Aronin and Singleton (2019) summarize the judgments regarding multilingualism stating that ideas have swung from seeing it as dangerous and unwelcome to an absolutely positive perception of multilingualism, now coming to rest at a view of multilingualism as a complex phenomenon, the evaluation of which depends on many factors in any particular instance. (Aronin & Singleton, 2019: XVI)

Therefore, recent research on multilingualism and multilingual development focuses on socio-linguistic transformations of society connected with different uses of language(s), e.g. when describing concepts such as translanguaging (e.g. García & Wei, 2014) or superdiversity (Vertovec, 2006). Psycholinguistics research has turned to comparing multilinguals with each other (and not with monolinguals), and a number of multilingualism researchers have started analyzing the differences between bi- and tri- or multilinguals, adopting new methods of investigation (cf. Aronin & Singleton, 2019). Nonetheless, the new conception of multilingualism adopted in research and, at least on the European scale, at the socio-political level does not necessarily correspond to the attitudes towards bi- and multilingualism in the population and the educational authorities. ‘Multilingualism is still seen as an exception because it is misunderstood’ (Jessner, 2008: 15). It is valued through a monolingual lens, which presupposes that acquiring a second or additional language means being able to then use it in the same way as monolingual speakers do. The idealized native speaker competence is also used as a general benchmark in multilingual acquisition and learning environments (Breuer & Steendam, this volume). Against this background, multilingual individuals are often seen as multiple monolinguals with deficient competences in their languages. But far from being disadvantaged, multilinguals have also been shown to have advantages over monolinguals on a variety of cognitive and metacognitive tasks. Their languages are not separate entities but are part of a multilingual language system (see Jessner, 2006, 2018). Each multilingual context develops individual forms of societal and individual multilingualism and multilingual literacy, and with them a variety of challenges on the educational level, as discussed in the following.

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5.2 Literacy 5.2.1 A changing concept

The concept of literacy is both complex and dynamic and renders a straightforward definition challenging. Formerly, literacy was contrasted with illiteracy and described as the ability to read and write. Due to rapid socioeconomic developments, there has been a shift from a narrow perception of literacy as a mere linguistic concept and a process of acquiring a set of tangible cognitive skills to a more holistic view, based on a broader social context, as a constantly evolving social process. The word play ‘reading the word and the world’ coined by Donaldo Macedo and Paulo Freire in their 1987 publication underpins the social and political dimension of literacy. ‘Reading is not only about decoding the word from the page; it is also about the ways in which literacy can be used to empower and disempower’ (Macedo & Freire, 1987: 35). Literacy has always been an essential part of human development, even though for many centuries only the privilege of some. In literacy research, there are two contrasting approaches to the definition of literacy depending on its function and nature. The autonomous model reflects a more skill-based understanding of literacy and focuses primarily on the technical skills of reading and writing (Street, 1997), regardless of the context in which they are acquired and the individual background of the person who acquires them. This approach ‘assumes that literacy is the ability to decode symbols on a page into sounds, followed by making meaning from those sounds’ (Baker & Wright, 2017: 307). The more recent ideological model takes a ‘constructivist’ view (Baker & Wright, 2017) and considers the social and cultural dimension of literacy as part of people’s daily lives (Rosowsky, 2001) that goes beyond the skills of reading and writing. It emphasizes that literacy practices may vary by social and cultural context, and that readers bring their own meanings to the text, depending on their language(s), culture, personal experiences and histories (Baker & Wright, 2017). A related view, sustained by the supporters of sociocultural literacy, allows for the possibility that different language communities ‘attach different values to different types of literacies’ (Baker & Wright, 2017: 308). When reading and writing, we revert to previous experience and cultural heritage. Thus, literacy is ‘not only a skill to be learned but a practice that is socially constructed and locally negotiated’ (Norton, 2013: 104). The growing significance of cultural and linguistic diversity is not the only driving force behind the urge to redefine literacy. A rapidly changing communication environment with digital communication opportunities such as SMS, emails, web pages and instant messaging also needs a notion of literacy that accommodates the multiple diversities of the 21st century. Edwards formulates the need ‘to talk in terms of multiliteracies rather

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than literacy (Edwards, 2009: 54). However, the term multiliteracy is a very complex and sometimes confusing one. It was originally coined by the New London Group, a group of 10 educators who proposed a broader concept of literacy and referred to ‘different languages, different varieties of a particular language, and different regional uses of a language’ (Baker & Wright, 2017: 319). Furthermore, this broader literacy concept included visual, audio, gestural and spatial aspects (Baker & Wright, 2017) embedded in linguistically and culturally diverse social settings. In contrast to the term multiliteracy that rather refers to the modes of communication, the ‘how’, Street coined the notion of multiple literacies that describe these literacies as cultural/social driver of communication, so to speak the ‘what’ (see Street in Stavans & Hoffman, 2015). In order to describe literacy in a multilingual context, Stavans and Hoffmann (2015) use the term multilingual literacy as an overarching concept. They define multilingual literacy as ‘the literacy of the multilingual individual’ (Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015: 256) that includes multiliteracies as ‘the different literacies that the individual masters in one or several languages’ and multiple literacies, ‘the literacies multilinguals have at their disposal when using their languages separately and together’. In this contribution, we refer to multilingual literacy in an applied linguistics sense as a process of dealing with cultural and linguistic differences within and between languages. When we think of literacy in the sense of the ability to read and write, we automatically associate the concept with children and practices of how to teach them the necessary skills. The notion of literacy is primarily embedded in elementary and primary school settings and is a key issue of formal education. When it relates to adults, it brings to mind illiteracy and all its concomitant disadvantages. The inability to read and write limits career prospects, inhibits parenting abilities and makes coping with everyday situations difficult. Literacy is seen as the key to avoid marginalization and to incorporate adults in established social and economic values and practices. In current research, there are different views on how literacy is acquired and how adult literacy should be understood. In the present paper, we will, however, only focus on the (pre)-literacy development of multilingual children in institutional education. We will discuss literacy as a set of cognitive and linguistic processing skills, though not losing sight of the sociological and anthropological dimensions of the concept. 5.2.2 (Multilingual) literacy in children

Literacy as the ability to read and write is seen as one of the key educational objectives of schooling. In monolingual as well as multilingual contexts, school literacy roots in the autonomous model as described under Section 5.2.1 and is interpreted as the ability to

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decode different alphabetical systems, rarely drawing on the social practices accompanying them. Historically, research looking into what constitutes literacy and how it influences human socialization considered cognition as pivotal. The main trends of these studies are summarized in the work of Snow et al. (1998) with regard to the treatment of literacy as a ‘decontextualized learning process’ (Stavans & Hoffman, 2015: 253). Scribner and Cole (1978) signalized a turn and suggested to link cognitive processes and the social practices involved in literacy. It were Street J. and Street B. (1991) who placed the teaching of literacy within a broader social and political context, also taking into account the different languages and cultural backgrounds. In his review of the past 50 years of literacy theory and practice, Street (2013) discusses new literacy, which includes those forms of literacy associated with the web and internet as they become a greater part of the children’s repertoire. Literacy development in children starts well before its formal introduction in school. Emergent literacy describes a child’s earliest behavior and concepts related to reading and writing before actually having developed these skills. It is seen as the first stage in the process of becoming literate. An extensive body of research shows that emergent literacy is critically important for the development of key skills (see other chapters in this book; see also Piasta et al., 2018). These skills can be influenced and fostered already in pre-schoolers by social interactions with adults, exposure to books and other literacy materials and the use of engaging learning activities. In school settings, literacy development is primarily seen as the formal acquisition of a set of key skills necessary for reading and writing such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, text comprehension and oracy (cf. Bialystok, 2007). Although it cannot be dismissed that the acquisition of reading and writing skills as a set of learnable techniques is an essential foundation of literacy, the connection between language and sociocultural practices should not be neglected (cf. Budde & Prüsmann, this volume). Nonetheless, the assessment of the successful acquisition of such skills is measured by means of standardized tests designed in a decontextualized language environment based on monolingual criteria. Thus, literacy practices in school do not take into account the linguistic capital of multilingual children and are tied to the majority language or prestigious languages taught at school. In a key study on the acquisition of literacy in bilingual children, Bialystok concludes that ‘bilingualism inevitably impacts on children’s ultimate acquisition of literacy’ (Bialystok, 2007: 71). If bilingualism impacts literacy acquisition, multilingualism does even more so. Multilingual ­children transfer generalizable literacy skills and strategies acquired in one language to the other, suggesting that reading competence in two ­languages does not operate separately but from a common underlying proficiency, as proposed in the CUP and Interdependence Hypotheses

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(e.g. Cummins, 1991, 2017). Cummins (1991) described (linguistic) knowledge in bilinguals as comprising more than simply the characteristics of both languages in contact. In his iceberg metaphor, the peaks of the iceberg symbolize the relatively automatized surface features of language (e.g. grammar, vocabulary, phonology etc.), while the base lying below the surface level represents the common knowledge – e.g. linguistic knowledge, world knowledge, metalinguistic awareness – involved in cognitively demanding tasks. This common underlying proficiency allows for the transfer of cognitive and/or academic skills from one language to the other. For instance, Gabriele et al.’s (2009) investigation of emergent skills in bilingual pre-schoolers provides evidence for the role of L1 syntactic comprehension as a predictor for L2 text comprehension. Challenges may vary, however, when differing writing systems (alphabetic, consonantal, syllabic or meaning based) are involved. ‘While some techniques such as the development of comprehension skills can be applied universally’ and seem to be similar for first and second language learners, ‘others need to be sensitive to specific languages and writing systems’ (Edwards, 2009: 79). A positive development of multilingual literacy is largely determined by the context in which literacy acquisition occurs (see also Baker & Wright, 2017). In an additive context a child may acquire literacy through a second language at no cost to literacy in the first language. This means that the child’s home language is not being replaced by the majority language. However, when literacy acquisition is attempted through the majority language that is possibly insufficiently developed in minority language speakers, the transfer of literacy skills between the two languages might be hampered (Baker & Wright, 2017). In such subtractive contexts, majority language literacy is promoted at the cost of family language literacy (see also Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). Under such circumstances, the family language is quickly neglected. Although there seems to be a strong argument for multilingual literacy, parents and educators fear that literacy in one language might interfere with becoming literate in a second and/ or third language. Additionally, there is an increasing trend to be observed in political statements to perceive multilingual literacy as an impediment to the acquisition of the national language and to social integration. In a globalized world the traditional focus on a national language, i.e. on monolingualism and monoculturalism, is not tenable any longer. Across Europe a high percentage of children are growing up in a bilingual or multilingual environment, which has far-reaching implications for literacy acquisition at the individual and societal levels (see also Baker & Wright, 2017; Donahue, this volume). However, literacy and classroom practices that accommodate linguistically diverse populations and their linguistic heritage are rare. Therefore, educational settings largely disregard the complex interactions that influence multilingualism and multilingual literacy.

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As has been shown so far, multilingual (literacy) development is determined by a myriad of internal and external factors that interact with each other and influence the overall development. A dynamic and complexity systems perspective such as the one adopted by Herdina and Jessner (2002) in the DMM might shed more light on language and literacy development in family and school. The following section outlines the theoretical foundations of the DMM and connects some of its relevant principles to language and literacy development. 5.3 The DMM Perspective – A New Path 5.3.1 Language development over time: Complexity and change

Research on multilingualism from a Dynamic Systems and Complexity Theory (DSCT) perspective has led to new insights into individual and societal multilingualism and has introduced a completely new view of the linguistic and cognitive processes taking place in multilinguals. Using metaphors as a way of exploring bilingual and multilingual reality can be very helpful, as researchers such as Hornberger (2002) and Aronin (2019, chapter 1; cf. Aronin & Jessner, 2014) have pointed out. In multilingualism research, a variety of metaphors or lenses of examination for multiple language use exist, for example the affordances perspective (Gibson, 1977, 1979), multicompetence (Cook, 1992), dominant language constellations DLC (e.g. Aronin & Jessner, 2014) and the DMM (Herdina & Jessner, 2002). The DMM serves as a lens or metaphor to explain psycholinguistic processes of multiple language development and use over time. The model describes language and literacy development and multilingualism as complex systems within an individual, with subsystems that are interconnected, mutually interdependent and in constant movement, i.e. ‘characterized by continuous change and non-linear growth’ (Herdina & Jessner, 2002: 151). Non-linearity refers to the fact that changes cannot be traced to a single cause (cf. Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008: 2). The constant dynamic processes, which are driven by the interaction of all the factors involved – linguistic, psycholinguistic, personal, neuroand sociolinguistic ones – lead to the emergence of new structures and abilities evidencing that the whole is much greater than and different from the sum of its parts (Herdina & Jessner, 2002; see also below). The interaction of factors, parts, agents and elements renders the multilingual system complex. ‘Complex’ (not to be confused with ‘complicated’, which means ‘compiled of many elements’, and therefore not necessarily complex) involves multiple active interactions between the parts which lead to countless, often unpredictable, outcomes. (Aronin & Jessner, 2014: 60).

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Multilingualism (and multilingual literacy) is more complex and less predictable than bilingualism since complexity increases with three (or more) languages as compared to two. This has been demonstrated in the case of language combinations in trilingual or multilingual upbringing. Grosjean (2001, also cited in Aronin, 2019) points out that there are seven language modes available for trilinguals in comparison to ‘a bilingual’s two’. DMM looks at language development over time, which includes language growth as well as language attrition, thus pointing to the reversibility of processes in dynamic systems. Multilingual systems are adaptive, that is, they may change depending on the perceived communicative needs of the multilingual speaker and adapt to new conditions and/or develop new qualities. Summing up, most models of multilingualism (see Aronin & Singleton, 2019, chapter 3), above all the DMM, underline three important aspects of the complexity of multilingual systems: all languages in a person’s repertoire interact, all these languages are in use, and previously acquired linguistic (and literacy) knowledge is important in learning a new language (cf. Aronin 2019, chapter 1). The models invite researchers and teachers to look at all the languages in a person’s repertoire as a whole and not in isolation. Such a holistic perspective allows us to see the cognitive and linguistic advantages that result from the interaction of (psycho) linguistic and contextual factors, and to see the connections between language and literacy development from a new perspective. In the following subsections, we will discuss some of the main aspects of a DMM approach and relate them to language and literacy development. 5.3.2 Some main tenets of a DMM perspective of language and literacy development 5.3.2.1 Interdependence of socio-, psycholinguistic and personal aspects in language and literacy development

Children’s early language and literacy development is connected with their overall, i.e. cognitive, psychological, socio-emotional and physical, development since all these factors interact with each other, with and within the environment. Linguistic and motor development, for example, are coupled systems that develop in parallel (e.g. LarsenFreeman & Cameron, 2008: 130). It is common knowledge that little free moving space for children may lead to reduced motor skills and eventually to reduced linguistic skills. Motor development is one precondition of literacy development, as kindergarten and primary school teachers will be ready to confirm. A child whose fine motor skills are not age-appropriate will have problems acquiring pre-literacy and literacy skills. In a similar way, personal and physical factors have an impact on language and literacy development. In multilingual (literacy) development,

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all variables which contribute to multilingual development need to be taken into consideration, as suggested by DST. Individual factors in language learning, such as motivation, attitudes, cognitive factors (e.g. aptitude, personality traits; see e.g. Dewaele 2010), as well as physical traits of multilingual learners (e.g. hearing capabilities) also contribute to the complexity of multilingualism and research of the phenomenon. Furthermore, during the life span of a multilingual person a variety of the factors involved can be subject to change, for instance motivation to learn one language may change. (Jessner, 2014: 4)

A case in point are the findings presented in several studies on the role of input in bilingual children’s language and literacy development (Huang & Kuo, 2018). Generally speaking, input (quality and quantity) is significantly related to language and literacy development, but input is also mediated by cognitive (e.g. motivation, language aptitude) and social (immigration status, maternal education in the present case) variables. In their study on bilingual children with immigrant as compared to refugee status in Canada, Sorenson et al. (2018) examined the relationship between maternal education, input and immigration status and discovered that, while maternal education correlated with input, the language used in the family (majority English versus minority family language) depended on immigrant status. For immigrant families, higher levels of education were associated with more L1 and less English use. In the refugee group, higher levels of education led to less L1 and more English use. The interdependence of social and psycholinguistic aspects can further be illustrated taking the case of language attrition or loss in individuals and groups, since it is the change in societal conditions that may result in changes in linguistic knowledge, affecting the L1 of migrant children/families. A case in point is the situation of migrant parents who opt to send their children to English classes, or speak English at home, rather than support home language and literacy development, as documented by Nakamura (2016) in the case of migrants from Thailand and the Philippines living in Japan. A similar trend, with English as an international language being preferred to the regional Catalan language by many parents, has been documented by Safont-Jordà (2015) for the bilingual region of Valencia. A holistic view of language and literacy skills and abilities, as adopted in this chapter, leads to a new understanding of transfer phenomena. The contact between languages results in cross-linguistic interaction, as defined in the DMM, which not only takes place on the linguistic level but also in terms of information processing, pre-literacy and literacy development and other cognitive skills. In the case of multilingual readers and writers, the metalinguistic and literacy abilities developed in one language can be transferred to each new language, thus leading to the emergence of new properties and cognitive advantages (cf. Cummins’ CUP and Interdependence Hypothesis mentioned above).

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A case in point is the story of a student in one of our seminars who grew up with Serbian and Greek as his L1s and learned German in kindergarten and school. His father used to take him to Greek classes when he was five, and with the knowledge acquired in Greek, and despite the differences in the alphabets, he taught himself how to read and write in German while he was still attending the Austrian kindergarten, indicating that he was able to transfer his knowledge of sound-letter correspondences to a new language and a new writing system. 5.3.2.2 The importance of sensitivity to initial conditions

Complex systems and their parts are related to each other in such a way that ‘some parts may play a central role at one time and only a minor or no role at all at other times’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2011: 50). Initial conditions influence the dynamic development of a system in a non-linear way, which may apply to languages, literacy development or to persons and communities seen as dynamic systems. The complexity of multilingualism implies sensitivity to initial conditions, where ‘the slightest change in those conditions can produce radically different results’ (Aronin & Bawardi, 2012: 20). Sensitivity to initial conditions is related to the unpredictability of multilingual development, and it relates to the M-effect defined as a set of emergent properties of the multilingual mind (see below). The concept of initial conditions provides a new perspective of educational success or failure in school settings, as Hofer (2017) describes: [I]t is to be assumed that the relationship between systems or parts of systems changes significantly from one person to another. This explains why learner-users differ in their susceptibility to certain external influences and why they do not all take in and internalize new input in the same way or progress at the same pace. It also explains why learner-­users who have seemingly identical learning conditions may produce very different learning outcomes. The reasons for discrepancies at the attainment level are of course closely related to potentially differential initial conditions, which may be very small initially but can have quite dramatic repercussions, and they are also related to factors at the ­psychological level (which a teacher may not be immediately aware of). (Hofer, 2017: 98)

Language prestige and language typology constitute such initial conditions that may influence the linguistic and literacy development of children. A pupil in an Austrian school with L1 Croatian learning L2 German might be disadvantaged due to the status that Croatian has in the Austrian society compared to a child in the same school with L1 French or English. Students with one of the Kurdish languages as their L1 might have more affordances when learning German and English than students with L1 Hungarian, since Kurdish is an Indo-European language and thus is typologically closer to German/English than Hungarian. L3 learners whose L1 is typologically unrelated to the L3

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might transfer their linguistic and language learning knowledge from their L2 and not from their L1 (see also Jessner, 2018: 34f). Therefore, when dealing with multilinguals in kindergarten and school contexts, the terminology used in the Austrian and German educational systems might represent another initial condition that is different for children with German as an L2, L3, Lx or one of their L1s when they start school. To illustrate this, the term German as a second language (Deutsch als Zweitsprache or DaZ) is indiscriminately used for all children whose L1 is not German or who are bi-/multilingual, and is accompanied by a focus on deficits in German, which may have a negative impact on children’s self-esteem in connection with language learning (Budde & Prüsmann, this volume). Another example of initial conditions or states that possibly influence the trajectory of language/literacy development are the modes (see Grosjean, 2001, as mentioned above) multilingual students find themselves in: Are they in a monolingual, bilingual or multilingual mode when at school? Are they able to manage these modes successfully? In the monolingual classroom, where the monolingual mode favors monolingual students, the bi- and multilingual modes might influence students’ linguistic behavior in the language of schooling and put them at a disadvantage. This means that, until multilingual pupils have learnt to manage their languages successfully by being able to keep them apart according to their specific needs in an educational context, their decision processes might take longer or they might have to find alternative routes based on their particular cognitive and linguistic repertoire when confronted with certain tasks in the school context. Finally, there are parents who do not (know how to) support their child’s cognitive and physical development. Pre-literacy skills include communication and social skills that babies/toddlers ideally acquire at home (see also above), long before they develop basic literacy skills such as imitating others when they read, wanting to look at books, following a story, recognizing sounds, identifying letters and print etc. The presence or absence of such skills represent differing initial conditions that influence the literacy development of children and their educational success. 5.3.2.3 Multilingualism and multilingual literacy as an emergent property

Emergent properties in multilinguals are properties not found in monolinguals since they develop in the multilingual mind as a consequence of the interaction of all languages and non-linguistic factors, parts or elements. Emergent phenomena, which are the product of multiple interactions of elements, acquire ­properties that are different from the properties of the components of a phenomenon. (Aronin, 2019, chapter 1)

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The DMM describes such emergent effects of the multilingual mind as the M-factor or M-effect (e.g. Jessner, 2013). A trilingual person not only knows three languages, but develops abilities and skills that go beyond the three languages and that are different from the knowledge related to each single language (cf. Aronin & Jessner, 2015) and are not bilingualism plus another language either (Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015). The active use of and the continuous reflection on multiple languages can for example lead to sudden insights into the structure of languages, their function and use. A bilingual Turkish-German student, to provide one example from our classrooms, discovers in one of her Spanish classes that many expressions in Spanish resemble Turkish words. She starts investigating and discovers that Turkish has a number of French loan words that are cognates in Spanish (e.g. blouse f. – blusa sp. – bluz t.). Her metalinguistic and cross-linguistic competences develop as a function of the languages in her mind, the use of these languages and the explicit comparison of parts of speech and are therefore an ‘emergent core factor of multilingual proficiency’ (Jessner & Kramsch, 2015: 4). Multicompetence, a concept initially defined by Cook (e.g. 1992, 2002, see also Donahue, this volume) as the knowledge of more than one language in the same mind, which was refined and expanded by Cook himself and other researchers since its introduction, has to be seen as an emergent property of the multilingual mind (cf. Jessner, 2016). It relates to the M-factor, in particular to metalinguistic and cross-linguistic awareness, and can be defined as ‘the totality of differentiated abilities and competencies that multilinguals develop and refine as a function of their regular usage of multiple languages and their extensive multilingual experience’ (Hofer, 2017: 101). Hofer (2017) provides a range of examples of primary school pupils’ emerging metalinguistic awareness in the areas of phonological awareness, grammatical/structural awareness, an enhanced monitor function or the use of code-switching and code-mixing as communication strategies. Some of these skills and abilities relate directly to literacy development, e.g. phonological awareness, which denotes the ability to distinguish (similar) sounds, to discover rhymes and to develop an understanding of the relationship between sound and letter(s). These examples support one of the key assumptions of DMM, namely that multilingual acquisition processes are supported and enhanced by robust synergetic effects which emerge in experienced multilingual ­learners on account of the extensive multilingual knowledge and the heightened level of metalinguistic awareness which they accumulate as language learners and users. (Hofer & Jessner, 2016: 2)

A study carried out by Stavans (2015) explores the ways in which (multilingual) children understand and interpret different writing systems

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present in their multilingual literate environment. The author compared bilingual (Amharic-Hebrew) and monolingual (Hebrew) kindergarten children’s judgments of alphabetic and non-alphabetic sequences of signs as ‘readable’ or ‘non-readable’. Children in both groups were pre-readers/ pre-writers. The study revealed important differences between the two groups: The Ethiopian bilingual children identified more alphabetic sign sequences as ‘readable’ than the monolingual children, and the difference between the two groups was more pronounced with regards to signs from mixed and less familiar alphabets, suggesting that children who are multilingual growing up in an active or passive multilingual landscape are more exposed to different alphabets and are more likely to judge them as readable. (Stavans, 2015: 23)

The author concludes that the findings are in line with Grosjean’s (1985) definition of bilinguals as unique speaker-hearers who differ in many ways from their monolingual peers, an argument that can be extended to multilingual literacies that develop alongside spoken languages. The differences suggest an enhanced awareness of writing systems among multilingual children. Literacy in this context is interpreted by the author not as a decontextualized skill of reading and writing but as a ‘social need of the child to take ownership of actions s/he regards as part of the adult world’ (Stavans, 2015: 109). Children develop literacy knowledge and awareness of writing systems as opposed to drawings and numbers based on their interest in the environment, ‘especially when they are involved in meaningful daily activities that require using print and symbols’ and in literate environments (for an overview of studies with monolingual children see Stavans, 2015: 111). Bi- and multilingual children develop an early ability to look for the different principles involved in different writing systems, much in the same way as they listen to and compare spoken languages and discover the respective rules. 5.3.2.4 Cognitive and linguistic advantages of multilingualism and ­multilingual literacy: The role of multilingual (metalinguistic and cross-linguistic) awareness

Constantly managing two or more languages for successful multilingual communication produces a number of advantages. As many studies have shown (e.g. Bialystok, 2001; Cenoz, 2003; Jessner, 2006; Kemp, 2007; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013) enhanced metalinguistic and crosslinguistic awareness lead to a better understanding of how language(s) work(s) and facilitate further language learning. In addition to these linguistic advantages that multilinguals display, multiple language learning is connected with advantages at the cognitive level, for example in the case of tasks that involve creativity or problem-solving and language learning strategies.

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High levels of proficiency in individual languages – which includes literacy – may be one important factor in multilingual development responsible for the multilingual benefit, as Dahm and De Angelis (2018) have shown. The authors define multilingual benefit as the ‘range of advantages multiple language speakers display (...) when they engage in complex activities’ (Dahm & De Angelis, 2018: 194), e.g. in cognitively demanding tasks. A number of studies are cited that support the claim of such a multilingual advantage for language learning. In contrast to recent criticism of the multilingual benefit, the authors hold that there is enough evidence in support of such benefits in language learning and that home language literacy seems to play an important role. Furthermore, a few studies in the mathematical field support the hypothesis of a multilingual advantage, above all a literacy-related advantage, for mathematical operations (for an overview see Dahm & De Angelis, 2018: 198–199). The study involving about 600 French students aged 15 examined the multilingual benefit regarding language (English in this case) and mathematical learning, in particular the role of mother tongue literacy in these two fields. The group was divided into three subgroups depending on the language background (school multilinguals with French L1, multilinguals with and those without home-language literacy and French L2/Lx). Overall results revealed a positive role of home language literacy for both language and mathematical achievement when SES (in this case, maternal and paternal education as indicators of socioeconomic status) was controlled. Developing (multilingual) literacy involves a number of skills and cognitively demanding activities that include reading, writing (e.g. using different alphabets) and manipulating content. Children ‘begin to understand that language is a system made of arbitrary symbols, and that each language has its own structure’ (Dahm & De Angelis, 2018: 209). Apart from that, children also develop vocabulary in different languages, the skills to communicate with people in these languages and the strategies to decide with whom to speak which language (see also language learning, language management and language maintenance skills in Herdina & Jessner, 2002). All these language activities are related to literacy development and enhance problem-solving and communication strategies. The authors conclude that ‘it should come to no surprise that children who go through literacy development in more than one language show an added benefit in learning’ (Herdina & Jessner, 2002: 210). 5.4 Developing Multilingualism and Multilingual Literacy in Elementary and Primary Education in Austria 5.4.1 Linguistic and cultural diversity in Austria

Although the official or national language of the Republic of Austria is Standard German, the linguistic situation of Austria is much more

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complex. The country is characterized by a great number of dialects that may differ widely from one region, valley or village to another. Additionally, seven minority languages are officially recognized as such by the Austrian Constitution, some of them spoken by autochthonous minority groups (e.g. Slovene, Hungarian, Croatian). Languages used by immigrants are not recognized as minority languages although the migrant groups speaking them might be quite numerous. This is the case of Farsi, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Turkish, Arabic, to name but a few languages that mirror the country’s long history of labor migration and the arrival of refugees. The great number of dialects and the presence of many different minority groups are ‘an ever-present reminder that the country’s history is deeply rooted in multilingualism and multiculturalism’ (ÖSZ, BMUKK and BMWF, 2008: 5). Thus, ‘Austria’s complex linguistic situation offers unmatched opportunities for creative innovation, while its equally complex educational structures should be seen as a bracing challenge rather than an insuperable obstacle’ (ÖSZ, BMUKK and BMWF, 2008: 6). Linguistic diversity has become a defining feature in most classrooms across Europe. In Austrian kindergartens and schools, there is an evergrowing number of individuals for whom the country’s official language is an additional language. According to statistical data (MedienServicestelle Neue Österreicher/innen, 2017), in 2015/16 the share of children of migrant background in nurseries and kindergartens amounted to 30.6%. In the same school year, 23.8% of the pupils attending Austrian educational institutions had a family language other than German, while in the capital city of Vienna, the number of minority language speakers in schools amounted to 49,7% in 2016. Even though these numbers are partly based on nationality and not on linguistic criteria, they do reveal part of the diversity present in educational institutions (for a critical discussion of statistical data recollection and interpretation see Vetter & Janik, 2019). In a number of official documents, for example in the Austrian Language Education Policy Profile (LEPP) presented to the European Council in 2009, Austria professes support of multilingualism and linguistic diversity and defines multilingualism as one of the primary goals of Austrian language education. At the same time, studies indicate that plurilingual learners in OECD-countries face more obstacles for their academic success than those who are categorized as monolingual students (see https://www. oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/). In Austria, speakers of languages other than German are overrepresented in Special Education, as 33.2% of the pupils attending Special Education Schools come from migrant families, but only 18.5% (Medien Servicestelle Neue Österreicher/innen, 2017) of pupils in higher education are from

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minority communities. These figures seem to indicate that educators associate low proficiency in German in multilingual students with cognitive deficits (see also Jessner & Mayr-Keiler, 2018b). In the Austrian educational context, the role of German as the language of education is regarded as pivotal to literacy development and educational success, whereas multilingual literacy is not perceived as a strategic resource to achieve educational goals. There are, however, official documents that support multilingualism and multilingual teaching approaches and a considerable number of interesting projects and programs, some of which will be described in what follows. 5.4.2 Multilingualism and multilingual literacy in official documents of Austrian elementary and primary education

In elementary education, multilingual approaches are explicitly encouraged in the official document of the Austrian Ministry of Education ‘Bildungsplan-Anteil zur sprachlichen Förderung in elementaren Bildungseinrichtungen’ (Compendium on linguistic support in elementary education) published in 2009 by the Charlotte Bühler Institut, which delineates pedagogical attitudes and teaching methods related to language and literacy development in kindergarten children. A short overview of early bi- and multilingualism in the document highlights the fact that children’s first languages have to be respected and developed alongside German, and a number of activities that encourage the use of all the languages present in the kindergarten are presented. In the section on literacy, the authors underline the necessity to support the development of multilingual literacy in children through a rich environment that offers children’s books, written and digital documents, signs etc. in different languages and different scripts (Charlotte Bühler Institut, 2009: 37–43). In primary school, one of the basic measures implemented to support bi- and multilingualism is the supplementary teaching of children’s mother tongue (muttersprachlicher Unterricht), a preventive action based on the assumption that developing language proficiency and literacy in the first language results in stronger proficiency and literacy development in a second language (see also Dahm & De Angelis, 2018; for more information see www.schule-mehrsprachig.at). The regulations regarding classes in home languages also include the possibility to offer team teaching for bilingual classes in German and another L1 in schools with bigger groups of home language speakers – which might be Turkish in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg or Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian in Vienna. Principles and goals in school curricula include intercultural and multilingual education as well as education for peace and understanding. Regarding multilingual education in primary schools, the curriculum

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proposes the encouragement of remarks made in the students’ first languages, emphasizes language comparison exercises and stipulates that other languages should be incorporated in (German) lesson plans. 5.4.3 Multilingual and multilingual literacy approaches in kindergarten and primary school – good practice examples

There is a wealth of projects and programs across Austria that target multilingual and multi-literate students and aim at enhancing their educational success. We will point out three of them to illustrate multilingual literacy efforts at the level of the classroom, the curriculum and of school development. 5.4.3.1 Kleine Bücher – Mini books

Cummins (e.g. 2006) developed the idea of identity texts, creative academic texts through which immigrant students display their multilingual literacy expertise by drawing on their linguistic repertoires and cultural resources. As students share their texts with peers, teachers and parents, they receive positive identity affirmation (cf. Prasad, 2018). Kleine Bücher – Mini books is a project carried out by primary school Ortnergasse in Vienna (http://www.schule-mehrsprachig.at/index.php?id=342). In this Viennese primary school, children are encouraged to invent and illustrate stories and write the texts in their home language(s) and in German. The size of the book and the number of pages are given. The books are then displayed in the school and classrooms so that all children can read them. The Kleine Bücher can be related to identity texts re-affirming minoritized students’ linguistic and cultural identity. 5.4.3.2 Curriculum Mehrsprachigkeit – Multilingualism Curriculum (Reich & Krumm, 2013)

The Multilingualism Curriculum elaborated by Reich and Krumm (2013) seeks to achieve an inclusive approach to language learning in school settings. It is based on the Austrian school curricula and aims at enhancing students’ language awareness, i.e. their capacity to reflect on their own languages and the role of languages in the world, the linguistic knowledge and skills necessary in a multilingual world and their language learning strategies. At a more general level, it promotes autonomous and goal-oriented learning, the development of individual linguistic repertoires and critical thinking. The curriculum refers to language experiences gathered at home, through the use of new media and in formal school settings. This ensures that even those languages that are not normally taught in Austrian schools yet have a crucial place in students’ biographies are seen

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as important resources for personality development and content acquisition. Language learning processes are viewed as individual paths to multilingualism which can provide a bridge between formal and informal learning as well as adult learning. (http://oesz.at/download/cm/ CurriculumMehrsprachigkeit2011.pdf: 2)

The Multilingualism Curriculum was developed to assist the Austrian LEPP process (see above) and refers to all education levels of the Austrian school system. The learning activities proposed are subsumed under three headings or areas: • Perceiving and Managing Multilingual Situations. • Knowledge about Languages, which, at later stages, is subdivided into two areas: Comparing Languages and Analysis of Social and Cultural Aspects of Language. • Acquiring Learning Strategies. At the primary level, to give some examples, students are invited to engage with language variants and languages in their environment through creative activities and active learning. Teachers are encouraged to explore topics in various languages, to include reading and writing competences of those children who are literate in other languages than German and to experiment with different scripts. 5.4.3.3 Five Building Blocks of holistic multilingual education

The Five Building Blocks approach of holistic multilingual education is based on the assumption that majority language teaching, German in the Austrian case, and language development in general can never be successful in a subtractive school context, i.e. when languages other than German are excluded from the learning process. The Building Blocks can be used as a planning tool for teaching, as a basic structure for school development in the area of majority language support and multilingualism, or as a tool for reflection in teacher training. The concept was elaborated by teachers and researchers, including some from the DyME group, on behalf of the educational authorities of the province of Vorarlberg (see www.sprachelesen. vobs.at > Sprache > 5 Bausteine). Figure 5.1 illustrates the Five Building Blocks of multilingual literacy: diversity, multilingualism, German, language awareness/language learning awareness and concepts/world knowledge and experience. They are all interconnected, and each of them can serve as a starting point in a given teaching context and lead to the exploration of the others. • Diversity – religious, cultural, social, economic, individual – is an everyday reality in Austrian schools. Diverse experiences, places of birth, languages, daily routines, concepts and life styles are a resource

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Figure 5.1  Five Building Blocks of holistic multilingual education (adapted from Allgäuer-Hackl et al., 2018: 4)

for rather than a hindrance to learning. The module addresses (new) perceptions and attitudes towards diversity in the classroom (see sociocultural literacy). • Multilingualism is based on several principles: one basic concept is to ensure that all languages students bring to school and all the school languages are connected with each other and with subject teaching in such a way that previous (language and literacy) knowledge can be integrated in the classroom. Multilingual teaching and learning respects and promotes all the languages and their speakers and promotes selfesteem and motivation to learn other languages. Another principle is home language teaching, still another is cooperation with parents and the school environment (e.g. library, associations in the village or town) to support bi- and multilingual upbringing (see multilingual literacy, multiliteracies). • German: Most children grow up with variants of German or other languages than German, but in school they have to use standard German. A growing number of parents are not able to accompany their children’s language and literacy development. And educational success or failure does not depend on oral skills in German but on the increasing demands that the use of decontextualized academic language places on students when confronted with subject matter in German. • Language awareness and metalinguistic/cross-linguistic awareness aims at promoting the awareness of languages and their role in society, the awareness of linguistic systems and the awareness of similarities

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and differences in the languages the students know. This module also includes language learning awareness across languages. • Concepts based on world knowledge/experience gathered in the family and early childhood: This module, placed in the middle, constitutes the main focus of the Five Building Blocks concept of teaching and learning. It is related to all other modules and invites teachers to critically analyze and assess the children’s basic concepts that are relevant to the content they are dealing with. One example shall illustrate the last module in more detail. Mathematical operations are often formulated in text form so that a primary school child might be confronted with a text like this: Family Müller spend their holidays in a spa in Styria. On Sunday, they go skiing and take the chair lift to the highest peak, Mondspitze. 575 people go skiing to the same place, whereas 345 take the chair lift to the other peak, the Sonnenkopf. How many more skiers are there on the Mondspitze? An analysis of the text shows that several of the concepts relate to experiences of Austrian (upper) middle class families: spa, skiing, cable car, chair lift, Styria (if the child lives in another province of Austria), that is, these words and their semantic meaning will represent an obstacle for all children with different experiences to realize the mathematical operation. Neither German structures nor mathematical knowledge is the core problem here. Rather the pupils might be confronted with missing or differing concepts and experiences linked to socioeconomic and/or linguistic background. In this case, teachers would ideally have to provide hands-on experience in order to clarify the concepts before proceeding to the mathematical operation. This relates to Cummins (2000), who also points to conceptual transfer as a major part of the CUP developed in bi- and multilingual literacy. Conceptual knowledge, if developed in one language, can help to make input in the other language comprehensible. The Five Building Blocks can be related to the Multilingualism Curriculum described above and to the plurilingual whole school curriculum projects developed at a European level outlined below. 5.4.3.4 PlurCur, a European project to promote whole language approaches and multilingual literacy

A holistic and integrative perspective was also adopted by the ECML project on plurilingual whole school curricula PlurCur© (www.ecml.at/ plurcur) and the Erasmus+ project Plur>E, both based on previous work by Hufeisen (e.g. 2011a, 2011b), whose initial idea was to make space for more languages, implement bilingual subject teaching and include the family languages that students bring to school to a greater extent. The main aims of plurilingual whole school curricula are the ‘systematic and structured inclusion of more languages’ on the one hand and the ‘taking

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into account of language in and across all subjects to a greater extent’ (Allgäuer-Hackl et al., 2017: 7) on the other across all levels of the educational system. In order to achieve this, a range of suggestions are made that include ‘cross-language, cross-subject and cross-year teaching’ (p. 8) as well as project teaching and a focus on teaching the majority language as an academic language (for a detailed description, research projects and examples from schools see Allgäuer-Hackl et al., 2017). There are a number of other related approaches to multilingual (plurilingual) teaching and learning that include multilingual literacy which have been developed at a European level, in France and in Canada. Interested readers are referred to: Cummins (2017) on teaching for transfer; Moore (2006) on plurilingualism and schools; Hélot et al. (2018) on language awareness approaches in European schools; the CARAP/FREPA project at the ECML (https://carap.ecml.at/) and the activities of the EDiLiC international association (https://www.edilic.org/), as initiated by Candelier. 5.5 Outlook: Opportunities and Challenges

Linguistic diversity is one of the most preeminent consequences of the current migratory movements with far-reaching implications for human society. The use of two or more languages within one community creates multilingual realities that are often experienced as challenging. Multilingualism can be a challenge, yet if properly navigated it may also serve as a source of social and economic growth and development. As discussed in this chapter, multilingual literacy is not only a cornerstone for political empowerment, it also represents the basic prerequisite for peaceful coexistence. The most efficient form of support is via the educational system. But this support needs to be informed by a holistic approach to multilingualism (see also Jessner & Mayr-Keiler, 2018a, 2018b). If we want to reach a better understanding of emergent (multilingual) literacy we need to focus on multilingualism from a DMM-perspective in order to be able to link socio- and psycholinguistic levels of analysis and at the same time approach superdiversity in a number of contexts. Examples of such an approach adopted in an Austrian context have been presented in this chapter in section 5.4.3, particularly in the Five Building Blocks of holistic multilingual education. The main future challenge consists in recognizing the complexity and the dynamics of the variables that are involved in the development of multilingual speakers and in creating a supportive educational environment and a change of attitude towards education. Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Kerstin Mayr-Keiler and Valentina Török for their time, support and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

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Online Resources CARAP/FREPA. Retrieved from https://carap.ecml.at/ EDiLiC. Retrieved from https://edilic.org Medien—Servicestelle Neue Österreicher/innen (2017). Retrieved from http:// medienservicestelle.at/migration_bewegt/2017/02/21/mehrsprachigkeit-inbildungseinrichtungen-nimmt-zu/ Curriculum Mehrsprachigkeit. Retrieved from http://oesz.at/download/cm/Curriculum Mehrsprachigkeit2011.pdf OECD. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/ Kleine Bücher – Mini Books. Retrieved from http://www.schule-mehrsprachig.at Five Building Blocks. Online version retrieved from http://www.sprachelesen.vobs.at

6 ‘He Just Does Not Write Enough For It’ – Literacy Practices Among Polish Adolescents in Ireland Malgorzata Machowska-Kosciak

This chapter investigates literacy socialization of one Polish immigrant adolescent attending both Polish heritage language school and English mainstream post-primary school in Ireland. The focus is on how second language literacy socialization goals affect this young person’s identity negotiation through his literacy practices as he grows up in a multilingual environment and try to find his place in a new country and society (cf. Norlund Shaswar, this volume). A particular focus is on second language literacy socialization and one’s emotional world. This study examines the ways in which emotions are being recognized and displayed through literacy practice. This paper is a part of the longitudinal study (five years) involving four students and their families, some of whom also attended Polish weekend schools in addition to mainstream secondary schools. The theoretical and analytical approach combines Ethnography of Communication approach to data collection and field work (participant home and school observations, audiorecordings of children’s interactions with their peers, their teachers and parents, open-ended interviews, children’s samples of written work) with Discourse Analysis approaches (Davis & Harre, 1990; Duff, 1995; Harre & Langenhove, 1999; Ochs & Capps, 2001). The results of the analysis are interpreted through the lenses of language socialization theoretical framework– ‘cultural apprenticeship into a community’s values, social positions and identities’, which are linked with locally formed literacy practices (Garrett Baquedano-López, 2002; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986; Sterponi, 2011. This micro-analysis of literacy language socialization is contextualized within a more holistic account of the Polish community in Ireland (Singleton, 2007) – a community culturally shaped by, and in turn shaping, wider societal and educational ideologies, values and power relations. 123

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6.1 Introduction

Socialization within a given language includes not only oral and written forms but also different genres, registers, speech acts and the social meanings they index, which are diverse by nature. As Roberts (2009) (in Duff, 2009) suggests, this diversification naturally increases when individuals move from home to school uses of language, and then into a vocational, professional, more technical or other specialized social sphere of language use (Roberts, in press). LS perspective on literacy entails not only ‘a set of cognitive and motor skills but also cultural apprenticeship into a community’s values. It underlines historical and cultural nature of literacy, social positions and identities that are related to locally shaped literacy practice (Sterponi, 2011). In Bourdieu’s terms a ‘literacy habitus’ is a set of historically contingent and culturally suited organizing principles that shape individual engagement with text. As Duff notes, when we are dealing with immigrants, we need to remember that we are dealing with adults or children who ‘already possess a repertoire of linguistic, discursive and cultural traditions and community affiliations’ (2007: 310). For example, it may happen that individuals are not sharing the same discourses in use because they may lack the background knowledge about new culture or current events in a given sociocultural context (see Duff, 2003: 324–326). In that case, their written/linguistic repertoire would not include certain so called ‘common knowledge discourses in use’ making it impossible to express their opinion on the given topic. It may also happen that immigrants may experience emotional chaos or feelings of anxiety while their, often contradictory, goals develop. As evidence elsewhere suggests, immigrants remain involved in their primary communities (family and friends they have left); in turn, this requires more and more compromises to be made on logistical and ideological grounds (Duff, 2009). In this paper, I attempt to take a closer look at emotions and the way they are expressed through L2, specifically during literacy activities. 6.2 Theoretical Background for the Analysis of Literacy

As Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez (2002: 344) note, the development of ‘practice theory [Bourdieu] was a crucial element in the language socialization research paradigm’s formulation, providing a strong but flexible framework for its routine-based and activity-based analytic approaches’. Community of practice theory presumes particular activities and interactions to be performed on a regular basis by members of any community (as a part of human sociality). Taking on LS research perspectives allows researchers to examine the nature of those interactions and socializing routines. This focus is rooted in ethnomethodology and the works of Garfinkel (1967 and Heritage (1987), and on the

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assumption that cultural knowledge is implicit – that is, is a part of ‘practical consciousness’ but not ‘discursive consciousness’ (Giddens, 1979) – and therefore is not explicitly reflected upon and spoken about. Thus, an analysis of the everyday routine allows an individual engaged in the LS process to gain this ‘background’ (implicit) knowledge about what guides and organizes different social activities that individuals often perform but rarely speak about openly (see Garrett & BaquedanoLopez, 2002: 343). LS research is concerned with the negotiated character of the routine and the activity and, in consequence, with its potential for change and innovation/improvement. Therefore, within the context of LS, routine is perceived as being socially constructed, negotiated, situated and contextually grounded and, in this way, LS research can be regarded as following from/reflecting ‘practice theory’ and notion of ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1980). Literacy, in that light, is a crucial unit of analysis in language socialization research (Garett & Baquedano-Lopez, 2002; Chaiklin & Lave, 1993; Engeström, 1987). It provides grounds for examination of how novices and ‘experts’ engage each other in ‘emergent’, ‘situated interactions’, many of which are routinized to some degree. Within these negotiated and constructed interactions, participants cooperatively engage/activate their cultural knowledge through practices as well as through emotions and affective stances (Schieffelin, 1990) and moral and normative evaluations. Literacy activities are embedded in the wider sociocultural context/structure from which they derive their significance for those who perform/or participate in them. Activities, then, provide ‘the raw materials of empirical analysis and serve as windows on underlying principles of social organization and cultural orientation’ (Schieffelin, 1990: 181). 6.3 Language, Identity and Emotions

Identity can be seen as fluid, dynamic and discursively created according to the cultural systems in which people are located both spatially and temporally. Thus, when a second language and culture are being socialized, they must inevitably change one’s sense of self as new norms and cultural and linguistic patterns are being observed. This process can also affect individuals’ emotional systems to a great extent. This is because, across different communities, individuals are expected to recognize and display emotions in culturally defined ways and according to local norms and preferences (Garrett & Baquedano-Lopez, 2002). For example, ‘affect’ is linguistically mediated and permeates/infiltrates talk, incorporating/infusing words with emotional orientations (Ochs, 1986, 1988; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1984. In the context of bilingualism, it may happen that one language can turn out to be incompatible with one’s emotional world. For example, when Wierzbicka (2004: 100, in Auer & Wei, 2007) refers to her own personal

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experience of emotionality while talking about her baby granddaughter, she confesses that English does not have the same emotional force that Polish has for her. She also adds that English lacks exact semantic equivalents of words used in Polish to talk about babies, and therefore in this context Polish feels irreplaceable (Wierzbicka, 2004: 100, in Auer & Wei, 2007). This raises the following questions: ‘Do bilinguals feel different people when speaking different languages?’ (Pavlenko, 2006: 1). Do they experience inner conflicts? Consider this example: I wait for the spontaneous flow of inner language which used to be my night-time talk with myself … Nothing comes. Polish, in short time, has atrophied, shriveled from sheer uselessness. Its words don’t apply to my new experiences … In English; words have not penetrated to those layers of my psyche from which a private conversation could proceed. (Besemeres, 1998: 107)

In the above example, it is evident that the person (Eva Hoffman, emigrated at 13 from Poland to Canada) is experiencing an inner conflict, and that one language is considered to have more of an emotional hold than the other. In her book, Hoffman (1991) reported that her inner speech seems to be mostly in English; however, Polish expressions always emerge automatically in emotional situations. She also reported experiencing some duality, being two different people within herself depending on which language she is using. Her ‘Polish self’ is ‘romantic’, whereas her ‘English self’ is more ‘pragmatic, rational’. A similar experience is recounted by Tzvetan Todorov (1994) and Julian Green, both of whom have reflected on their sensitivity to intrinsic links between languages and selves. They both recall that they are fully aware that their voices sound differently in two different languages, even though telling the same story (Pavlenko, 2006: 1–6). Correspondingly, Pavlenko (2002: 111) argues that second languages that are learned and socialized after puberty may not have the same emotional impact. As Dewaele (2007: 122) points out, it is a fact that there is the strong emotional power and the emotional connotations of a first language in bilingual individuals; however, it is possible that for some bilinguals, languages learnt later in life may gain the same emotional hold as that learnt in their childhood. 6.4 Nature and Scope of the Present Study

This paper is a part of a larger longitudinal study that took place in the years of 2009–2015. The research described in this paper explored and documented the experiences of the Polish children currently living in Ireland. The focus was on how heritage language socialization (Polish) goals affect these children’s identity negation as they grow up

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Table 6.1  Participants of the longitudinal study Student participants

Parent participants

Teacher participants

Case I EMS • Kasia (14)

• Agata • Adam

Peter (previous English teacher) Debra (current English teacher) Ann (Maths’ Teacher)

Case II EMS +PWS • Wiktoria (14)

• Ala • Rafal

Gretta (ESOL teacher ) • Danuta (Teacher of Polish PWS)

Case III EMS +PWS • Janek (15)

• Ewa • Marek

Paul-Maths teacher Ann-English teacher • Adam-teacher of Polish language and Culture (PWS)

Case IV EMS • Marcin (13)

• Anna • Patryk

• Debbie (Primary school teacher)

Table 6.2  Range of data collected for each case including Janek’s case Audio recordings

Observations conducted in schools and students homes

9.85 h

96 h

Wiktoria

6.81 h

152 h

Case III EMS + PWS Janek

8.65 h

198 h

7.53 h

88 h

Case Study Case I EMS Kasia Case II EMS + PWS

Case IV EMS Marcin

in multilingual environment and try to find their place in a new country and society. The main participants of this longitudinal study were four Polish immigrant children aged 13–15. Their parents and teachers constitute two additional informant groups. Table 6.1 above provides brief information with respect to these participants, their families and teachers. Table 6.2 provides information about the range of data collected. This paper, however, examines the ways in which one of the participants (Janek) constructed his literacy practices in the second language. This involves an examination of his own ‘literacy practice’ across communities of practices to which he belongs, such as family and the wider school communities. The teacher’s and Janek’s own subjective interpretation of his behaviours and language practices is seen as crucial to understanding second language literacy socialization experience. 6.5 Methodology

Ethnographic methods along with discourse analysis methodologies were employed in this study of identity. They provided a set of methods

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for conducting the present research as well as provided the grounds for emic and etic analysis of communication/discourse. The theoretical framework that underpins this approach to data collection and analysis draws upon Hymes (1972) and Schiffrin (1994), a discursive psychology that examines ‘talk’ as social action. The style of data collection and analysis focuses on exploring and collecting wide range of materials such as without being constraint by a specific hypothesis (Potter & Edwards, 2001). Scholars such as Anne De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou (2007, 2015) propose to re-analyse narrative as an interactive practice by which interlocutors elicit, explain, justify, tell, solve problems or establish cultural norms, ideologies, values and negotiate their identities. Therefore, transcripts were coded for narratives and small stories following on work of Ochs and Capps (2001) and Georgakoupolou (2007) and translated into English. Interviews with English mainstream teachers were conducted in English. As Georgakopoulou (2016) further explains, ‘small stories research was developed to account conceptually and analytically for a range of narrative activities that had not been sufficiently studied nor had their importance for the interlocutors’ identity work been recognized’. These include fragmented and openended tellings without a specific beginning, middle or end. They are often heavily co-constructed, ‘rendering the sole teller’s story ownership problematic’ (Georgakoolu, 2016: 266). As Duranti (2005: 421) states ‘small stories research has been intended as a model for, not a model of narrative analysis’. Georgakoolu (2016) suggests that in the instances of ‘small stories’ structure is sequentially based and evolving. Thus, narratives in the present study are considered to be all kinds of short stories/storylines cooperatively produced/constructed by participants and interlocutors (including the researcher herself). They include spontaneous retrospective accounts of past events or narrative activities related to present or future events real or hypothetical Additionally, discourse analysis was considered to be a suitable analytic and linguistic tool having potential for unravelling language socialization practices inherent in the audio material collected. Data triangulation was used in order to ascertain participants’ perspectives on their own linguistic and cultural practices. All audio recordings were transcribed for analysis. The analytic role of the interviews in this study was to learn about the ways the Polish children (including Janek) use and socialize their languages and cultures, and how this is shaped in and by the given community of practice (including both home and educational context). This analytical process was informed by speech acts and actions (social acts) with a particular focus on stance taking, (both affective and epistemic stance taking), social identity construction as it is negotiated over certain period of time further following on works such as (Goodwin, 2000; Kiesling, 2009; Ochs, 1996; Ochs & Capps, 2001).

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Table 6.3  Language conditions in the two educational contexts Monolingual educational Context 1

Bilingual/enriched educational Context 2

English mainstream school only (EMS)

Polish Weekend School Plus English mainstream school PWS + EMS

6.6 Research Design, Participants and Educational Contexts Studied

Two broad educational contexts, English speaking Mainstream Schools; (EMS) and Polish Weekend School English Mainstream Schools (PWS + EMS) are represented in this case study. Table 6.3 briefly outlines the two language educational contexts examined. 6.7 Janek – Heritage Language Enriched Context

Janek attended both Polish Weekend School (PWS) and Junior High School (EMS). In Baker’s taxonomy (2006) this type of context is considered as heritage bilingual education as it aims to foster the minority language and culture in the child. Polish weekend schools in Ireland do not only hope to maintain their students’ language skills, but also to develop Polish language skills to full proficiency and full bi-literacy adequately to child’s age (enriched bilingual education). The scope of the curriculum is, however, limited to a few hours per week delivered on Saturdays or Sundays. Polish weekend schools differ from heritage language bilingual education since Polish children do not use their native language in their mainstream schools as medium of instruction as opposed to indigenous/heritage immersion programmes described by Baker (2006: 238). Polish heritage language education takes place through weekend supplemental schools in Ireland (supported by the Polish government) and is restricted to one day tuition per week. The Polish Weekend School represented in this study is among other schools of this type in Ireland. The Polish Weekend School (Szkolny Punkt Konsultacyjny) operate in accordance with Polish legislation and are supported by the Polish government; albeit in a limited way. The reasoning behind such support is set out in the legislation relating basic curriculum for Polish diaspora children (see ORPEG, Ośrodek Rozwoju Edukacji Polskiej za Granicą). It is underlined there that through offering and promoting first-hand cultural connection between the Polish Diaspora and the ‘Ojczyzna’ [Mother Nation], children will have a greater possibility of finding their own place back in the Polish society in the future as well as in the employment market. Polish Weekend Schools operate in accordance with National Polish School standards. They

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connect a local Polish migrant community with the Polish education system back in Poland, providing a link between an individual’s personal past and first-hand cultural and linguistic experience. This cultural experience is strengthened by extra-curricular events. Age groups range from Pre-primary (Przedszkole, 3–6), Primary (Szkola Podstawowa, 6–13 years) and Lower Secondary General (Gimnazjum, 13–16 years). Higher Secondary General (Szkoła Średnia). Older students are taught 5 curricular subjects such as Polish language and literature, Polish history, religion, mathematics, geography. Each subject is taught through Polish by exclusively Polish teachers all qualified in Poland and holding third level degrees in their subject area. It is worth noting that while Polish Weekend Schools prepare students for Polish state exams, they opt for this option very occasionally. 6.8 Janek and His Literacy Practices

The excerpts in this section come from Janek and his teachers. They are examples of Janek’s second language literacy skills socialization, illustrating the ways in which Janek discursively constructed his own understandings of problems experienced with literacy development in L2. In these excerpts he was interviewed by the researcher in his own home. Additionally, his English teacher transcripts are provided and analysed. Interviews with Polish adolescents and their parents and teachers (including Janek) from PWS were conducted in Polish, transcribed in Polish and then coded. The initial coding followed Charmaz (2006) Grounded Theory protocol subsequently, transcripts were coded for narratives and small stories (Georgakopolou, 2007; Ochs & Capps, 2001) and translated into English. Interviews with English mainstream teachers were conducted in English. The role of the interviews was to learn about the ways the Polish children use and socialize their languages and how this is shaped in and by the given community of practice (including educational context). In particular, narratives during interviews were very important as they appeared in children’s stories recurrently, whenever the chance to talk about them occurred. They included events from the distant or more recent past, or were concerning retrospective accounts of different situations, generalizations, assessments or justifications of particular behaviours. While many narratives were constructed by co-participants (including researcher in the form of interviews or children parents) there was, however, a significant number of narratives that were spontaneous in nature and were often initiated by participants themselves. The analysis of the recordings focuses on learning how the producers of the words view and experience their social worlds and how these views and experiences fit into existing literature on language socialization (Bogdan & Biklen, 2006). It is believed that

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this approach can provide broader ways of understanding students’ experiences and feelings by analysing not only what is being said but ‘through the social construction and apprehension of meanings created during the discourse’ (Berg, 2009: 353). 6.9 Janek – ‘He Just Does Not Write Enough For It’

Janek often raised the theme of being uncomfortable with ‘writing longer texts in English’. He also often compared his written skills in Polish and in English. The following excerpts exposed Janek’s stances in relation to his literacy skills in English and Polish. ‘G’ stands for a researcher. Excerpt TJ761-768: 761 G: To dobra. + Y::m czy jest coś tutaj w Irlandii, że to sprawia, że czasami nie lubisz szkoły? Czyli masz na przykład jakieś przedmioty których nie lubisz+. [Right. + Y :: m is there anything here in Ireland that makes you dislike the school sometimes? So, for example, do you have any subjects that you don’t like+.] 762 J: Tak, angielski. [Yes, English.] 763 G: Angielski. + Dlaczego? [English. + Why?] 764 J: No bo musze pisać te dłu::gie rzeczy i jeszcze + [It’s because I have to write these lo::ng things and even more] 765 G: I masz [y::] [And do you have [y::]] 766 J: [Długie-długie odpowiedzi w ogóle pisać trzeba + zamiast tak ściśle. [You need to write long-long answers and all + instead of writing (scientifically/briefly/ up to the point)] 767 G: Ehym. + A masz z tym właśnie trudności. [Ehym. + And you’re having difficulties just with this.] 768 J: Tak. [Yes.]

In this excerpt, Janek mentions that he does not like English because writing in English entails composing long/extensive texts, he says: ‘musze pisać te dłu::gie rzeczy i jeszcze’ or ‘długie odpowiedzi w ogóle pisać trzeba + zamiast tak ściśle’ [It’s because I have to write these lo::ng things and even more + instead of writing briefly]. Janek displays his affective stance in this excerpt by using a modal verb ‘have to’ (deontic modality, Leech, 2003. He expresses and emphasizes the strong obligation caused by external circumstances. Moreover, he puts emphatic stress on the word ‘dłu::gie’ [long] to further emphasize his point.

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By emphasizing the necessity of writing longer texts in English, Janek is constructing a negative affective stance towards writing in English. He further explains his standpoint in the following description of classroom writing activities. Excerpt TJ802-806: 802 J: Wszyscy-znaczy się rozmawiam i nagle wszystko cichnie i ja dalej siedzę przez tych jakieś dziesięć minut. Potem dopiero ja się rozglądam wszyscy coś piszą i ja musze dopytać co się dzieje. + A oni mówią, że jakiś esej mamy pisać. Everybody – I mean, I’m talking and suddenly everybody goes silent and I’m still sitting for some ten minutes. Only then I look around (to realize that) everyone is writing something and I have to find out what is happening. + And they say that we have an essay to write.] 803 G: A ty siedzisz. [And you’re sitting.] 804 J: A ja rozmyślam ... [And I wonder …] 805 G: I jak tutaj-to fajne to było uczucie czy takie nie bardzo? [And – was this a good feeling or not really?] 806 J: Bardziej takie + e:m + takie dyskomfortowe, bo nie wiedziałem o czym w ogóle mam pisać. Każdy już był zajęty pisaniem, więc.+ [It was rather + e:m + quite uncomfortable, because I did not know what about I’m going to write at all/I had no idea what to write about. Everyone was already busy with writing, so.+]

In this excerpt, Janek does not mention an actual technical difficulty writing texts in English it is rather not sharing the discourse in use/not being able to find and reflect upon the topic that is causing difficulties. In particular, he reflectively positions himself by talking about in a situation in which he was unable to complete an assigned task (write an essay) because of not knowing what to write. He revealed that the situation made him feel [quite] uncomfortable; however, the discursive features of this narrative point to ‘confusion’ and lack of ability to participate in an activity; as Janek comments on the situation: ‘a ja siedzie:; siedze’ [I’m sitting and sitting] or ‘i nagle wszystko cichnie i ja dalej siedze przez tych jakieś dziecięć minut’ [and suddenly everybody goes silent and I’m still sitting for some ten minutes]. Janek intentionally uses linguistic means to emphasize a word ‘siedzę’ [sitting] three times in this excerpt. He repeats this word to affectively index the length of time spent wondering and not knowing what to do. Intensifiers such as ‘wszyscy’ [everybody] and ‘wszystko’ [everything], ‘w ogóle’ [at all]; ‘nagle’ [suddenly] or the discourse quantifier ‘dziesięć minut’ [ten minutes] are used to reflectively construct a negative affective stance towards this activity. What is more,

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Janek’s English teacher initiated the topic of writing ‘limited’ texts on numerous occasions. She was not expressing her concerns with regard to the ‘correctness’ of his texts, but the limited character of his essays/compositions or stories. She expressed her doubts on numerous occasions, as she was not sure whether the situation was caused by lack of ability or factors connected to Janek’s personality (see following excerpts). Excerpt TE30: TE 30: [I think he’s only been you know I think he’s very smart. I think you know+ now not only English+ No PROBlems, + Again he’s only thing is I’m trying to get him to give a little bit more information, elaborate a little bit more. He’ll give the answer, but you know sometimes in English you have to talk about well] [Offering opinion of a novel or a poem + yes he can do that, again it’s just limited in what he’d say ‘I liked it because’ and he gives a little reason, and I say but WHY did you like it? you know so it’s a – he needs to take this a step further. I am not sure whether it’s to do with ability or so he wouldn’t be terribly interested + it does not appeal to him].

In this excerpt Janek’s teacher comments about Janek’s general qualities, as she considers him to be ‘smart’ not only with regard to English as a subject but in a more general sense. However, she points out that she is having some difficulties getting him to write more. She expresses her doubts about whether Janek writing short answers is due to lack of abilities, lack of interest or that the assigned tasks are not appealing to him. In next excerpt she further illustrates her point: TE 47: It’s not this, he’s only thing I think it’s his personality he’s well able to describe feelings, experiences, reactions, but he just does not write enough for it – and I don’t think it’s the lack of ability, it’s just his personality.

Janek’s teacher offers her assumptions with regard to the ‘limited/ brief’ nature of his assignments. She makes the presupposition that the fact that he writes short answers is due to his personality. She demonstrates a high level of certainty through the epistemic stances that she takes here, as she reflectively assesses Janek as being ‘well able’, or by stating: ‘I think it’s his personality’ or ‘I don’t think it’s the lack of ability’. She also uses a discourse marker ‘just’ to trivialize the problem/ issue (of the limited length of Janek’s texts). In the following excerpt, Janek makes a comparison between his written skills in Polish and English

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Excerpt TJ334-394: 334 J: Tak, bo jak, po polsku to mogę składać takie + ba:rdzo skomplikowane jakby zdania, a po angielsku to [+ czasami tak prosto to wychodzi raczej prosto + bez wyrazu+ [Yes, because in Polish, I can make + ve:ry complex sentences, and in English [+ sometimes the effect is rather flat/lifeless/no emotional impact .]] 391 G: Dobra. I zadanie jak robisz to też masz problem? [Right. And when you’re doing your homework are you having problems too?] 392 J: Raczej jeśli mam napisać cztery strony z angielskiego to+ [I’d say when I need to write four pages in English then+] 393 G: To jest jednak problem troche? [Then, this is, a little problem?] 394 J: Jednak tak. + Ale to raczej z:: osobistych powodow.  [Well yes. + But it’s rather because:: of my own personal reasons.]

Janek makes the point here that he can write longer ‘more complex sentences’ in Polish, whereas in English his sentences are rather ‘flat’ – without much of emotional impact. On the other hand, in Polish school things were different. His Polish teacher commented once: Excerpt: PTJ 98: 98 JT:  Janek naprawde sie udzielal przez ostanie lata. Mm + w tym roku moze mniej troszeczke, ale tak to mozna go bylo namowic do napisania czegos do gazetki szkolnej + I nawet niezle mu to szlo. W tym roku np. dzeciaki kreca filmik o szkole, Janek tylko troche sie anguzuje ale zawsze gdzies tam w poblizu jest…+ [Janek really did a lot for the last few years. Mm + this year, maybe a little bit less, but (before) it was possible to persuade him to write something for the school newspaper ... And that’s was not bad at all. This year, for example, kids are making a movie about the school, Janek is only getting a little bit involved, but somewhere in the vicinity he still is ... +]

When asked about Polish school, Janek touched upon aspect of ‘belonging’ therefore importance of meeting other Polish fellows rather than learning. Excerpt TJ101-104: 101 G:  No i jak tam w tej polskiej szkole? Pomaga Ci ten-ten-ta szkoła, żeby ten+ polskiego jakoś nie zapomnieć?@ [Yeah/Well and how’s the Polish school? Does it help you, so that you don’t forget Polish in a way?@] 102 J: Nie:: ja tam chodzę tylko, żeby się: z Polakami spotkać. [No:: I go there only because, so as to: meet with Poles.]

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103 G:  Tak? Ehym. + Czyli właściwie nie w celu jakiejś nauki większej, tylko [Yes? Ehym. +So you don’t go there really to study hard, just to] 104 J: Ehym, tylko tam siedzę i ucze się, żeby nie narzekali nauczyciele, że nic nie robię. [Ehym, I only sit there and I’m only studying (some things) so as the teachers don’t complain that I am doing nothing.]

In this excerpt Janek points to an important aspect of being part of the Polish community – being able to meet other Poles on regular basis. He openly rejects the interviewer’s proposition that he attends the Polish school in order to remember or learn about Poland or his Polish heritage. Janek explicitly states that the only reason for which he attends Polish Supplementary School is to meet with other Poles. In line 103, the interviewer repeats the question, trying to elicit more details regarding these meetings. Janek again decides to retain his claim. He exposes his investment in the claim when justifying it. He reveals that he only learns things he is told by the teachers so as to avoid their criticism (line 104). Janek’s mother provided her own perspective on Janek’s attendance of Polish weekend supplementary school (see the following excerpt): Excerpt TM 60: Więc-więc ten ostatni rok to-to ja mu powiedziałam ‘dobra Janek’, + bo poprzednio powiedział, że on już raczej nie będzie chodził już jest za stary na szkołę i te. Ja mówię’ Janek + jak ten + jak-jak nie chcesz to nie. Ja cię nie będę już zmuszać. Zrobiłeś to, co miałeś zrobić, + po co mam, tyle, co-co nauczyłeś się to już ci w życiu wystarczy. Ja:: (x), jeśli nie chcesz to nie’. + Ale na koniec rok-ale potem się okazało, że on nie, że + bo to chodziło tu o tą polską szkołę. [So-so the last year -I told him ‘Right Janek’ + because before he said that he does not think he would attend the school anymore as he is too old for the school. I say ‘Janek+ + it’s if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I’ll not force you. You did what you had to do + why will I + what you’ve learnt so far will be enough in your life. I :: (x), if you do not want to, you don’t have to. ‘+ But at the end of the year-it turned out that+ well it really was + about the Polish School itself.]

In this excerpt Janek’s mother makes the point that being part of the Polish community is a central reason sustaining Janek’s motivation to keep attending Polish Supplementary School [it is all about Polish school]. As she points out, he is not forced in any way as she evaluates Janek’s range of knowledge about Poland and his Polish language competence as ‘being sufficient’ for his future life. She says: [You have done what you were to do]. In this way she confirms that he has fulfilled her expectations with regard to education about Poland. She also expresses her surprise at the fact that Janek decided to continue

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attending the school this year as he was not sure whether he was going to continue or not. Janek often acknowledged his ‘double’ cultural and linguistic identity and also constructs a positive stance towards bilingualism. However, in certain situations he has experienced some kind of conflict, often related to emotional impact the two languages had on him. The following conversation took place a short time after the summer holidays. Janek spent about three weeks in his hometown in Poland. The interviewer initiated the theme of ‘personal changes’ that take place among people and can be spotted by the person from outside. Janek aligned with this idea and reflected on the ways he perceives his old friends in Poland now by initiating a small story/narrative about ‘cursing’ in Polish and English. In many ways he positioned himself as a ‘novice’ within emotional language of swearing that is used in Ireland. On the other hand, he reflectively positioned himself as an ‘insider’ of the Polish language. Excerpt TJ459-467: 459 G: Aha. Czyli-czyli teraz tak bardziej się interesujesz światem dookoła.[]+ Ehym. A w jaki sposób, nie wiem + postrzegasz inaczej swoich rówieśników w Polsce albo + nie wiem, w jakiś sposób inaczej o nich myślisz? Jak tam kogoś spotykasz jak jedziesz nie wiem, do babci na wakacje? [Aha. So you’re you’re you’re more interested in the world around you. [] + Ehym. And, in what way? I do not know + do you perceive your peers in Poland differently or + I do not know, do you think differently about them in some ways? When you meet someone while visiting your grandmother during holidays.] 460 J:  [Ehym] + No: to: teraz + po tym, co tutaj słyszę od Irlandczyków, to tam się zdaje, że strasznie przeklinają. [Yeah: now + after what I heard here from Irish peers it seems to me that they curse a lot there. [Ehym] + 461 G: W Polsce? [] Czyli tu mniej? [In Poland? [] That is, here less?] 462 J: [Ehym] + Chociaż tutaj też używają + pewnych słów, tylko, że dla mnie, jako Polaka, te słowa nic nie znaczą, bo jakoś ich nie przetłumaczałem sobie dosłownie, więc to są po prostu puste słowa. Sam mógłbym używać bez urazy, ale po polsku nie mógłbym raczej przeklinać, wtedy ja czuje raczej, co to znaczy. [[Ehym] + though + they use certain words here as well, but for me, as a Pole, these words mean nothing, because somehow I do not translate them literally, so these words are just empty words. I could use them with no offence, but I’d say I could not curse/swear in Polish, because I sort of feel what it means.] 463 G: Takie dziwne no nie? Trochę to jest + Bo tak jakby dogłębnie czujesz, że przeklinasz, że [wiesz, co robisz. A tutaj] to jest tak

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jakby to było takie, takie obok, takie jakby ciebie to nie dotyczyło, no nie? Coś takiego. + No::, znam to uczucie. Ehym. [That’s strange isn’t it? It is a little + Because you can feel it deeply as if, when you curse/swear [you know what you’re doing. And here] it is as if, it is so, beside you, as if it does not concern you, doesn’t it? Something like that. + :: Well, I know the feeling. Ehym.] 464 J: [Tak. A z irlandzkim tak nie jest.] + Dlatego raczej mi nie przeszkadza jak (x) klną co drugie słowo. [[Yes. And with Irish it’s not like that.] + So I sort of don’t mind if they curse every second word.] 465 G: Aha:, te przekleństwa. [Aha: These curse words.] 466 J: Ale jak do Polski zajadę to!+ [But when I got to Poland then!+] 467 G: To tak. To przeszkadza ci tam. + Aż-aż ci uszy puchną. @ [Then yes. It bothers you there. + Up-until your ears swell. @]

In this excerpt Janek reveals that he has an impression that ‘they’ (Polish teenagers) curse terribly ‘tam’ [there] (in Poland) as he compares the language of his Polish peers with his Irish classmates. He uses the third person pronoun (‘they’) in relation to his peers in Poland and adverb (‘there’) to Poland itself. In this way, he implicitly rejects identification with the group and creates a distance between himself and the place. In line 462 Janek gives a retrospective account regarding the ways ‘cursing language’ affects him. In this way he is reflectively positioning himself within this discursive practice of his peers across two contexts. First, he makes a proposition that ‘cursing’ is more common among his Polish friends, and then he changes/modifies his suggestion slightly by adding that ‘some (bad) words’ are used here (among his Irish peers) as well. He elaborates on it using adversary conjunction ‘chociaż’1 [though] to indicate Janek’s hesitation with regard to the legitimacy of his previous proposition (that swearing happens mostly in Poland) . Next, Janek decides to justify his proposition as he argues that in English ‘te słowa nic nie znaczą’ [these words mean nothing] as he does not ‘przetłumaczam sobie dosłownie’ [translate them literally]. He uses expressions such as ‘te słowa nic nie znaczą’ [these words mean nothing (to me)] or ‘to tylko puste słowa’ [these are just empty words] to emphasize that these words have no emotional or psychological effect on him. ‘Nic nie znaczy’ [doesn’t mean nothing (literal translation)] a double negative in Polish is used here to intensify/strengthen the negative form of the verb. Janek also points out that he could use these words himself without any offence. On the contrary, in Polish he would ‘raczej’2 [sort of/quite/rather] never use them as he is fully aware of their meaning. Janek and the interviewer display a high level of affiliation in this conversation. In line 463 the interviewer provides her own personal

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description of the way she feels with respect to ‘swearing’ in Polish. ‘Bo tak jakby dogłębnie czujesz’ że [wiesz co robisz’ [Because you feel deeply that you are cursing [you know what you’re doing]]. She uses the adverb ‘deeply’, emphasizing the emotive impact of cursing in Polish on herself. She also contrasts this strong emotional reaction with the rather flat reaction evoked by swearing in English: ‘takie obok, takie jakby ciebie to nie dotyczyło’ [it is just beside you as if it did not concern you]. ‘Obok’ [beside] is used metaphorically here to indicate little emotional/affective impact. She also explicitly affiliates with Janek as she says [I know the feeling]. In line 464, Janek immediately aligns with the interviewer’s proposition. He makes a comment that here it does not bother him when they curse every second word. The situation is reversed when he goes to Poland. Again, the interviewer and Janek achieve a high level of affiliation as the interviewer comments on Janek’s reaction in line 466. She uses an idiomatic expression ‘aż ci uszy puchną’ [you feel as if they had a mouth like a sailor (direct translation: [as if you had swollen ears when you hear them)] to emphasize the contrast between the two languages. In this excerpt, Janek and the interviewer affiliate in claiming that the Polish language is considered to have more of an emotional hold on them than English when it comes to ‘cursing’. In this way they both make allegiances towards the Polish language. 6.10 Emotional Continuities and Discontinuities Between Home and School – Two Persons in One?

It can be debated here whether Janek’s ‘not sufficient’ or limited participation and completion of writing activities is related to the fear of being singled out, limited language proficiency (strong B2+ CEFR) or rather a personal choice of not sharing the same affective stance as his peers. When we consider the second example in which Janek reveals that ‘personal reasons/matters’ are restricting him from writing longer texts in English, but not in Polish, we come to realize that some other factors may be at play. As already mentioned in previous sections, identity can be seen as fluid, dynamic and discursively created according to the cultural systems in which people are located both spatially and temporally. Thus, when a second language and culture are being socialized, they must inevitably change one’s sense of self as new norms and cultural and linguistic patterns are being observed. This process also affects individuals’ emotional systems to a great extent. This is because, across different communities, individuals are expected to recognize and display emotions in culturally defined ways and according to local norms and preferences (Garrett & Baquedano-Lopez, 2002) For example, ‘affect’ is linguistically mediated and permeates/infiltrates talk, incorporating/infusing words with emotional orientations (Ochs, 1986; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).

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In the present chapter I have shown that there are emotional discontinuities between home and school literacy practices. Minority language adolescents often perceive the same things differently to their majority language peers. It also happens that reading and writing in L2 is having different emotional hold for them as a result of former socialization practices through L1. Young people may invest more of their effort into activities that are highly valued in a new society as they are sensitive to the relations of power inherent in every society. These differences in perceptions, conceptual and emotional processing, may be related to demands and practices of a society one lives in or had previously lived in. Pavlenko (2002) argues that languages that are learned and socialized after or around the puberty period may not have the same emotional impact. Janek has started learning English in the age of 7, however, Polish remained the language of home and intimacy until present day. It may suggest, as Dewaele (2007: 122) points out, that there is the strong emotional power and the emotional connotations of a first language in bilingual individuals. Dewaele (2007) also contends that emotions caused by similar stimuli may be experienced and expressed differently in different languages, and as a consequence the same person might be perceived differently by his or her interlocutors. Janek has been perceived as a quiet introvert, scienceoriented boy, with limited emotional and linguistic expression in English, basically, not expressing himself much in school. This was not the case in the Polish Weekend School. He was actively participating in his heritage school’s life. Thus, the problem of ‘emotional discontinuity’the problems caused by discontinuity between the home environments (including emotional expression) and the school environments and also by home ecologies that are often different than new school ecologies appear when the transition from one mode of being to another takes place (Marcia, 1987). In this situation, an individual needs time to develop his or her own understanding of the new demands that are being imposed on him by the new sociocultural and sociohistorical circumstances. It is important to accommodate these new observed ways of being in the world within existing norms and culturally specific values in order to construct positive self-concept and ultimately wellbeing. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many children like Janek. His teacher did not recognize that Janek struggle with producing longer and more complex texts was related to the mismatch between his emotional world in L1 and L2. He was not able to ‘express’ or ‘feel’ emotions in the same way in two languages. Therefore, it was not the case of insufficient second language learning but rather a struggle to conform to the imposed modality through which he was expected to express himself fluently. His ‘multiliteracy’ has not been acknowledged, rather it has been ignored and left unrecognized by his mainstream school. This situation shows a limited openness of schools to embrace

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linguistic diversity that is there. Moreover, there is no support to exploit the linguistic diversity of the school for the benefit of all pupils. As Little et al. (2017: 202) notice: ‘it is clear that the home language is a crucial element in pupils’ learning, given that it exists as: the default medium of their self-concept, their self-awareness, their consciousness, their discursive thinking, and their agency … [and] is thus the cognitive tool that [they] cannot help but apply to formal learning, which includes mastering the language of schooling’. A central assumption of this theoretical framework is that immigrant students can be either ‘empowered’ or ‘disempowered’ by their schools as Cummin’s (1996) research demonstrated. He explains that ‘interactions are mediated by the implicit or explicit role definitions that educators assume in relation to four institutional characteristics of schools’ (1996: 22). One of these characteristics is the extent to which minority students’ languages and cultures are incorporated into the school program. As Mc Daid (2011: 23–24) points out ‘teachers who positively recognise the importance of children’s first languages, and thus infuse their pedagogy with such understanding, convey a message to their minority language children that their language is important, and hence that what they bring with them to school is valued within the school setting’. There is a huge misrecognition of students’ linguistic capabilities by their schools showcased by numerous studies such as Nowlan, 2008; Wallen & Kelly-Holmes, 2006) presenting students from ‘deficit’ perspective Devine (2005). As Mc Daid (2011: 25) notices ‘issue of minority language recognition is fundamentally an issue of inequality within the Irish education system’. For instance, Breuer and Steendam (Chapter 1) point out that social activism and social justice also depend on the view taken on multiliteracy. It can either be perceived as an opportunity or a threat to the linguistic fluency of the child. Building on multilingual literacy approaches, on the other hand, would have offered greater potential to respect and cherish diversity in schools. Openness to diverse cultural pedagogies highlighting meaningful acknowledgment of children’s heritage languages and cultures can be a way in which we start combating inequalities in schools. While this study deals with the PolishIrish context specifically, immigrant students worldwide are faced with the same or similar challenges. Thus, it seems reasonable to facilitate and raise awareness among both children, their parents, educators and wider society alike. We should rethink our ways of teaching literacy in, very often, multilingual classroom. Providing teacher training specifically dealing with multilingual literacy approaches is needed. Also, Initial Teacher Education in Ireland would benefit enormously from offering multiliteracy modules and paying greater attention to recognition of potential of immigrant teachers and lecturers who are often bilingual or multilingual and can facilitate the process substantially. Currently, there is a huge underrepresentation of immigrant teachers and lecturers in Irish Education system (Migrant Teacher Project, 2020). There are

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many simple ways in which Janek’s capacity to express himself could have been recognized and enhanced by his teachers. As a study by Wedin (this volume) demonstrates there are various opportunities to draw upon students’ multilingual background and the different languages they know. One is producing identity texts or dual language texts to make their unique personality visible to (the) readers. Janek could have been offered a chance to engage with poetry or a novel written in the heritage language and reflect on it in his English class. This would have not only acknowledged his dual linguistic and cultural identity but would also facilitate his sociocultural alignment with both of his emotional worlds across two languages. As Kirsch et al. in this volume suggest, utilizing students’ home environment and their community will support their multilingual multiliteracies and positive cultural identities (see Kirsch, this volume, Bergman Deitcher et al., this volume). It would also foster their positive self-image. As worldwide researchers on bilingualism came to realize decades ago, assessing multilingual learners against monolingual ones is never going to produce fair results. There are, however, positive examples documenting inclusion of heritage languages of the students set by Deirdre Kirwan, a principal of Scoil Bhrídef (Primary School). Pedagogical practices and whole school approach adopted by the setting proved that heritage languages of the students can be cherished and can be positioned from a positive perspective as ‘child without [their] language is a child without their soul’ (Kirwan, 2019). Notes (1) ‘Chociaż’ – conjunction connecting a subordinate clause with the main one believes the childs mind from which content can be drawn with respect to the opposite court, as referred to in the main clause. (2) ‘Raczej’ – particle expressing hesitation on the part of the speaker with regard to the choice of the appropriate judgement and a tendency to regard the judgement of the claim/proposition as positive.

References Auer, P. and Li Wei (eds) (2007) Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Baker, C. (2006) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (4th edn). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Berg, B.L. (2009) Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Bergman Deitcher, D., Johnson, H. and Aram, D. (2021) Multilingual preschoolers’ word learning from parent- child shared reading of informational and narrative books. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 213–222). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Besemeres, M. (1998) Language and self in cross-cultural autobiography: Eva Hoffman’s ‘Lost in Translation’. Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 40 (3/4), 327–344.

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Bogdan, R.C. and Biklen, S.K. (2006) Qualitative Research for Education. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Bourdieu, P. (1980) The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Breuer, E.O. and Van Steendam, E. (2021) Multiple approaches to understanding and working with multilingual (multi-)literacy. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 1–18). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Chaiklin, S. and Lave, J. (1993) Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Charmaz, K. (2006) Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage. Cummins, J. (1996) Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. In T. Beauboeuf-Lafontant and D. Smith Augustine (eds) Facing Racism in Education (2nd edn) (pp. 349–368). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1990) Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20 (1), 43–63, Devine, D. (2005) Welcome to the Celtic tiger? Teacher responses to immigration and increasing ethnic diversity in Irish schools. International Studies in Sociology of Education 15 (1), 49–70. Dewaele, J.M. (2007) Predicting language learners’ grades in the L1, L2, L3 and L4: The effect of some psychological and sociocognitive variables. International Journal of Multilingualism 4 (3), 169–197. Duff, P. (1995) An ethnography of communication in immersion classrooms in Hungary. TESOL Quarterly 29, 505–537. Duff, P. (2002) Pop culture and ESL students: Intertextuality, identity, and participation in classroom discussions. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 45, 482–487. Duff, P. (2003) New directions in second language socialization research. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 3, 309–339. Duff, P. (2007) Second language socialization as sociocultural theory: Insights and issues. Language Teaching 40, 309–319. Duff, P. (2009) Second Language Socialization. See http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/duff/ personal_website/Publications/Duff_SEcond_Language_Socialization Oct 15 2009. pdf on 15 April 2017. Duranti, A. (2005) On theories and models. Discourse Studies 7 (4–5), 409–429. Engestrom Y.E. (1987) Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. Garrett, P.B. and Baquedano-Lopez, P. (2002) Language socialization: Reproduction and continuity, transformation and change. Annual Review of Anthropology 31, 339–361. Georgakopoulou, A. (2007) Small stories, interaction and identities. Applied Linguistics 31 (3), 471–473. Georgakopoulou, A. (2016) Small stories research: A narrative paradigm for the analysis of social media. In L. Sloan and A. Quan-Haase (eds) The Sage Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 266–281). London: Sage. Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley: University California Press. Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32 (10), 1489–1522. Harre, R. and van Langenhove, L. (eds) (1999) Positioning Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heritage, J. (1987) Ethnomethodology. In A. Giddens and J.H. Turner (eds) Social Theory Today (pp. 224–51). Cambridge: Polity. Hoffmann, C. (1991) An Introduction to Bilingualism. London: Longman Group UK Limited. Hymes, D. (1972) On communicative competence. In J. Pride and J. Holmes (eds) Sociolinguistics (pp. 269–285). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

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Kiesling, S. (2009) Style as stance: Stance as the explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation. In A. Jaffe (ed.) Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 171–189). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kirwan, D. (2019) Multilingual environments: Benefits for early language learning. The Journal of the Irish Association of Applied Linguistics 10, 38–57. Langman, J. (2003) Growing a rock crystal on barren soil: Forming a Hungarian identity in Eastern Slovakia through joint (inter)action. In R. Bayley and S.R. Schecter (eds) Language Socialization in Bilingual and Multilingual Societies (pp. 182–199). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Leech, G. (2003) Modality on the move: The English modal auxiliaries 1961–1992. In R. Facchinetti, M. Krug and F. Palmer (eds) Modality in Contemporary English. (pp. 223–240). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Little, D., Dam, L. and Legenhausen, L. (2017) Language Learner Autonomy: Theory, Practice and Research. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Marcia, J.E. (1987) The identity status approach to the study of ego identity development. In T. Honess and K. Yardley (eds) Self and Identity: Perspectives across the Lifespan (pp. 161–171). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mc Daid, R. (2011) Glos, voce, voice: Minority language children reflect on the recognition of their first languages in Irish primary schools In M. Darmody (ed.) The Changing Faces of Ireland Exploring the Lives of Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Children (pp. 17–34). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Migrant Teacher Project (14.09.2020). Norlund Shaswar, A. (2021) ‘I should really interpret word by word for you’: Researcher, interpreter, and interviewee negotiating roles, responsibilities, and meanings in two multilingual literacy research interviews. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 63–94). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Nowlan, E. (2008) Underneath the band-aid: Supporting bilingual students in Irish schools. Irish Educational Studies 27 (3), 253–266. Ochs, E. (1986) From feelings to grammar: A Samoan case study. In B. Schieffelin and E. Ochs (eds) Language Socialization across Cultures (pp. 251–272). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. (1988) Culture and Language Development: Language Acquisition and Socialization in a Samoan Village. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. (1996) Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In J. Gumperz and S. Levinson (eds) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 407–437). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E. and Capps, L. (2001) Living Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pavlenko, A. (2002) Bilingualism and emotions. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 21 (1), 45–78. Pavlenko, A. (2006) Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression, and Representation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Potter, J. and Edwards, D. (2001) Discursive social psychology. In W.P. Robinson and H. Giles (eds) The New Handbook of Language and Social Psychology (pp. 103–118). Chichester: Wiley. Schieffelin, B. and Ochs, E. (1984) Language acquisition and socialization: Three develop­ mental stories and their implications. In R. Shweder and R. Levine (eds) Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion (pp. 276–320). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, B. and Ochs, E. (1986) Language Socialization Across Cultures. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, B. (1990) The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiffrin, D. (1994) Approaches to Discourse. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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Singleton, D. (2007) ‘Globalization, language, and national identity: The case of Ireland’. Dublin: Trinity College. CLCS Occasional Paper 68. Sterponi, L. (2011) Literacy socialisation. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin (eds) The Handbook of Language Socialization (pp. 227–247). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Todorov, T. (1994) On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wallen, M. and Kelly-Holmes, H. (2006) ‘I think they just think it’s going to go away at some stage’: Policy and practice in teaching English as an additional language in Irish primary schools. Language and Education 20 (2), 141–161. Wedin, Å. (2021) Construction of identities in diverse classrooms: Writing identity texts in grade five. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 145–162). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wierzbicka, A. (2004) Preface: Bilingual lives, bilingual experience. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25, 94–104.

7 Construction of Identities in Diverse Classrooms: Writing Identity Texts in Grade Five Åsa Wedin

Identity is a useful concept when analysing issues of language use in classrooms (Gee, 2000; Ivanič, 1998), such as in the case that this article draws upon, when students in grade five write identity texts. Gee draws on Hackings when he refers to identity as ‘being recognized as a certain “kind of person”’, while Ivanič talks about identity as a wish to ‘appear as somebody’. Following socio-constructionist views of identity, people have multiple identities, which they may accept, claim, contest, oppose and reclaim through negotiation in interaction with others, and identities are ambiguous and instable (Fairclough, 1989; Gee, 2000; Ivanič, 1998, among others). The aim of this chapter is to analyse how including students’ diverse linguistic backgrounds may give students opportunities to express and construct identities through their written texts. The study is carried out in Meadow school, a school in a municipality in central Sweden where a majority of students come from homes that are considered to be economically below medium standards and some live in conditions that are considered to be poor. A majority of the students have languages other than Swedish as the dominating language in the home and are considered by school authorities to be multilingual, but similar to other studies, for example Laursen (2016), the group is not homogenous. While most of them are born in Sweden, some came during their childhood and others are newly arrived in Sweden. In this chapter, different analytic lenses are used to study expressions and the construction of identity through the process of writing in an action research project where flexible orientations to language were promoted to create room for cross-lingual transfer.1 The questions that the chapter aims to answer are:

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(1) How do students use the texts they write in the project to construe their own identities and for identity development? (2) Which frames for identity construction are given by the classroom context? 7.1 Identity Construction in Education

Following Foucault (2000, 2008) and his critique of essentialist notions of identity as something fixed and stable given once and for all, critically oriented researchers have debated the notion of identity. Researchers such as Fairclough (1989), Ivanič (1998) and Gee (2000) have used identity to analyse language in education from a critical, socio-constructionist perspective, and have argued that people have multiple social identities that are related to their social life and to questions of power distribution. Ivanič discusses identity as ‘constructed socio-culturally, discursively and through the mechanisms of social interaction’ (Ivanič, 1998: 10–11). According to McLaughlin (2012), power affects the individual’s possibilities to choose different identities and some people may find ‘a stigmatized, devalued identity imposed on them from which it is not easy to escape’ (McLaughlin, 2012: 3). He argues that ideologically there has been a move from interest in redistribution to recognition, from a focus on economic inequalities to recognition of what he calls cultural identities. He claims that while there has been a decline in class consciousness and organisation of the working class, the problems they have confronted have not disappeared but are expressed in other ways. As an example of such changes, he gives the increasing celebrating of different aspects of identities, such as Gay Pride parades. The use of identity to study aspects of education related to diversity, language and power has become common. Building on Bakhtin and Vygotsky, Fairclough (1989) and Wertsch (1991) have developed an understanding of relationships between identity and language. Ivanič (1998) has focused on relationships between identity and writing based on socio-constructionist views of identity as not only the result of individuals’ minds and intentions but also as the result of how people hold particular beliefs and possibilities available to them in their social context and of how the self is implicated through discourse and in power struggles. Following Giddens (1991), Ivanič argues for a view of identity as located in events and experiences, rather than perceived as a quality or attribute. Gee (2000) defines four ways to view identity; (1) Nature identity, (2) Institutional identity, (3) Discourse identity and (4) Affinity identity. The first, Nature identity, is a state given by nature. He gives being an identical twin as an example. This type of identity may be created and sustained by institutions. The second, Institutional identity, is

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a position that may be authorised by an institution or authority. An institutional identity may be either desired, optional or imposed. The third type, Discourse identity, is an individual trait constructed through discourse or dialogue with people. Discourse identities may be ascribed or accomplished. The fourth, Affinity identity, is constructed through experiences, and is more fluid and require an active choice. Particularly among young people, different identities are created through networking in joint activities, such as identities among video game players and on social media. According to Gee, people can accept, contest and negotiate whether they want their different identities to be recognised and by whom, and also whether they want particular identities to be seen as Nature, Institutional, Discourse or Affinity identities. He stresses that access, networking and experience are crucial for the processes where children construct their identities. He also stresses the importance in contemporary society of imaging new forms of identities. Following critical, socio-constructivist theories on identities as contested, ascribed, imposed, claimed, reclaimed and negotiated through social interaction, it is important to consider Foucault’s warnings against deterministic views of power relations and arguments that while individuals may be doomed to failure in their struggle for alternatives, as member of an oppressed group the potentials for change are greater (Ivanič, 1998). 7.1.1 Identity and language

In linguistics, power relations have sometimes been perceived as secondary to relations between language and identity, but McLaughlin argues, building on Bourdieu, that power and language are inseparable. Fairclough (1989) created a framework of layers for describing language in context, with the text constituting the first layer, embedded in the second layer, the processes of production and interpretation, which in turn is inextricable from the third layer, institutional and socio-historical conditions. This was later developed by Ivanič (2004) to a multi-layered view of language: text as layer one, cognitive processes as layer two, event as layer three and sociocultural and political context as layer four. Ivanič suggests a use of the embeddedness of the layers both for research and for educational planning. While Fairclough focuses on how social context shapes the production and interpretation of discourse, and the text itself, Halliday in his Functional Grammar (1993, 2004) uses a socio-semiotic perspective with a focus on social relations and what he calls the ‘textual’ function of language. Halliday does not deal explicitly with identity, but Ivanič (1998) builds on Halliday when creating three dimensions of identity: (1) social identity, an individual’s set of values and beliefs about reality), (2) relative status, a sense of status in relation to others and

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(3) orientation to language use. Fairclough’s model resembles Cummins’ model for classroom education (2000) with a focus on content, language and language use. The core of Cummins’ model is classroom interaction between teachers and students. Cummins stresses the importance of creating an atmosphere that is positive towards students and that affirm their identities. This is particularly important for newly arrived students and students from minority backgrounds who belong to groups which are often ascribed low status. As the teacher becomes a representative for the school as institution and for the dominant culture, whether he or she makes a student’s language visible or not affects how the student perceives that this language is valued in school. This highlights the importance of the teacher for the student’s learning and identity work. Cummins stresses that the relation between student and teacher should be based on respect and affirmation. He also stresses that while the teacher creates classroom discourses where students become active learners, the teacher is also involved in a learning process by learning about the student’s language, culture, background and knowledge. Thus, the core of Cummins’ model is classroom interaction with the two components of maximum cognitive engagement and maximum identity investment. While Cummins’ model has three aspects, or foci, for language in classroom, in the models of Fairclough and Ivanič the layers are embedded in each other with the text at the centre and the context as the outer layer. While the models of Fairclough and Ivanič focus on the power dimension of language and education, Cummins and Halliday direct their attention to more formal aspects of language use (see also Machowska-Kosciak, this volume, for relations of language and identity to emotions). 7.1.2 Construction of identity in education

Using identity as an analytical tool for educational practices enables the investigation of questions related to language development and academic learning and thus to school success (Cummins et al., 2015; Gee, 2004; Norton, 2013). Cummins et al. (2015) claim that patterns for acquisition/non-acquisition are directly related to the negotiation of identities, investment and affirmation for students from different social groups, arguing for the use of educational practices that include students’ varied linguistic resources and thus the affirmation of students’ diverse identities. The use of linguistic repertoires that include students’ whole repertoires creates opportunities for students to view themselves as capable and competent (see Jessner et al., this volume), developing what Manyak (2004) calls identities of competence. Education practices that include students’ whole linguistic repertoires invite students to use a learning strategy that all learners employ – to use

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what they already know to learn what they do not yet know (Velasco & García, 2014). To build education on students’ linguistic and cultural resources is a way to harness diversity. Discourses that invite diverse linguistic and cultural forms have real consequences for students with immigrant backgrounds, contrary to monolingual educational practices where only the mainstream language is recognised and thus some of their identities are devalued. Through a teacher-initiated project in Canada, teaching strategies called Identity texts were created (Cummins et al., 2015; Cummins & Early, 2011; Giampapa, 2010; Schecter & Cummins, 2003), where the linguistic space for students was widened through the inclusion of their different languages in writing. Identity texts direct their attention to fundamental aspects of the affirmation of identity, social power relations and literacy engagement (Cummins, 2007). Through creative writing including response and dialogue, space is given for the expression of identity, projection of identity and re-enactment of identity, which is particularly important for students whose language, culture and religion have been down-valued by the surrounding society. Work with identity texts, and thus with literacy practices that affirm identities, means increased engagement among students (Cummins et al., 2015). Working with identity texts and multilingual writing in school relates literacy education to second language students’ earlier linguistic competence and creates engagement among students, as does including students’ diverse languages in oral presentations and using immigrant students’ earlier knowledge in education in different subjects (Cummins, 2007; Wedin, 2017). The importance of using students’ different languages has also been stressed by researchers such as Thomas and Collier (1997, 2002), Cummins (2000, 2001), García (2009), Giampapa (2010) and Cummins and Early (2011). Other examples of multilingual school practices are co-languaging and preview-view-review (García & Flores, 2012) where two languages are used for instruction following preplanned patterns. In work with identity texts, students are supported in different ways in producing dual language texts, both narratives and texts related to different knowledge areas. The production of dual language books is important in this, where students write their own stories in two languages, English and one language used at home or a language that the student knows. Through these dual language books, students are supported in their development of multiple languages, and a multilingual environment is created where learning both in different school subjects and in different languages is supported. The books are displayed in the school library together with other books, and are used in the reception of newly arrived students. Thus, newly arrived students may also be included in classroom practices through the possibility to use their language skills.

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7.2 Methods

This chapter builds on material from an ethnographically inspired activity research project, Multilingual students and learning1, where students in grades one to six (students aged 6–13 years old) were stimulated to include their languages in classroom education in different ways. The overall aim of the project was to increase students’ engagement and to support their identity development through the development of teaching methods for multilingual education which take advantage of, make use of, and develop their varied linguistic resources. The project was carried out in Meadow school, the local school in Meadow Farms in a municipality in central Sweden, as an action research project. The teachers in this school faced many challenges, with many children from economically poor families, some newly arrived children and a high number of children who were categorised as second language learners of Swedish. In many classes, no child had Swedish as the dominating language in the home. A base for the project was teachers’ ambition to develop their education to become more relevant for students’ diverse backgrounds. Action research enables the creation of knowledge where both researchers and teachers are active participants in change (Vesteraas Danboldt & Iversen Kulbrandstad, 2013). For the study of complex, multi-layered phenomena such as discourses and practices related to language and learning, ethnographically oriented methods offer perspectives and tools for the creation of a detailed understanding of micro-processes, and for investigating and analysing diversity (Zeichner, 2001). Thus, innovations and reflections form the core of the research. the aims of any action research project or program are to bring about practical improvement, innovation, change or development of social practice, and the practitioners’ better understanding of their practices. (Zuber-Skerritt, 1996: 83)

Four types of data were created through this project, (1) field notes from classroom observations, (2) audio recordings from lessons, (3) student and teacher interviews and (4) artefacts such as student texts, teaching material, teachers’ planning material and photographs from classrooms. In this article, the main material will be 41 student-written texts from grade five, together with classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students. A base for the project is the cooperation between the researcher and teachers involved, characterised by four principles: • The project will create new knowledge about multilingualism and learning at the same time as it works to develop practice in contexts where many students have a multilingual background.

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• The project builds on close cooperation between school staff and the researcher where the distribution of roles between the researcher and school staff is clear. • The project is permeated by dialogue and reflection through regular meetings between school staff and the researcher. • The project will contribute to making teachers’ experiences visible. During the project, the role of teachers was to plan and carry out teaching while the researcher’s role has been to initiate sub-projects, to document the process and to collect, process and analyse data. The researcher, participating teachers and school leaders have continuously gathered for exchanges of experiences, reflection and discussion and to plan future actions. As the study was carried out in sensitive settings, including students from varying background, some of whom live under harsh conditions, and teachers who work under challenging conditions, ethical issues were considered throughout the project. Participants were carefully informed about the research, and written consent was sought. All data are presented in ways that make the recognition of individuals difficult. 7.3 Writing Identity Texts in Grade Five

The teachers and school leaders in Meadow school had decided to find ways to enhance the results of the students. They had worked hard for some years, changing the school policy from Swedish only on the school premises into a policy of making students’ and teachers’ different languages visible and audible. They had also engaged in creating a suitable plan for the reception of newly arrived students and to work out ways to organise education in Swedish as a second language, study guidance in the mother tongue and mother tongue teaching so that all are included in the ordinary school day (Wedin & Wessman, 2017). Mona and Ulla, the teachers in the two streams five, 5a and 5b, already had their students write identity texts in grade four in the form of multilingual stories presented as dual language books (see Wedin, 2017). For grade five, they wanted to include work that inspired students’ identity development by stimulating the students to write about themselves. The writing process started with ‘I am-poems’ where students wrote characteristics about themselves. Then, each student created a family tree. As step three, students in 5a wrote about their own history, How I got here. They were inspired to write in Swedish and another language of their own choice and to ask their parents about things they did not know. Of these 21 students’ texts, 12 were written in two languages, with Somali, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Finnish and Arabic as the other languages. The texts in languages other than Swedish had been written in cooperation with the study guidance assistants or

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mother tongue teachers in these languages. All texts were compiled in a book and read out at a parent meeting one evening after school where students read the texts in the languages they had written them in. In 5b, for different reasons, the teachers decided to instruct students to write these texts only in Swedish, with three parts: Myself, My mother and My Father. Also in this class, the texts were compiled in a book and the texts were read out in front of the class. Students were instructed to ask family members about parts of their own history that they did not know. As teachers saw a risk that things like family secrets may appear, students were made aware that the texts would later be published for others to read and that they should consider that in their writing and when necessary discuss the issue with their parents. 7.4 Identity and Writing in the Writing of Personal History

To answer the questions about how students use the texts they write in the project to construe their own identities and for identity development and which frames for identity construction are given by the classroom context, the analysis will be carried out in three steps. In the first step, Gee’s ways of viewing identity will be used to find out what identities were expressed through students’ texts, and in step two, Ivanič’s three-layered model of identity in relation to language will be used to analyse how identities were constructed through the process, based on observations (field notes from 83 lessons in grade five), interviews with students and the two teachers. Finally, in the third step, Cummins’ view on relations between language, identity and pedagogy will be used to analyse the frames for identity construction in the classrooms, based on the observations and teacher interviews. In this step also 112 lesson observations from grade four in the same classes are used. First, an overview of the written texts will be given. 7.4.1 Student texts

The 41 texts written by the students will be the base for the analysis of how identity was enacted throughout the writing process. In this process students started with Writing ‘I am-poems’, writing about themselves with different characteristics. Then each student created a family tree, which included the family as students had to ask for information about relatives and the history of the family. After this they wrote individual texts that were compiled to a book for each class and finally all texts were read out aloud in front of each class and at a parental meeting. The 21 texts written in class 5a on the topic ‘How I got here’ contain personal histories as expected, about students themselves, parents

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and other relatives, and many tell about migration including several countries. Two of the texts were written by students with Swedishspeaking backgrounds, two boys. Lars told the story about his great grandfather, the pilot of a bomber who managed to rescue himself and his plane in the southern part of Sweden where he met the girl who was to become Lars’ great grandmother. Filip based his text on a family chronicle that he had got access to, starting with a grandfather’s great grandfather who was a sea captain. The texts written in two languages were quite similar in both languages. All but one text were typed on a computer in Swedish, as were the two texts in Arabic. The text versions in other languages were hand written, except for one that was typed in Arabic. In both classes many of the texts include narrations about how their parents met each other. This was a topic that evoked many feelings, and some of the students changed their narrative several times during the writing process, due to who in the family they had talked to and also following discussions with peers. The texts in class 5b, Myself, My Mother and My Father, were all typed and despite the stricter topic, the contents of the texts varied. All texts were first written by hand, revised through cooperation with peers and with the teacher, and then copied on a laptop or tablet. All but one tell about origins from outside Sweden, and about how and when they or their parents came to Sweden. 7.4.2 Analysing expressions and constructions of identities following Gee

The analysis will start by analysing the students’ texts following Gee (2000), interpreting the texts regarding what types of identities become visible, Nature, Institutional, Discourse and Affinity identities. As only students’ texts are used here, this is my understanding of students’ expressed identities based on the texts. Following Gee, I understand that the students express a few Nature identities, such as being a boy or a girl and 11 years old. Students also expressed identities such as being rapid and smart which may be interpreted as biological, but which may also be expressions of aspirations. The identities that students expressed and that I interpret as Institutional identities that are desired, imposed or optional are mainly expressions of aspirations and ambitions related to school, such as getting good grades and performing well, and also future ambitions, such as becoming a doctor or a researcher, claiming identities such as a good student or a good daughter or son. These could also be perceived as D-identities, discourse identities, constructed through dialogue, as they fit well into the context, writing a school text in the classroom which is to be read by the teacher and the researcher, and then read out loud in front of the class and parents.

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Relying only on the texts, I do not find it easy to distinguish between I-identities and D-identities, but when students express values and wishes for the future and make claims about their self which may be understood as showing ethical values, I interpret this as D-identities. Among these are ethical and religious statements, such as being a Muslim and understanding Good, being ‘girl and strong’, prettiest and brave, but also statements that disparage the self, such as coward and having low selfesteem. These are all statements about the self and about how the self may be understood. Statements about dreams for the future and about identities that one may be attributed by others, I interpret as A-identities, fluid and requiring active choice, which are less tangible identities, such as expressing concern about others, dreams and wishes. Only from the text, it is not possible to categorise the identities expressed by students, but it is possible to interpret them following Gee’s types. This has made students’ expressions of who they want to be visible, as well as which identities they want to be attributed and what groups they want to belong to. Thus, the process of writing these texts gave students opportunities to construe their own identities by expressing them through writing. Through the writing process including the final compilation of all texts and the individual reading aloud in front of the class and parents, the identities that students claimed were also constructed through oral interaction, in relation to and responded to by peers, teachers and parents. 7.4.3 Analysis of the writing process based on Ivanič’s layered model

In a second step, Ivanič’s three-layered model (1998) will be used to analyse the whole writing process, as it enables an analysis on three levels layered in each other, where the inner layer, language use, shapes social identity through the processes of production and interpretation, while language use in its turn is shaped by social identity through the same processes. The use of layers captures the embeddedness of textual aspects of language in mental and social aspects. The inner layer, orientation to language use, is then part of and inseparable from relative status, the individual’s sense of status in relation to others, which in its turn is embedded in social identity as an ‘individual’s set of values and beliefs about reality’ (Ivanič, 1998). The other way around, the outer layer, social identity, the individual’s values and beliefs about reality, shapes the individual’s sense of status, relative status, which in its turn shapes language use. The inclusion of students’ personal histories and their varied linguistic resources opened up spaces for students to negotiate roles in the classroom and to express varied identities. Social identities related to emotions such as pride and shame in relation to certain languages

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became visible. One example was a girl who wrote her text in Swedish and Kurdish, but said that she felt ashamed writing in Kurdish as she claimed that her prime language was Arabic, and thus she felt she could not present her language skills well through Kurdish. She only received Mother tongue tuition in Kurdish and not in Arabic, as she did not have enough literacy skills in Arabic, which she herself claimed was due to not having received Mother tongue tuition in Arabic. Thus in her case, language choice in the inner layer, language use, was embedded in her sense of status in relation to others, which in turn was related to her perceived social identity when she claimed Arabic language skills that she was not enabled to show. Another example of the interrelatedness and embeddedness of layers of text is when one of the boys said that he did not want to write in Kurdish, and when he expressed feelings of shame in relation to the language used in his home. His parents had endured hardships during their school time due to their language, and now in the Kurdish community where they lived, their variety of Kurdish was perceived as of less quality due to the high influence of Swedish in the Kurdish they used. Thus, this boy felt stigmatised in relation to the language they used in the home. In this case tensions between the status given in the environment and teachers’ intentions to support his home language put him in a conflicting situation, in relation to the status of the language variety used in the home. At the end of the writing process, when students read their texts out aloud in front of the class, a feeling of pride was obvious among many of the students. One girl, who had only written her text in Somali, read her text out loud. When she had finished, one of the other Somalispeaking girls spontaneously rose and translated the text to the rest of the class. This is one example of how roles became negotiated as she in this case took on the role of expert, while the teacher together with the non-Somali speaking part of the class became novices, ignorant and interested in understanding. Here, four students’ writing processes will be analysed, chosen as examples of how students used the writing process to express and construe identity, and of the embeddedness and interrelationship of layers of writing. Leon

Leon was born in Sweden as a grandson to an immigrant from Finland to Sweden who later moved back to Finland. Leon’s mother, the daughter, then moved back to Sweden, so Leon thus has relatives both in Sweden and Finland. In the process of writing ‘How I got here’, he asked his mother to tell him about the migration between Finland and Sweden. He wrote about how the job market was the reason for the migration, and also that the family had earlier been Laestadians, but that some

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family members, among them his family, had exited and thus did not follow their strict rules any longer. Från Finland till Sverige Morfar Jaako flyttade till Sverige år 1970. De behövde arbetskraft i Sverige. Morfar fick jobb på (the company). Han hittade en fru, Pirjo. De flyttade in i ett thus i X-byn. Dom fick barn och en familj. När mamma var liten var familjen religiös men mamma och några fler i familjen har gått ur. Religionen dom hade följde den kristna bibeln: helt naturligt och därför inget smink, inte TV, inte alkohol. Leon (Grandfather Jaako moved to Sweden in 1970. They needed workforce in Sweden. Grandpa got a job at (the company). He found a wife, Pirjo. They moved to a house in X-village. They got children and a family. When mother was small the family was religious but mother and some else in the family have left. The religion they had followed the Christian Bible: totally natural and thus no make up, no TV, no alcohol.) Leon

In an earlier multilingual writing project, Leon had expressed sadness at not being able to speak to his grandmother who only speaks Finnish, a language that he does not speak. ‘I’ve not spoken a single word to her in my entire life’ he said then with emphasis. This time the teacher, Ulla, asked the Finnish mother tongue teacher to help by translating Liam’s text to Finnish. Leon showed pride in having the text in both languages and when it was read out oud in the parent meeting Ulla, who has some proficiency in Finnish, read the Finnish version and it was apparent that both he and his parents were proud of having their history represented in both languages. By acknowledging his linguistic background and by giving space for him to make it visible through his text, although he himself does not master Finnish, the teachers gave Leon an opportunity to express an aspect of his sociolinguistic identity that would in other case have been invisible. This gave him the opportunity to negotiate not only his linguistic and ethnic identities, but also to some extent his social identities as a person of Finnish descent In the context of this town are related to industrial work-places, and are today also well represented in other sectors, such as on different levels of the government in the municipality. Almas

As a newly arrived student, Almas wrote her text ‘How I got here’ in Arabic. As her Swedish was still on a restricted level, the task was explained to her by the study guidance assistant in Arabic. She first wrote by hand, and after having had the text corrected, she wrote it on a laptop. The assistant translated the text to Swedish together with her, and then Almas copied the Swedish version on the laptop. The text tells

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the story about how the family had to escape from Syria when the war broke out. Her father had moved first to Sweden while she and the rest of the family had waited for two years for their residence permits with an aunt’s family in Istanbul. The importance she attaches to relatives may be understood from her text where family members are mentioned throughout the text, until she ends with: När vi var framme i Stockholm väntade min pappa och mina tvp morbröder på oss. Vi fick det två fantastiska mottagandet. Vi åkte vidare till X-stad där mina släktingar och min pappa bodde. Min morbrors fru hade lagat flera goda maträtter och vi alla satt runt maten och var glada. (When we arrived in Stockholm my father and two uncles were there waiting for us. We had two fantastic receptions. We went to X-town were my father and relatives lived. My aunt had cooked many tasty dishes and we all sat around the food and were happy.)

Almas read the text out loud in Arabic at the parent meeting while the teacher read the Swedish version. By being given space for her Arabic literacy skills, Almas got the opportunity to not only show these skills but also to tell her story and to practise Swedish at an age-appropriate level by translating her Arabic text. By reading the text aloud in front of the class and the parents, she positioned herself as a competent, Arabic-speaking and -writing girl developing her proficiency in Swedish. Both her hand-written and her typed texts show her proficiency while also giving her space to express herself concerning parts of her life that are highly significant for her present life in Sweden, as a newly arrived girl developing Swedish skills in both written and spoken forms, who is already highly proficient in another language. Through this work, she negotiated identities related to language, school knowledge, social and ethnic status. The use of her Arabic skills in the classroom gave her opportunities to claim status as a proficient student although she was still at early stages of developing the school language, Swedish. Abdikaram

In stream 5b where Abdikaram is, the texts were only written in Swedish. Abdikaram wrote about how he had left Somalia and Mogadishu together with his family when he was ten years old. His mother had moved first to Sweden while he had stayed in Kenya together with his father and siblings. He wrote about how he had been longing for his mother. When it was time to reunite with the mother in Sweden, his father had, according to Abdikaram, refused and had gone to live in Norway instead, where he is still living. Min pappa heter Abdi och är 34 år gammal. Nu tänker jag berätta mer om min pappa. Han föddes i (bynamn). Han bodde i (stad), sen flyttade

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familjen till Kenya. Efter det flyttade min mamma till Sverige och senare flyttade jag och mina syskon. När vi hade kommit till Sverige sa min pappa att han inte ville komma till Sverige. Idag bor min pappa i Norge. Under (en fotbollscup) spelade jag fotboll och min pappa tittade på. Jag gjorde 2 mål och pappa sträckte upp händerna och skrek JAAA!!! Min pappa är snäll. (My father’s name is Abdi and is 34 years old. Now I’m going to tell more about my father. He was born in (village). He lived in (town), then the family moved to Kenya. After that my mother moved to Sweden and later I and my siblings moved. When we had come to Sweden my father said that he didn’t want to come to Sweden. Today my father lives in Norway. During [a local football cup for children] I played football and my daddy watched. I scored two goals and daddy raised his arms and shouted YEEES!!! My daddy is kind.)

Although the text is only written in Swedish, a language that he started to learn two years ago, his text shows strong emotions, related to the longing for the mother and to the father’s recognition of his football skills. This narrative further emphasises the importance of developing earlier language skills in school. In Abdikaram’s case, Somali will be necessary for his future contacts with his father who did not end up in Sweden. Even though Norwegian, the language his father is learning, is close to Swedish, the fact that Abdikaram attends Somali mother tongue education will be of particular importance for his continued communication with his father. Through the use of Ivanič’s three-layered model, the embeddedness of language use, relative status and social identity become visible. Through their writing, students express thoughts about how they want to appear in relation to others, such as family members, and also in relation to peers. The focus on social identity, relative status and orientation to language use in the form of production and interpretation of language as layers reveals the embeddedness of textual aspects in mental and social aspects. In both classrooms, the task has given students opportunities to express and construct different identities, related to language, ethnicity and social status, but also related to each other, teachers, parents and the school. The inclusion of students’ different languages in class 5a’s texts extended students’ opportunities to include linguistic aspects of identity negotiation. The embeddedness of textual aspects of language, with language use and social identity shaping each other, is exposed through the writing process. Through Ivanič’s model, the inseparableness of language use and social status and the individual’s sense of social status become visible, and in this case teachers expressed the view that the whole writing process deepened their understanding of students’ varied language skills and the variety of feelings students had in relation to their different linguistic resources.

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7.4.4 Analysis of the pedagogical process following Cummins

In a third step of the analysis, Cummins’ model for classroom interaction focusing on pedagogy (2000) will be used to analyse the frames for identity construction in the classroom context. Cummins argues that inclusion of students’ varied linguistic resources in classroom education is necessary for the affirmation of students’ diverse identities to create identities of competence. He also claims that this is necessary for maximum cognitive engagement and maximum identity investment. Through the observations, it became clear that the writing process included students’ varied linguistic resources, although this became more visible in class 5a’s texts where students could chose to write in their different languages. Students’ engagement throughout the whole process was also apparent, as was the importance they paid to expressions of identity. Cummins’ focus is on pedagogy and on teachers’ roles, and through the process of this writing project, from the initial stage of planning to the final reflections, the teachers discussed language and language use in relation to education and content, both in class and in teacher meetings. That the teachers’ language awareness has increased can be exemplified by the way they have also started to include this diversity in their teaching in other topics. When Ulla teaches grammar, she has started to ask students to compare Swedish with their different languages, and in the teaching of different topics she directs their attention to students’ languages and backgrounds in different ways. This is something that she herself stresses in an interview when reflecting on the whole process of this writing project. Inclusive pedagogical models, like the writing projects here, offer students spaces where their identities may flourish. Through the writing process, their diversity was made visible and the inclusion of students’ varied linguistic resources helped affirm their different identities. The process of finding out about their own background involved parents and other relatives in school work. Through the process of writing, students were given, and made use of, opportunities to express and construct different types of identities, and also express what they want to become. Education practices created here opened up spaces enabling students to use their varied linguistic resources for learning. 7.5 Discussion

The focus on identity through the lenses of Gee’s categories (2000), Ivanič’s layers (1998, 2004) and Cummins’ pedagogical model for classrooms (2000) has made visible how students construe varied identities through their writing of identity texts. In this writing project, including students’ diverse linguistic backgrounds gave students opportunities to express and construct varied identities.

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Through the work, students expressed multiple identities and what Manyak (2004) calls identities of competence. The writing project revealed varied identities in relation to students’ multi-ethnic and -linguistic background, particularly in relation to family and peers, and also in relation to ancestry and skills. Identities were also contested and negotiated such as in the exchanging of roles as expert and novice, and relations between language and emotions became clear through the classroom practices. Particularly in the final reading aloud in front of peers, teachers and parents, students’ sense of pride of their varied origin and linguistic skills became visible and also positive feelings on the part of many of the parents became clear. What students aspired to become was exposed through the flexible orientations to language that was promoted and that created room for cross-lingual transfer, particularly in the classroom where writing was stimulated in different languages. Opening up for the use of multiple language resources in writing enable students’ inclusion of language as one aspect of identity. This raises the question of frames for the construction of identities. Who is it possible to be in these classrooms, and what may one aspire to become through the process of writing these texts? Cummins (2000) claims that the inclusion of students’ varied language in classroom writing is important for identity investment and engagement. In this case, both classrooms held positive attitudes towards students’ varied languages, although only students in class 5a wrote dual language texts. As Hornberger stresses (2003), multilingual practices in classrooms make the nexus of power relations visible and make them open for discussion and change. The case presented here supports Cummins’ (2017) claims that teachers’ active choices may challenge coercive power relations and be of particular importance for students who run the risk of being exposed to marginalisation or stigmatisation. Through creative writing including response and dialogue that created room for the expression of self and that widened students’ linguistic choice, space was given for the expression of identity, projection of identity and re-enactment of identity. Acknowledgements

This chapter has been written in the frame of the research group Critical Educational Studies which is part of the research profile Education and Learning at Dalarna University, Sweden. I want to express my gratitude to research colleagues who discussed an earlier version of the text, particularly Maria Olsson for insightful comments. A particular thank goes to students and staff at Meadow school who let me be part of their work and who agreed to take me in as a research partner in their work.

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Note (1) The project Multilingual Resources in Education, 2013–2016.

References Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (2001) Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society (2nd edn). Los Angeles, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Cummins, J., Hu, S., Marcus, P. and Montero K.M. (2015) How to reverse a legacy of exclusion? Identifying high-impact educational responses. Language and Education 29 (3), 272–279. Cummins, J. (2007) Promoting Literacy in Multilingual Contexts. Ontario: The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat. Cummins, J. (2017) Flerspråkiga elever: Effektiv undervisning i en utmanande tid. [Multilingual Students: Effective Education in a Challenging Time]. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur. Cummins, J. and Early, M. (eds) (2011) Identity Texts: The Collaborative Creation of Power in Multilingual Schools. Stoke on Trent & Sterling USA: Trentham Books. Cummins, J., Hu, S., Markus, P. and Kristiina Montero, M. (2015) Identity texts and academic achievement: Connecting the dots in multilingual school contexts. TESOL Quarterly 49 (3), 555–581. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman. Foucault, M. (2000) Essential Works of Foucault. Vol 1., Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (2008) Diskursernas kamp. [The Fight of the Discourses] Eslöv: Symposium. García, O. (2009) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. García, O. and Flores, N. (2012) Multilingual pedagogies. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge and A. Creese (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 232–246). London: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2000) Identity as an analytic lens for research in education. Review of Research in Education 5 (25), 99–125. Gee, J.P. (2004) Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. New York: Routledge. Giampapa, F. (2010) Multiliteracies, pedagogy and identities: Teacher and student voices from a Toronto elementary school. Canadian Journal of Education 33 (2), 407–431. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Halliday, M.A.K. (1993) Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education 5, 93–116. Halliday, M.A.K. (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. Hornberger, N. (ed.) (2003) Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research and Practice in Multilingual Settings. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ivanič, R. (1998) Writing and Identity the Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ivanič, R. (2004) Discourses of writing and learning to write. Language and Education 18 (3), 220–245. Jessner, U., Malzer-Papp, E. and Allgäuer-Hackl, E. (2021) Paving a new way to literacy development in multilingual children: A DMM perspective. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 97–122). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Laursen, H.-P. (2016) Mange dansksprogetheder: Andre andetsprogheder? [Many Danish languagesnesses: Other second languagenesses?] Nordand 11 (1), 9–37. Machowska-Koscziak, M. (2021) ‘He just does not write enough for it’ – literacy practices among Polish adolescents in Ireland. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 123–144). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Manyak, P.C. (2004) ‘What did he say?’ Translation in a primary-grade English immersion class. Multicultural Perspectives 137 (2), 12–18. McLaughlin K. (2012) Surviving Identity: Vulnerability and the Psychology of Recognition. New York: Routledge. Norton, B. (2013) Identity and Language Learning: Extending the Conversation (2nd edn). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Schechter, S. and Cummins, J. (eds) (2003) Multilingual Education in Practice Using Diversity as a Resource. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Thomas, W. and Collier, V. (1997) School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students. NCBE Resource Collection Series, No. 9, George Washington University. See http:// www.ncbe.gwu.edu/ncbepubs/resource/effectiveness (accessed April 2020). Thomas, W. and Collier, V. (2002) Reforming educational policies for English language learners means better schools for all. The States Educational Standard 3 (1) (The quarterly journal of the National association of State Boards of Education, Alexandria, Virginia). Velasco, P. and García, O. (2014) Translanguaging and the writing of bilingual learners. Bilingual Research Journal 37, 6–23. Vesteraas Danbolt, A.M. and Iversen Kulbrandstad, L. (2013) ‘Sel (säl) är kaka på spanska’: arbete medlitteracitet och flerspråkighet i norska klassrum. [‘Sel (seal) is cookie in Spanish’: Work with literacy and multilingualism in Norwegian classrooms.] In C. Hedman and Å Wedin (eds) Flerspråkighet, litteracitet och multimodalitet (pp. 16–44). [Multilingualism, Literacy and Multimodality] Lund: Studentlitteratur. Wedin, Å. (2017) Flerspråkigt skrivande: Identitet och engagemang. [Multilingual writing: Identity and engagement] Nordand 13 (1), 45–61. Wedin, Å. and Wessman, A. (2017) Multilingualism as policy and practices in elementary school: Powerful tools for inclusion of newly arrived pupils. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 9 (4), 873–890. Wertsch, J.V. (1991) Voices of the Mind: Sociocultural Approaches to Mediated Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zeichner, K. (2001) Educational action research. In P. Reason and H. Bradbury (eds) Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (pp. 273–283). London: Sage. Zuber-Skerritt, O. (1996) Emancipatory action research for organizational change and management development. In O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research (pp. 83–95). London: Falmer Press.

8 Developing Multiliteracies in Online Multilingual Interactions: The Example of Chat-Room Conversations in Romance Languages Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer

8.1 Introduction

In contemporary societies marked by a large population of digital natives, computer mediated communication is a constant part of daily lives, whether resorting to digital applications in smartphones or more sophisticated programs or even specific platforms (see chapters by Kirsch and Stavans et al., this volume). In parallel to this growing use of mediated communication, increased accessibility to the internet and increased migration flows mean that conversations, both spoken and written, are increasingly carried out between interlocutors who do not share a common mother tongue. Communication thus can occur either in a common foreign language, with a different sociolinguistic status for the speakers involved, or even in several languages simultaneously, depending on speakers’ perceived and/ or real competencies. In all these linguistic exolingual constellations – some monolingual, others multilingual – the emergence and fostering of ‘translinguistic practices’ (Canagarajah, 2013) is part of strategic communicative behaviours meant to ensure the collaboration between interlocutors (see Stavans et al., this volume, for other format of exolingual communication). Exolingual plurilingual communication will be object of analysis in this contribution; it refers to communicative situations where interlocutors resort to several languages in which they have different degrees of command. The multilingual situation we will deal with in the 165

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study has been referred to as ‘intercomprehension between languages of the same linguistic families’. In intercomprehension situations, the use of different languages to communicate is far from being a face-threatening act connected to lack of competencies or deviation from native-like norms. Instead, it is simultaneously a sign of respect for the plurilingual repertoires in presence and a sign of trust in the plurilingual abilities and in the commitment of all interlocutor(s). Despite this multilingual modus, some reminiscences of the monolingual and monoglossic communicative norms are still present and emerge from time to time (Melo-Pfeifer, 2016), as we will also see. In this data-driven contribution, we intend to look at the simultaneous development of multilingual and electronic literacies in a specific online interaction tool: chat rooms. ‘Multilingual literacies’ refers to the use of different languages to achieve communication and is thus connected to the intercomprehension environment described above. Electronic literacies refers to the use of meaning-making semiotic signs typical of chat communication. The context of this research is the European project Galanet (Platform for the development of Intercomprehension between Romance Languages), which aimed at creating multilingual and collaborative communicative situations between speakers of different Romance Languages (RL): Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. We will analyse the interactional interdependence of the development of specific skills of interaction in chat rooms (computer literacy) alongside the development of multilingual abilities to actively participate in the co-construction of meaning (multilingual literacy). The simultaneous development of both literacies will be called multiliteracies. This means that, in order to convey and to negotiate meaning in multilingual online interaction, participants, as social actors, have to resort to skills (both receptive and productive) in different languages as well as specific features typical of online conversations (smileys, capital letters and so on). The co-construction of meaning is thus achieved through the active participation of all speakers and relies on their ability to use the languages they know and to combine them with other meaning makers. Following an interactional analysis of the chat-room multilingual conversations, we will show how participation in this complex communicative situation fosters participants’ abilities to move across languages and modes and to acquire and combine (new) forms of meaning making, what could be called translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014). It will show how the just-in-time and collaborative, simultaneous development of multilingual and electronic literacies is essential to successfully participate in online multilingual and multimodal interactions. More specifically, we will analyse the interactional processes that allow participants: (i) to collaboratively acquire different

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‘bits of languages’ (Blommaert, 2010; RL in our case) in order to communicate in a multilingual setting; (ii) to acquire and take up the interactional norms characterising chat rooms as a communicative tool (use of smileys, punctuation and use of upper case, preference for short sentences, etc.).

8.2 From ‘Literacy’ to ‘Multiliteracies’ 8.2.1 Understanding ‘literacy’

As with other concepts in teacher education and language learning, ‘literacy’ has become increasingly difficult to grasp. A narrow conception of literacy would be an ability related to reading skills acquired by an individual in a given linguistic community; from a broader perspective, literacy also relates to abilities in writing skills and the use of written codes in society (Cuq, 2003: 157–158; see also Barton, 2007). Despite the loose nature of the ‘literacy’ concept (Barton, 2007; Reuter, 2003; Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015 particularly chapter 8), it is generally accepted that literacy emerged in the field of the development of reading and writing skills in the first or mother tongue and is still related to concepts such as ‘alphabetisation’, ‘illiteracy’ and ‘reading and writing’ (and even with ‘language awareness’, as argued by Anderson, 2016). Additionally, it is still connected to print-based and monolingual practices (Macleroy, 2016). However, as recognised by Stavans and Hoffmann: In the course of three decades, the concept of ‘literacy’ has changed from a purely pragmatic and educational enterprise related to the teaching of reading (and consequently writing) to the recognition that literacy events involve much more than the techniques of encoding and decoding written language. (2015: 255)

Further, in a post-normative and post-positivist paradigm of education and language education in particular, concepts are no longer expected to remain monolithic and stable. Instead, the heuristic adequacy of concepts is permanently challenged by the need to describe, analyse and reassess new educational scenarios. Thus, concepts and theories are revisited and reconfigured in order to understand or problematise challenging realities and what is at stake (Bartlett, 2007), but also to help researchers act upon new or emergent educational scenarios (Helmchen & Melo-Pfeifer, 2018; Melo & Santos, 2008). ‘Literacy’, traditionally related to the ability to produce or understand a written linguistic system, thus saw its conceptual applications stretched into a myriad of uses related to multilingual societies and plurilingual individuals: ‘multilingual literacies’, ‘plurilingual literacy practices’,1 ‘multiliteracies’, ‘pluriliteracies’, ‘multiple literacies’ and ‘transnational

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literacies’ (see García et al., 2007; Martin-Jones & Jones, 2000; New London Group, 1996; Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015; Warriner, 2012). It should be stated that we are using ‘plurilingual’ to refer to individuals’ composite and heterogeneous linguistic repertoires and ‘multilingual’ to refer to social contexts of language juxtaposition (see Marshall & Moore (2016) on this distinction). The evolution of ‘literacy’ in this conceptual landscape is framed by two main contextual features: (i) the widespread use of digital media to communicate and learn, and thus the increasing concern with aspects such as multimodality and transemioticity; and, (ii) the expanding scenarios of multilingual communication between plurilingual individuals possessing very heterogeneous and dynamic linguistic repertoires (Abendroth-Timmer & Hennig, 2014; Anderson, 2016; Macleroy, 2016; New London Group, 1996; Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015; Warriner, 2012). The intricate character of both aspects is clearly stated by Stavans and Hoffmann, according to whom ‘literacy and communicative skills are changing as communication across geographic borders and in real and virtual space generates more and more transnational multilingualism’ (2015: 7). Besides this evolution of the concept ‘literacy’, three other aspects challenge its definition. Firstly, the concept of ‘literacy’ is employed in diverse contexts and to describe a plurality of human knowledge and actions across different disciplinary discourses (Melo & Santos, 2008; Thorne, 2013), such as ‘computer literacy’, ‘scientific literacy’ or ‘mathematical literacy’ (see Melo & Santos (2008) for a revision). Secondly, it seems plausible to assume that certain languages may have specific preferences regarding the use of prefixes as ‘bi’, ‘pluri’ or ‘multi’ (Hornberger, 2007; Marshall & Moore, 2016), and thus ‘multiliteracies’ or ‘pluriliteracies’ would might be understood as synonyms. The third challenge relates to the use of plural and singular forms of the substantive: if ‘multiliteracy’ is considered a cocktail of different literacies, it is plural by definition; however, it seems that the plural form ‘multiliteracies’ has been used to accentuate that multi-layered nature of the term, and it is this form we are using in this contribution. It would be impossible to review here all the definitions of ‘literacy’, all the fields of application and its modern uses. However, we can recognise three components that seem to be fundamental and transversal to all: one related to attitudes and motivations, another related to knowledge and a third related to skills and behaviours, thus more pragmatic (see Simões & Araújo e Sá, 2004). In addition, all accounts of literacy recognise that: (i) literacy is neither innate nor an epiphany, as it depends on learning; (ii) like all learning activities and accomplishments, literacy is built by (and simultaneously builds) social, economic, religious, linguistic and political realities; and (iii) it is permanently actualised in and through situated

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practices or literacy events (Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015; Warriner, 2012; see also Breuer & Van Steendam and Stavans et al., this volume). 8.2.2 Multiliteracy as a cohesive ensemble

Taking into account previous interpretations of the literature (Abendroth-Timmer & Hennig, 2014; Anderson, 2016; Macleroy, 2016; New London Group, 1996; Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015; Warriner, 2012) and considering the difficulties regarding the (in)determination of the concept of ‘literacy’ and its successors, at least three conceptions of ‘multiliteracy’ can be enumerated (Melo & Santos, 2008). The first relates to ‘literacy in different languages’, what could be called a functional ‘multilingual literacy’ (see Ménigoz, 2003; also MartinJones & Jones (2000) stressing the fusion of new digital literacies and multilingualism), closely related to the term ‘biliteracy’ (Hornberger, 2007); García et al. (2007) proposes the term ‘pluriliteracies’, close to what is called ‘plurilingual competence’ (Coste et al., 1997). This proposal blurs the notion of languages as isolated entities with definite borders and intertwines their use with other semiotic systems, contributing to the dissemination of the concept of ‘translanguaging’ (García & Wei, 2014). A second perspective on multiliteracies views them as an ‘ensemble of different literacies’ needed to accomplish a task (communicative or not), as the merging of ‘literacy’ in the original sense, and other literacies, such as computer literacy and scientific literacy. In a study carried out by Laplante (2000), students had to accomplish a task resorting to their literacy in a foreign language and their scientific literacy. Finally, a third perspective sees multiliteracy as ‘multiplicity and diversity of literacy practices’, in which ‘literacy is no longer seen as a universal trait’ but ‘as a lifelong contextbound set of practices in which an individual’s needs vary with time and place’ (Verhoeven & Durgunoglu, 1998: ix). Regardless of the perspective adopted, multiliteracy always refers to plural, multidetermined, complex, participatory and multimodal contexts. More recently, the concept of multiliteracies has been used to focus on the first of those tendencies, close to the sense given to ‘multilingual literacies’ by Martin-Jones and Jones (2000), as in the following quotation: Multilingual literacies are rich and flexible, consist of different spoken and written forms, can be combined and exploited for efficiency and clarity, and are constantly calibrating, reaffirming and redefining themselves within the individuals’ repertoires across a lifespan and as part of a wider social circle within the cultural borders. (Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015: 257)

In this contribution, however, we will analyse multiliteracies as described in the second tendency, the interpenetration of literacies in

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different domains (both in several languages, ‘multilingual literacies’, and in the electronic artefact, computer literacies) in order to collaboratively achieve intercomprehension in chat rooms. Our approach is thus close to the definition provided by Stavans and Hoffmann, for whom multiliteracy refers to ‘multiple forms of literacy associated with different channels or modalities such as, for instance, computer literacy, mathematical literacy (numeracy) and visual literacy’ (2015: 269). In our work, plurilingualism, as a set of individual linguistic repertoires, is ‘an integral part of developing multiliteracies’ (Macleroy, 2016: 72). Multiliteracies thus highlights ‘intersections between the multilingual and multimodal’ (Anderson, 2016: 34) and between the individual and the social components of interaction. 8.3 Intercomprehension Between Romance Languages: A Focus on the Interactional Perspective

In this section, we define intercomprehension in connection to multiliteracies as an ensemble of skills, attitudes and knowledge. Intercomprehension, whether within or beyond typologically related languages, is a pluralistic approach to teaching and learning (Candelier et al., 2007). It may be understood from two perspectives: the receptive and the interactional perspective (Araújo e Sá, 2013; Ollivier & Strasser, 2016).2 More specifically, the receptive perspective is the capacity to understand, in written and/or oral activities, typologically related languages (adopting a cognitive approach to language learning); the interactional perspective is understood as the ability to co-construct meaning in multilingual exolingual interaction (in line with a socioconstructivist approach to language learning and use). The interactional perspective, the one that will be dealt with in this contribution, usually describes situations in which interlocutors make a double but interrelated interactional effort. First, one makes efforts to produce comprehensible output, adjusting different features of his/her production (written or oral) to the interlocutors; second, efforts are made to understand what is conveyed by the other speakers in the unknown (or perceived as unknown but potentially transparent) language(s) (Araújo e Sá, 2013; Araújo e Sá et al., 2010; Melo-Pfeifer, 2018). In our research context, i.e. multilingual chat rooms, languages are seen as ‘one element within a range of available semiotic resources for meaning-making including digital resources’ (Anderson, 2016: 14–15). Thus, we understand interactions as the collaborative co-construction of intercomprehension from a holistic and integrated perspective. Such a perspective recognises the interdependency of individuals, on the one hand, and the simultaneous shared and distributed nature of their semiotic resources, on the other. Linguistic and other semiotic resources are not immanent or selected beforehand to the interaction: they are

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selected, shared and collaboratively developed during interaction, in situations that are unpredictable (Bono & Melo-Pfeifer, 2012; see also Melo-Pfeifer, 2018). Furthermore, as we previously stated regarding the description of multilingual chats, because of certain characteristics of chat conversations (Crystal 2011), e.g. their pragmatic minimalism, other ‘sense makers’ and ‘sense ­containers’ (Jewitt 2009) such as smileys or the expressive use of punctuation and capital letters are mobilised to create, support and/or increase the meaning of the verbal utterances. This use configures intercomprehension in multilingual chat conversations as plurisemiotic, as it ­integrates multiple languages and other semiotic resources. (Melo-Pfeifer & Araújo e Sá, 2018: 868)

This means that online multilingual interaction in Romance Languages (RL), in line with our personal stance toward multiliteracies (as stated above), can be described as the integration of multilingual literacies, through the use of several languages to communicate, and of computer literacies, as several aspects of non-verbal modes contribute to the construction of meaning. ‘Integration’ thus entails the acknowledgement that meaning in online multilingual interaction results from the symbiosis of linguistic and non-linguistic features and that non-verbal and para-verbal features must be considered alongside verbal utterances. Thus, the concept of translanguaging, even if not central to this contribution, can be used to understand how interlocutors collaboratively achieve meaning across languages and modes, i.e. how they make use of and develop their multiliteracies in interaction (MeloPfeifer, 2016). 8.4 Research Context and Methodological Design 8.4.1 The Galanet platform

The focus of his contribution will be on interactions that were collected from an online platform – Galanet (www.galanet.eu) – designed to develop intercomprehension between individuals who master one or more RL. This platform privileged telecollaborative and multilingual work, based on several working spaces and communicative tools, aiming at accomplishing a common task: the completion of a multilingual and intercultural Press Dossier on a topic previously chosen and negotiated by the participants (in the session analysed here, the topic was ‘Ridiamo per le stesse cose? ... Y a-t-il un humour romanophone?’ / ‘Do we laugh at the same things? … Is there a Romance Language humour?’). The platform includes different communicative tools, both synchronous (chat) and asynchronous (discussion forum and e-mail), through which students from RL countries and/or engaged in learning

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Figure 8.1  Visual presentation of the platform

a RL interact to develop the project (see Araújo e Sá et al. (2010) and Melo-Pfeifer (2018) for more information). Figure 8.1 illustrates the organisation of the platform, in two important parameters: time and space. The different communicative spaces of the platform are in the centre of Figure 8.1, including: (a) discussions forums (top left side of the plan); (b) e-mail in the personal bureau (next to the discussion forums); (c) 3 chat rooms (in the bottom right side), where the interactions analysed in this contribution occurred. Table 8.1 lists all the spaces/tools. The ‘time metaphor’ visible on the left side of the platform (see Figure 8.1), shows us that an intercomprehension formative ‘session’ in Galanet follows a chronological path of four phases, as described in Table 8.2. The communication happening in the chat rooms could be called ‘multi-pluri’-lingual (Ehrhart, 2010): on the one hand, it brings together the multilingualism of the communicative contract (the contract establishes that each interlocutor should speak their own language(s) Table 8.1  The different spaces of the platform Interaction tools

Chat rooms E-mail Discussion forums

Archive tools

Chat archive ‘Who’s there?’ (online co-presence)

Organisation tools

Who is who? My profile My team’s profile My preferences Available tools

Self-study tools

Linguistic modules Linguistic resources

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Table 8.2  The four phases of a Galanet session (Araújo e Sá et al., 2010) Phase

Activities

Period (relating to the Canosession)

Breaking the ice and choosing a theme

– Participants present themselves, get to know each other and exchange ideas about the project, expectations and motivations. – They suggest and debate different themes for the session and choose one as leading theme for the upcoming collaborative work.

From February 20th to 14th March 2004

Brainstorming

– Participants discuss sub-themes related to the main theme, in order to prepare the multilingual ‘press dossier’.

From March 15th to 22nd 2004

Collecting documents and debate

– Resorting to different languages, participants search for and discuss documents and web references to illustrate each sub-theme.

From March 23rd to April 12th 2004

Elaborating and publishing the press dossier

– In teams, participants organise a written synthesis of the discussions related to each sub-theme, and publish the press dossier.

From April 13th to May 15th 2004

and understand the language(s) of the other); on the other hand, it makes use of participants’ plurilingual repertoires (each participant and each team knows at least two RL, as shown in Table 8.3). Regarding the communicative contract, it should also be stated that the ‘reference language’ is the RL in which the subjects are most skilful and that is often used for production purposes. Target RL, that are targeted for receptive purposes, can be languages previously learned, being learned, acquired in the host country and/or included in participants’ linguistic projects: they are not ‘target’ in the traditional sense, as a mastery of those languages at all levels is not intended. Table 8.3  Profile of the participant teams Teams/universities

Countries

Number of participants

Languages of reference3

‘Target’ languages

Lusomaníacos

Portugal

17

PT, FR

FR, ES, IT

Os Quinas

Portugal

17

PT, FR

FR, ES, IT

Les Canuts de Lyon

France

9

FR, IT, ES

FR, ES, PT

Che, Rio Cuarto

Argentine

14

ES, FR

FR, IT

Le rane di Grenoble

France

19

FR, IT, ES

FR, IT, ES

Gli spagnoli di economia

Italy

15

IT, FR

FR, ES

forum2004BCN

Spain

34

ES, FR

FR, ES

RA and C° Lyon 2

France

16

FR, PT, ES

PT, ES, FR

‘Les Dahuts’ di Monica

France

18

FR, IT

IT, ES, FR

Madrid

Spain

36

ES, FR

FR, IT, PT

Cassino- Martine

Italy

19

IT, FR

FR, IT

Le Dino-saure,unicas2

Italy

14

IT, FR, ES

FR, ES, IT

Les Montois

Belgium

8

FR

ES, IT, PT

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The Canosession brought together 209 students from six different countries. They were chosen on the basis of either their attendance of RL classes or foreign language teacher education modules provided by the universities of the teacher-researchers involved in the project (i.e. participation was integrated in the curriculum of certain academic subjects). So, students were attending foreign language subjects or teacher training modules in different universities and participated in the platform activities for two main reasons: if language learners, they complemented their linguistic learning of a specific RL with online intercomprehension practices in order to foster their understanding of other related languages; if future RL teachers, they participated in the activities of the platform in order to reflect on how intercomprehension works and how it can foster language learning in formal contexts. Those students were accompanied by 27 teacher-researchers, who participated as animators/tutors. Regarding the status of participants, we may describe them as follows: • Animator/tutor – is responsible for the collaborative work of a group of students (team), namely by stimulating their participation in all languages and answering their questions. • Student – is expected to actively participate in all phases of a section, by reading in all languages, participating in the different communicative spaces and considering all languages on equal terms. 8.4.2 Research design: Multilingual chat conversations analysis

In order to illustrate the complexity of our research object, three sequences of multilingual chat interaction were chosen. The sequences were extracted from much longer chat conversations produced in the chatrooms (see Figure 8.1) and automatically saved by the system. They were then chronologically available to the research team through the ‘archive room’. Chats were recovered and analysed according to researchers’ aims and goals. Thus, a first step in the analysis was, just as for oral conversations, the identification of meaningful sequences, respecting formal or content pre-defined criteria (such as number of languages in presence or collaborative resolution of communicative problems). In our study, the chat sequences were selected because they are representative of how inextricably intertwined are multilingual and computer literacies, and they therefore present common features: (i) they involve at least three RL; (ii) they illustrate the combination of multilingual utterances and ‘internet talk’, such as smileys, punctuation and capital letters; (iii) they demonstrate a high engagement and commitment of speakers towards the co-construction of meaning, through the use of verbal and non-verbal elements; and, finally,

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Table 8.4  The analysed chat sequences Sequence

Day and phase of the collaborative work on the platform

Number of utterances (verbal or non-verbal)

Number of participants involved

Languages used

1

12.03.2004 (breaking the ice and choosing a theme)

22

4

CAT, ES, FR, PT

2

22.03.2004 (Brainstorming)

23

2

ES, FR, PT (IT)

3

19.03.2004 (Brainstorming)

8

4

ES, IT, PT

(iv) being considered ‘a conversation’, usually connoted to an oral modus, they focus on written aspects of this kind of interaction. We may say that the sequences selected as corpus for this contribution clearly demonstrate the functioning of multilingual chat interactions and thus, the analysis can be transferred to other communicative episodes, because of their paradigmatic status; indeed, all three sequences introduce ‘lateral sequences’ (or meta-conversation sequences) where speakers temporarily abandon the topic of the conversation and talk about formal aspects of multilingual chat conversation (languages being used or chat conventions). Table 8.4 presents a brief description of the three sequences, locating them in the timescale of the collaborative work on the project. The three sequences also focus differently on multilingual and computer literacies. The first sequence contains the interpenetration of multilingual resources, whereas the second and third sequences show how digital literacies are co-constructed. In order to better understand the sequences, Table 8.5 presents the linguistic profile of the participants involved (nicknames in alphabetical order), as well as their status in the session (tutor or student).

Table 8.5  Characterisation of participants’ profile in the analysed sequences Nickname

Status

Country

Team

Reference Languages

Target Languages

AndreaG

Student

Italy

Gli spagnoli di economia

IT, ES

PT, FR

Chegade

Tutor

France

Le rane di Grenoble

FR, IT, ES

PT

Colombia

Tutor

France

Le rane di Grenoble

ES, FR

FR, IT, PT

Djose

Tutor

Italy

Le Dino-saure,unicas2

ES, IT

IT, FR, PT

EliaC

Student

Spain

forum2004BCN

CAT, ES

PT, IT, FR

EncarniC

Tutor

France

Le rane di Grenoble

CAT, ES, FR

IT, PT

Mokab

Tutor

Portugal

Os Kinas

PT, FR

ES, IT

Romautos

Tutor

France

Les Canuts de Lyon

PT, FR

ES, IT

SilviaM

Tutor

Portugal

Lusomaníacos

PT, FR

FR, ES, IT

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Although the sequences may seem to privilege the roles or interactions of the tutors, at this point in the project (initial experimentations on the platform and an as-yet uncommon use of online communication in 2004) all of the participants are still learning to use online communication tools and participate in online multilingual interactions. All participants could thus be considered newbies and the novelty posed by chat communication to all participants is a key element of our analysis. Furthermore, students and tutors both are experts in some languages and ‘learners’ of the other languages, which helps to explain why tutors so actively engage in language learning sequences. 8.5 Analysis of Multilingual Chat Sequences

In the previous section, the terms of the communicative contract adopted on the platform were presented: communication should be multilingual, participants ‘speaking’ their own RL and trying to understand the RL of the others. As we also mentioned, the traditional framework of foreign language acquisition and use has been challenged in many aspects: (i) all languages should be treated as equal, without a specific ‘target language’; (ii) receptive and productive skills should be kept separate; (iii) communication, even if (quasi) synchronous, is developed through the written medium. All these challenges have a profound impact on interaction and on the collaborative dynamics between participants and influence the development of multilingual literacies differently. The discourse analysis of the three chat sequences will explain why. 8.5.1 Engaging with an open space of multilingual literacies development

The first excerpt presents a communicative sequence between two tutors (SilviaM and Mokab) and two students (EliaC and AndreaG). This sequence (Table 8.6) is prototypical in that it shows how participants thematically and linguistically engage with each other (focus on form and on content). This chat sequence begins with the discussion of the diglossic situation in Catalonia and the distribution of linguistic resources in this bilingual region of Spain. The use of Catalan by EliaC produces an emotional response from Silvia M (‘I would love to speak Catalan ... ’), which, from this point onwards, means that all languages are not immediately or automatically treated as equal, because interlocutors have personal linguistic goals, aims and preferences. Furthermore, many of the utterances produced by the two Portuguese speakers are made in languages not meant to be used

Developing Multiliteracies in Online Multilingual Interactions  177

Table 8.6  First chat sequence Original excerpt4

English translation

1. [SilviaM] Yo he visitado Barcelona pero toda la jente me hablaba en Español … 2. [SilviaM] No esta mal, pienso que querin que los comprendiera … 3. [mokab] Quand j’ai été à Paris tout le monde me parlait en Anglais! C’est bizarre! 4. [EliaC] sobretot si es Barcelona ciutat, però depend per on vaigis de Catalunya la gent només sap parlar català o parla molt malament el castellà 5. [SilviaM] Me encantaria poder hablar catalan … 6. [EliaC] a mi m´agraderia parlar portugues i italia … 7. [mokab] Et le français, ça ne te plait pas? 8. [SilviaM] Vamos hacer un tandem: yo ensegno el portugués … 9. [EliaC] la veritat que quan comences a estudiar idiomas no pots parar..o almenys això em passa a mi 10. [SilviaM] Eu tambem sou assim! é o feitiço das línguas … 11. [EliaC] feitiço?? 12. [SilviaM] hechizo 13. [SilviaM] se escribe así? 14. [EliaC] jajaja … es verdad 15. [mokab] E das culturas, pois penso que é impossível estudar uma língua sem estudar também a sua cultura! 16. [EliaC] si, muy bien 17. [SilviaM] Yupppiiiiiiiii! 18. [SilviaM] Algunas palabras las escribo como me suenan …. 19. [mokab] Andrea, que passa? parla avec noi? (J’essai d’écrire en italien;) 20. [SilviaM] Andrea …. vuelve! 21. [Andreag] Barcelona … yo no he nunca hecho un viaje a barcelona, pero sè que es encantador 22. [EliaC] es lo bueno del castellano es eso, que lo escribes casi todo según se pronuncia

1. [SilviaM] I visited Barcelona but everybody spoke to me in Spanish … 2. [SilviaM] It is not wrong, I think they wanted me to understand them … 3. [mokab] When I was in Paris, everybody talked to me in English! It’s strange! 4. [EliaC] Mainly if it is Barcelona city, but it depends where you are traveling in Catalonia people do not know how to speak Catalan anymore or speak Spanish very badly 5. [SilviaM] I would love to speak Catalan … 6. [EliaC] I would love to speak Portuguese and Italian … 7. [mokab] What about French? Don’t you like it? 8. [SilviaM] Lets make a tandem: I will teach Portuguese … 9. [EliaC] The true is when you start learning languages, you can not stop … Or at least, it is that way with me 10. [SilviaM] It is the same with me! It is the curse (feitiço) of languages … 11. [EliaC] curse?? 12. [SilviaM] curse (hechizo) 13. [SilviaM] Is it written this way? 14. [EliaC] jajaja … it is true 15. [mokab] and of cultures, because I think it is impossible to study a language without studying its culture! 16. [EliaC] yes, very good 17. [SilviaM] Yupppiiiiiiiii! 18. [SilviaM] Some words I write them as they sound …. 19. [mokab] Andrea, what’s going on? Speak to us (parla avec noi?) (I try to write in Italian;) 20. [SilviaM] Andrea … come back! 21. [Andreag] Barcelona … I have never been to Barcelona, but I know it is lovely 22. [EliaC] The good thing about spanish is that, that you write almost everything as you pronounce it

productively: SilviaM uses Spanish, a receptive target language; Mokab uses French (a foreign language she has learnt) and tries to produce in Italian, another target language for receptive purposes. Mokab promptly recognises her hazardous venture, with the statement ‘I try to write in Italian ;)’ seeming to play a double role. First, it acknowledges the violation of the linguistic contract; and second, it recognises the artificial nature of the distinction between productive and receptive skills and the concomitant distinction between reference and target languages, as both are potential resources for communication. The fact that the innovative contract is not completely abided by the participants can also be observed through SilviaM’s suggestion for transforming this multilingual chat interaction into a potential monoglossic learning

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situation (‘Lets make a tandem: I will teach Portuguese ... ’). This shows that the linguistic rules are permanently revisited according to learning and communicative interests: practicing or teaching a given language (SilviaM’s linguistic behaviour in Spanish and Portuguese) and recovering a ‘silent’ participant (Mokab’s behaviour in Italian), respectively. Another aspect worth analysing is the way the written code is thematised in this conversation. The verbs used by the participants refer primarily to oral communication (hablar, parlare, parler, parlar) and participants reproduce features of oral communication (as interjections, laugh or para-verbal information through smileys or the repetition of punctuation marks). The situated nature of the communication brings the written code – and the normative use of the written code – back to the forefront (‘Is it written this way?’, ‘I try to write in Italian ;)’). This unintended focus on form introduces a second strand in the conversation about the matches and mismatches of pronunciation and orthography (‘The good thing about Spanish is that, that you write almost everything as you pronounce it’). So, whereas multilingual communication and its dilemmas regarding code-choice appear in connection to oral interaction, correction is more associated to the written code. Thus, it is with a focus on writing that discussions on the normative use of language emerge. This sequence also shows the orientation towards learning: participants are driven by a strong bidirectional attention, to the meaning and to the form, both being considered essential for the co-construction of intercomprehension (see Melo-Pfeifer & Araújo e Sá, 2018). This can be seen when participants ask for help in cases of linguistic opacity (‘feitiço??’) or overtly request the normative correction of an utterance (‘Is it written this way?’). Despite the openness of the (multilingual) communicative contract, our samples still show that multilingual communication is impregnated by monolingual and monoglossic viewpoints towards communication. Even in a situation that is substantially recognised as fostering multilingual literacies and despite the possibility of forging, claiming and performing a multilingual identity, the understanding of these multilingual literacies is still based on certain monoglossic norms, such as the recognition of languages as countable entities and the potential of singular language learning. What we see, then, are pregiven communicative norms appropriated and renegotiated according to the parameters of each communicative episode. Languages being omnipresent in this communicative scenario, they easily become conversational topics as they are constantly visible on the computer screen. However, it is important to stress that this focus on monolingual norms in multilingual interaction also occurs in episodes where students and tutors are engaged in other thematic strands and

Developing Multiliteracies in Online Multilingual Interactions  179

languages are not directly recognized as topic of the conversation (Melo-Pfeifer, 2016). 8.5.2 Developing trans-semiotic competence and trans-semiotic awareness

In the second sequence, the interlocutors – both tutors, with little experience of chat conversation – establish and share positive representations regarding chat communication. They realise they can manipulate its rules and, at the same time, play with identity construction and performance (performing awkward or naïve users of chat communication). This episode also shows how individuals learn to communicate and ­communicate to learn in an online multilingual setting, underpinning the dialectical relationship between ‘to communicate’ and ‘to learn’. Thus, the first chat sequence of this section (Table 8.7) is a very telling Table 8.7  Second chat sequence Original excerpt

English translation

1. [Chegade] mas que ‘dejar muestras’, me parece que hay que discutir sur ‘ridiamo per le stesse cose?’ à partir d’exemples concrets 2. [romautos] tomo notas das tuas propostas Chegada 3. [Chegade] Donde esta Chegada, no la veo en la lista? 4. [romautos] que Chegada? 5. [romautos] eu nao tenha nenhuma cegada na minha lista :(( 6. [Chegade] tu hablaste con Chegada mas arriba 7. [Chegade] me muero de risa :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) 8. [Chegade] a las cracajadas :))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) 9. [romautos] ahhhhh 10. [Chegade] carcajadas quiero decir 11. [romautos] acho que estou a ficar cansada 12. [romautos] 8-) 13. [romautos] \-) 14. [Chegade] ça je connais pas 8-) attends je prends mon dico des emoticons 15. [romautos] :-D 16. [Chegade] ça fait un moement 17. [romautos] estou tentando guardar os olhos ‘grande abertos’ 18. [Chegade] 8-) \-) :-D :-???? 19. [romautos] nao uso oculos ‘8’ mas deveria para poder ver melhor o teclado 20. [Chegade] ok, ben on va aller se coucher alors? até amanha 21. [romautos] até breve 22. [Chegade] oui, très breve 23. [romautos] tchao

1. [Chegade] more than ‘show’, I think we have to discuss ‘do we laugh at the same things?’ through concrete examples 2. [romautos] I’m taking notes of your proposals Chegada 3. [Chegade] Where is Chegada, I don’t see her in the list? 4. [romautos] which Chegada? 5. [romautos] I don’t have any Chegada on my list:(( 6. [Chegade] You talked to Chegada up there 7. [Chegade] I am dying in laughter :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) 8. [Chegade] I am breaking out in laugher :))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) 9. [romautos] ahhhhh 10. [Chegade] laughter I mean 11. [romautos] I think I am getting tired 12. [romautos] 8-) 13. [romautos] \-) 14. [Chegade] I don’t know that one 8-) Wait I take my smiley dictionary 15. [romautos] :-D 16. [Chegade] just a moment 17. [romautos] I am trying to keep my eyes ‘big open’ 18. [Chegade] 8-) \-) :-D :-???? 19. [romautos] I don’t use glasses ‘8’ but I should to see the keyboard better 20. [Chegade] ok, well are we going to bed, then? See you tomorrow 21. [romautos] see you soon 22. [Chegade] yes, very soon 23. [romautos] tchao

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example of how representations about linguistic and communicative and computer skills emerge, merge and are performed by interlocutors. As tutors, the speakers are engaged in a task related to the intercomprehension session in Galanet: how to organise the session and how to develop the chosen topic in order to organise the ‘press dossier’. The conversation runs smoothly in Spanish and Portuguese, and it seems that both are taking the communicative contract seriously. Because of a typing error committed by Romautos, who types ‘Chegada’ instead of ‘Chegade’, a small parallel conversation occurs regarding the presence or absence of the fictional female participant (Chegada), who temporarily was given an imaginary presence in the conversation. The intentionally created confusion is revealed by Chegade, who, through what could be seen as very competent use of smileys, makes his humoristic and playful goals evident, protecting Romautos’ face. Thus, the seriousness of the linguistic rules is combined with the playful representation of a communicative chat situation. As the conversation advances, it becomes clear that the professional and skilled use of smileys was another performance of identity. Romautos’ use of two unknown smileys prompts Chegade to recognise the need to resort to a ‘smiley dictionary’ (‘I don’t know that one 8-) Wait I take my smiley dictionary’), supporting our observation that tutors as well as students are neophytes in this kind of communicative situation. This acknowledgement of insufficient skills makes Romautos laugh, a sign of full recovery of face and status. And again, Chegade admits to ignorance of this third smiley (‘:-D’), repeating all three and asking for help, paradoxically also resorting to a smiley: ‘8-) \-) :-D :-????’. Chegade’s learning attitude, that clearly positions him as an apprentice of chat communication codes is deduced from the way he uses an intersemiotic translation: from words and linguistic clues in a specific language to visual signs representing para-verbal information. Such interweaved use of codes would be expected from a bilingual or, in this case, a smiley-verbal dictionary: • [Chegade] me muero de risa :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) • [Chegade] a las cracajadas :))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) Confronted with the unfamiliarity of the smiley ‘8-)’, Romautos explains it resorting to Portuguese (‘I am trying to keep my eyes “big open”’). However, he also integrates the symbol in a sentence containing an example of intersemiotic code-switching (even if this expression can be seen as an unnecessary repetition), as it is not a simple translation from one semiotic sense-container to another, across modes. It is rather a change aiming at facilitating the appropriation of a new sign: ‘I don’t use glasses “8” but I should to better see the keyboard’. The integration of the smiley is made in such a way as to create a network of semantic

Developing Multiliteracies in Online Multilingual Interactions  181

Table 8.8  Third chat sequence Original excerpt

English translation

1. [colombia] me despido, aqui encarni queda en representacion del espagnol 2. [EncarniC] Si, si, pero el de la MAdre PAtria (ji, ji, ji …) 3. [djose] Ciao Amparo 4. [colombia] si se dieron cuenta como representamos la risa ? 5. [romautos] até breve Colombia 6. [romautos] :-D 7. [colombia] los italianos ahah, los portugueses hahaha, los colombianos jajajajaja y los espagnoles ji ji ji 8. [EncarniC] Lo importante es reir verdad?

1. [colombia] I say good bye, encarni stays as a representative of spanish 2. [EncarniC] yes, yes, but from the Mother Fatherland (ji, ji, ji …) 3. [djose] Bye Amparo 4. [colombia] Did you notice how we represent laughing? 5. [romautos] see you soon Colombia 6. [romautos] :-D 7. [colombia] the Italians ahah, the Portuguese hahaha, the Colombians jajajajaja and the Spanish ji ji ji 8. [EncarniC] The important thing is to laugh, isn’t it?

relationships (‘to use’, ‘glasses’, ‘better see’, alongside with the previous ‘eyes’) potentially serving as scaffolding with acquisition purposes. Our third sequence (Table 8.8) also serves to show the acquisition of and play with chat conversation rules. More precisely, it shows the development of a trans-semiotic competence that exposes interlocutors’ awareness of multilingual conventions attached to the use of chat-room non-verbal sense-makers (in our case, onomatopoeias to represent laughter across RL). From this perspective, the following sequence is an example of development of multiliteracies based on the improvement of trans-semiotic competence with a ‘meta’ component (that we approached in previous work through the concept of ‘translanguaging’). The question that brings about the reflection on the representation of laughter in different RL follows an ironic and potentially facethreatening act, related to the pluricentric nature of Spanish. Following the utterance ‘(ji, ji, ji …)’, Colombia asks: ‘Did you notice how we represent laughing?’. It is clearly a ‘meta’ moment, as a parallel sequence is explicitly opened to discuss this multilingual communicative convention in chat situations. The awareness of chat conventions in multilingual conversations is achieved through a juxtaposition of onomatopoeias (‘the Italians ahah, the Portuguese hahaha, the Colombians jajajajaja and the Spanish ji ji ji’), a strategy that could be coined from multilingual education and aimed at explicitly treating similarities and differences across codes (or modes, in our case). 8.6 Synthesis and Perspectives

Our discourse analysis is based on a small but representative corpus of multilingual chat communication in a specific learning scenario. It shows that there was a ‘gain in metacognitive and metalinguistic abilities when learners [and tutors] interacted across languages and modes of communication’ (Macleroy, 2016: 74), as all participants

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display agency in the meaning-making process. The detailed ­analysis of the chat sequences justifies our preference for an understanding of ‘multiliteracies’ as an entangled relationship between multilingual and computer literacies. Indeed, we observed how participants resorted both to receptive and productive skills in different languages, as well as specific features typical of online conversations (such as smileys and interjections). As we saw, none of these literacies taken separately could be responsible for meaning-making and meaning co-­ construction in multilingual online interaction, as they are not merely added to each other, but instead interrelate to and change each other. Regarding the three components of multiliteracies we identified in the theoretical section of this contribution – attitudes, knowledge and skills –, it was possible to see how positive attitudes and motivations were at the same time an ingredient and a product of the context. Knowledge about languages, cultures and appropriate online behaviours, as a second component, was lubricant of the conversation, allowing humour and play to emerge. The third constituent, related to skills and behaviours, allowed communication and learning processes to merge. Among the multiliteracy practices we observed and described, we saw collaborative work around four processes that testify to the development of multiliteracies (Macleroy, 2016: 74) as situated, socially shared and permanently actualised in literacy events: • Experiencing: by actively participating in multilingual chat communication, interlocutors could practice the repertoires they bring with them, and put those repertoires at the service of co-constructing meaning; multilingual chat communication was also an occasion of sharing experiences of multilingual interaction in other settings and discussing the implicit or explicit rules that trigger and regulate them. • Conceptualising: even if not supported by our data, it is plausible to assume that experiencing complex communicative situations, such as multilingual chat rooms, may boost interlocutors’ abilities of hypothesising about the verbal and non-verbal functioning of those situations. • Analysing: participation in such a communicative scenario allowed contributors to actively and critically observe each other’s multilingual and digital repertoires (of which we dealt with but a small portion in this contribution), creating opportunities for the development of transsemiotic competences and trans-semiotic awareness that potentially impact the development of multiliteracies. • Applying: through the collaborative disposition that we observed in the analysed sequences, participants were able to re-use the new ‘bits of languages’ (Blommaert, 2010) and ‘bits of codes’ immediately in the interaction, revealing the potentialities of interaction to the ‘justin-time’ learning (Melo-Pfeifer & Araújo e Sá, 2018).

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In terms of evolution of the term literacy or multiliteracies, our study challenges ‘the traditional dichotomy between the oral and the written while also taking into account the variety and hybridity of texts and communication’ (Breidbach & Kuster, 2014: 130). Indeed, as communication in online media is plurisemiotic (or even trans-­ semiotic) and combines aspects traditionally attached to written or oral media/communication (Crystal, 2011), it is plausible to assume that the concept of ‘literacy’ is losing its traditional attachment to the written code (logocentric perspective). Indeed, it would appear to be embracing much more complex, dynamic and multimodal practices, which are not (immediately) identifiable as belonging to stable texts, genres and modes, neither to established languages or linguistic codes. The communicative situation analysed in this contribution thus challenges borders between languages and the border between semiotic modes, and is meant to expand visions on ‘literacy’ and ‘multiliteracies’ (see Pennycook, 2017: 270). In the perspective presented here, literacy and multiliteracies are not based on languages-as-systems located in the mind of individuals, instead being achieved through and anchored on activity, collaboration and real-time dynamics (Pennycook, 2017: 276). The future of literacy will thus probably be ‘multi’ and multiliteracies is, in our perspective, the concept that best serves to describe the skills, attitudes and knowledge needed to participate in contexts made of ‘intersections between multilingualism and multimodality’ (Anderson & Macleroy, 2016: 262), such as the chat rooms looked at in this contribution. Notes (1) One project dealing with this particular concept is ‘Koinos - European Portfolio of Plurilingual Literacy Practices’ (financially supported from 1.09.2015 to 1.09.2017, in the scope of a European Erasmus Plus Project), coordinated by the Consejaría de Educación, from Barcelona (Spain). More information available in Helmchen and Melo-Pfeifer (2018) or at http://plurilingual.eu/en. (2) The European project EVAL-IC (Evaluation of competences in intercomprehension) also used these two dimensions of Intercomprehension – receptive and interactive – to develop a referential of competences and assessment tools. EVAL-IC was an Erasmus Plus Project (project number 2016-1-FR01-KA203-024155) in the field of cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (Strategic Partnerships for higher education), coordinated by Christian Ollivier (Université de la Réunion, France), from 1.09.2016 to 1.09.2019. Further information under http:// evalic.eu. (3) The abbreviations designate the different RL covered by this session CAT (Catalan), ES (Spanish), FR (French), IT (Italian) and PT (Portuguese). (4) All the examples are reproduced with the original grammar and stylistic features.

References Abendroth-Timmer, D. and Hennig, E.-M. (2014) Plurilingualism and multiliteracies: Identity construction in language education. In D. Abendroth-Timmer and E.-M. Hennig (eds) Plurilingualism and Multiliteracies (pp. 23–37). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

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Anderson, J. (2016) Language and literacy: Challenging monocultural discourses. In J. Anderson and V. Macleroy (eds) Multilingual Digital Storytelling (pp. 13–41). Oxon: Routledge. Anderson, J. and Macleroy, V. (2016) Reflections and implications for multilingual digital literacy. In J. Anderson and V. Macleroy (eds) Multilingual Digital Storytelling (pp. 261–267). Oxon: Routledge. Araújo e Sá, M.H. (2013) Intercompreensão em Didática de Línguas: modulações em torno de uma abordagem interacional. Linguarvm Arena 4, 79–106. Araújo e Sá, M.H., de Carlo, M. and Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2010) “O que diriam sobre os portugueses?????”’: Intercultural Curiosity in Multilingual Chat-Rooms. Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication 10(4), 277–298. Bartlett, L. (2007) Literacy’s verb: Exploring what literacy is and what literacy does. International Journal of Educational Development. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2007.09.002. Barton, D. (2007) Literacy. An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Blommaert, J. (2010) The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bono, M. and Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2012) La compétence plurilingue dans une perspective socio-constructiviste et (co-)actionnelle. In G. Alao, M. Derivry, S. Yun-Roger and E. Suzuki (eds) Didactique Plurilingue et Pluriculturelle: l’Acteur en Contexte Mondialisé (pp. 61–72). Paris: Éditions des Archives Contemporaines. Breidbach, S. and Küster, L. (2014) ‘Bildung’, ‘Multiliteracies’ and ‘Identity’ – Key concepts in language education in the light of sociocultural theory and dynamic systems theory. In D. Abendroth-Timmer and E.-M. Hennig (eds) Plurilingualism and Multiliteracies (pp. 129–144). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Breuer, E.O. and Van Steendam, E. (2021) Multiple approaches to understanding and working with multilingual (multi-)literacy. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 1–18). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, S. (2013) Translingual Practices. Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. Oxon: Routledge. Candelier, M., Camilleri-Grima, A., Castellotti, V., de Pietro, J.-F., Lörincz, I., Meißner, F.-J., Schröder-Sura, A., Noguerol, A. and Molinié, M. (2012) (eds) (2007) Cadre de référence pour les approches plurielles des cadres et des cultures. Graz: European Centre for Modern Languages. Coste, D., Moore, D. and Zarate, G. (1997) Compétence Plurilingue et Pluriculturelle: Langues Vivantes. Strasbourg: European Council. Crystal, D. (2011) Internet Linguistics. London: Routledge. Cuq, J.-P. (2003) Littéracie. In J.-P. Cuq (ed.) Dictionnaire de Didactique du Français (pp. 157–158). Paris: Clé Internacional. Ehrhart, S. (2010) Pourquoi intégrer la diversité linguistique et culturelle dans la formation des enseignants au Luxembourg? [Why should linguistic and cultural diversity be integrated in teacher education in Luxembourg?]. In S. Ehrhart, C. Hélot and A. le Nevez (eds) Plurilinguisme et Formation des Eenseignants : Une Approche Critique (pp. 221–237). Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main. García, O., Bartlett, L. and Kleifgen, J.A. (2007) From biliteracy to pluriliteracies. In P. Auer and L. Wei (eds) Handbook of Applied Linguistics (pp. 207–228). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. García, O. and Wei, L. (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Helmchen, Ch. and Melo-Pfeifer, S. (eds) (2018) Plurilingual Literacy Practices at School and in Teacher Education. Bern: Peter Lang. Hornberger, N. (2007) Biliteracy, transnationalism, multimodality, and identity: Trajectories across time and space. Linguistics and Education 8 (3–4), 325–334.

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Jewitt, C. (2009) An introduction to multimodality. In C. Jewitt (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (pp. 14–27). London: Routledge. Kirsch, C. (2021) Promoting multilingualism and multiliteracies through storytelling: A case study on the use of the app iTEO in preschools in Luxembourg. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 187– 210). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Laplante, B. (2000) Apprendre en sciences, c’est apprendre à ‘parler sciences’: des élèves de l’immersion nous parlent des réactions chimiques. Canadian Modern Language Review 57(2). See http://www.utpjournals.com/product/cmlr/572/572-Laplante.html [1-12-2005]. Macleroy, V. (2016) From literacy to multiliteracies. In J. Anderson and V. Macleroy (eds) Multilingual Digital Storytelling (pp. 68–86). Oxon: Routledge. Marshall, S. and Moore, D. (2016) Plurilingualism amid the panoply of lingualisms: addressing critiques and misconceptions in education. International Journal of Multilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2016.1253699. Martin-Jones, M. and Jones, K. (2000) Multilingual Literacies: Reading and Writing Different Worlds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2016) Translanguaging in multilingual chat interaction: Opportunities for intercomprehension between Romance Languages. In C. Wang and L. Winstead (eds) Handbook of Foreign Language Research in the Digital Age (pp. 188–207). IGI Global. Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2018) When non-romance languages break the linguistic contract in romance languages chat rooms: Theoretical consequences for studies on intercomprehension. In J. Buendgens-Kosten and D. Elsner (eds) Multilingual Computer Assisted Language Learning (pp. 151–167). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Melo-Pfeifer, S., and Araújo e Sá, M.H. (2018) Multilingual interaction in chatrooms: translanguaging to learn and learning to translanguage. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 21 (7), 867–880. Melo, S., and Santos, L. (2008) Compétence plurilingue et plurilittéracie: de nouveaux concepts pour de nouveaux enjeux. In. M. Gibson, B. Hufeisen and C. Personne (eds) Mehrsprachighkeit: lernen und lehren (pp. 233–253). Darmstadt: Schneider Verlag. Ménigoz, A. (2003) La littéracie en milieu multilingue – principes didactiques. LIDIL 27, 89–102. New London Group (1996) A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66 (1), 60–92. Ollivier, Ch., and Strasser, M. (2016) Interkomprehensionskompetenz(en): Versuch einer Eingrenzung als Grundlage für die Umsetzung im Sprachunterricht. In M. Rückl (ed.) Sprachen und Kulturen: vermitteln und vernetzen (pp. 112–126). Münster: Waxmann. Pennycook, A. (2017) Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism 14 (3), 269–282. Reuter, Y. (2003) La littéracie – perspectives pour la didactique. LIDIL 27, 11–23. Simões, A.R. and Araújo e Sá, M.H. (2004) ‘Aquele de camisas às flores é brasileiro’: estereótipos sobre línguas e povos manifestados por alunos do 3º Ciclo do Ensino Básico. In A.D. Barker (ed.) O Poder e a Persistência dos Estereótipos (pp. 283–297). Aveiro: Universidade de Aveiro. Stavans, A. and Hoffmann, C. (2015) Multilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stavans, A., Eden, M. and Azar, L. (2021) Multilingual literacy: The use of emojis in written communication. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 233–259). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Thorne, S. (2013) Digital literacies. In M. Hawkings (ed.) Framing Languages and Literacies (pp. 193–219). London: Routledge.

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Verhoeven, L. and Durgunoglu, A. (1998) Perspectives on literacy development in multilingual contexts. In A. Durgunogluand and L. Verhoeven (eds) Literacy Development in a Multilingual Context: Cross-cultural Perspectives (pp. IX–XVIII). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Warriner, D. (2012) Multilingual literacies. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge and A. Creese (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 508–520). Oxon: Routledge.

9 Promoting Multilingualism and Multiliteracies through Storytelling: A Case Study on the Use of the App iTEO in Preschools in Luxembourg Claudine Kirsch

9.1 Introduction

Early literacy programmes are a pivotal component in many countries’ educational programmes because they help close gaps in academic achievement. The children’s experiences with language and literacy as well as the development of their oral language, their understanding of the alphabetic code and their print knowledge are predictors of success in reading (Riley-Ayers, 2006; cf. Bergmann Deitcher et al., this volume). Standards in literacy are tested ever earlier, with Luxembourg a case in point. While early years teachers and educators recognize the importance of early literacy, they feel under pressure to develop these skills. This chapter focuses on storytelling because it is one means of developing oral language and narrative skills, which, in turn, promote literacy (Miller & Pennycuff, 2008; Morrow, 2001; Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2001). Storytelling can be enhanced through digital tools which engage learners, encourage interaction and connect formal and informal learning environments (Bachmaier & Pachler, 2015; Kucirkova et al., 2014, Melo-Pfeifer, this volume). The present chapter presents a literature review on multiliteracies, multilingual practices and digital storytelling as well as a case study of 187

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multilingual literacy practices in two preschool classes in Luxembourg. The latter shows the ways in which digital storytelling is embedded in multilingual pedagogies that promote multiliteracies. Literacy is thereby understood as a social practice (Barton & Hamilton, 1998) rather than as the competence of an individual to read and write. The data of the case-study come from the project iTEO, which examined the use of the iPad app iTEO (2013–2017), an open-content application that allowed the recording and editing of oral productions in preschool and primary school classes in Luxembourg. The aim of the project was to promote innovative practices that further both the development of the children’s target languages and their use of home languages (Kirsch, 2017). The examples presented will illustrate the ways in which, firstly, two preschool teachers developed multiliteracies while drawing on the children’s entire linguistic repertoire and, secondly, a Portuguesespeaking girl used iTEO to create multimodal texts. Luxembourg is a particularly interesting setting in which to carry out research on multiliteracies in early childhood owing to the country’s trilingualism (Luxembourgish, German and French) and the high diversity of the school intake. In the academic year 2016/7, 64 per cent of the fouryear-olds who entered the compulsory preschool did not speak Luxembourgish as a first language (MENJE, 2018). The presentation of the case study is preceded by two theoretical sections; a sociocultural perspective on literacy, and literacy development with digital storytelling. 9.2 A Sociocultural Perspective on Literacy and Language Learning: Multiliteracies and Multilingual Pedagogies

In the past four decades, literacy has become a field of interest to linguists, psychologists, educators, anthropologists, sociologists and historians. In the field of education and linguistics, literacy has been widely researched and theories, approaches and methods have been developed, contested and challenged. More specifically, the sociocultural perspective on literacy has become the game-changing theoretical perspective that followed the traditional way of interpreting literacy as an individual’s ability to read and write. The sociocultural perspective understands literacy as a situated social practice and communal resource which depends on various domains such as the family, the community or school. This view sheds light on the types of experiences, knowledge and skills that people need to actively participate in literacy practices. Kelly (2010), for example, showed that learning to read in a nursery school in London was a multimodal and inclusive experience. The emergent multilingual children co-constructed meaning, connected pictures to text, drew on world knowledge and mobilized their knowledge of letters and phonological awareness. They were expected to actively participate, engage and collaborate with the

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teacher not expecting any correct answers at this stage. In such literacy practices, which are distinctive cultural ways in which written language is used, children learn specific behaviours, norms, values and beliefs (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1984) and position themselves. While a sociocultural perspective provides insights into practices, it neither explains the cognitive processes involved in becoming literate nor focuses on skills frequently associated with reading and writing such as phonological awareness, letter recognition, and oral skills. Two parallel factors influenced the development of this perspective: the New Literacies Studies and the New London Group. 9.2.1 New Literacies Studies: Home literacies and funds of knowledge

In England, Barton and Hamilton (1998), Gee and Street (1984) were the most influential scholars in reframing literacy as a social practice. Many research studies in this field focused on the literacy practices of multilingual families. Gregory and Williams (2000) and Gregory (2001), for instance, illustrated the ways in which parents and children brought together the knowledge and skills gained at home, the mainstream school, the complementary school and/ or other community settings, and blended or ‘syncretized’ the diverse literacy practices, thereby reinterpreting them in new and dynamic ways. Similarly, Kenner and her colleagues found that bilingual four and six-year-olds were able to make sense of their differing literacy practices. They operated in ‘simultaneous worlds’, produced bilingual texts and explained specificities of the scrips in peer-teaching sessions (Kenner et al., 2004). Likewise, Purcell-Gates (2007) and McTavish (2009) demonstrated that bilingual children had acquired a range of ways of using languages, including in new media, in their family and community before they entered school. To describe the children’s linguistic and cultural capital, many researchers referred to the concept of ‘funds of knowledge’, defined as ‘historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and wellbeing’ (Moll et al., 1992: 133). McTavish (2009), for example, reported that Rajan, an eight-yearold boy, engaged at home in multilingual activities involving networking and producing multimodal texts. For instance, he included graphics from video games in a text about MSN. The complexity and variety of his home literacy practices contrasted with the print-orientated, individual and monolingual practices at school. In sum, this field of research shed light on children’s ‘funds of knowledge’ developed through participating in literacy practices situated in out-of-school contexts. In addition, it showed the ways in which children made sense of these differing experiences and constructed their identity by positioning themselves. Furthermore, it helped

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reposition home literacy practices as valid pedagogical practices, which complement those existing at school. 9.2.2 The New London Group: Multiliteracies and a pedagogy of multiliteracies

The New London Group (NLG), a group of ten academics from the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Australia, was the second driving force behind the sociocultural perspective on literacy. Its members recognized that communication and ways of meaning making were rapidly changing owing to two factors. Firstly, increased migration and globalization resulted in growing linguistic and cultural diversity, and second, the diversification of communication channels through new technologies led to complex multimodal practices. Children had experience with new media and digital tools which their families used for entertainment and transnational networking (Gregory & Williams, 2000; McTavish, 2009). In response to these global societal changes, the NLG developed a new approach to literacy coined ‘multiliteracies’ which emphasized diversity, multiple forms of meaning making and multimodality. Furthermore, it challenged the existing literacy pedagogy at school which was characterized by monolingual, monocultural and print-based practices. Only particular text genres and literacy practices were legitimated at school. The existing pedagogy was at odds, firstly, with the students’ complex linguistic, semiotic, and cultural experiences made out of school and, second, with the aims of curricula that should prepare students to successfully function in linguistically, culturally and technologically diverse societies. Learners should become familiar with a range of meaning making systems, learn to express themselves multimodally and develop social, analytical, critical and problemsolving skills (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). Based on this analysis, the NLG developed a ‘pedagogy of multiliteracies’ that drew on the students’ experiences and encouraged them to engage in multiple literacy modes (e.g. linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial). The pedagogy was based on four principles: situated learning, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice (New London Group, 1996). Years later, the group reviewed these components and related them more closely to the knowledge processes, comprising experiencing, conceptualizing, analysing and applying (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2015). The concepts developed by the NLS and NLG influenced teaching approaches, among others the ‘multiliteracies approach’ developed by Cummins and colleagues in Canada. Some of these initiatives involved dual language books (Naqvi et al., 2012; Taylor et al., 2008). Taylor et al. (2008) observed how teachers, parents and four- to fiveyear children of ethnic minority background produced bilingual books based on children’s experiences. The parents and the children thereby

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drew on their expertise of storytelling. According to a survey, the parents told stories in English and a home language and used a range of materials obtained either from abroad or locally from a library or a religious institution. The multimodal texts included oral productions, illustrations, photographs taken at home or at school and texts translated by the parents into the home languages. The finished bilingual books were scanned and sent to family members to be shared with the wider community. Cummins (2004, 2009) coined the term ‘identity texts’ to refer to texts where children include personally, linguistically and culturally relevant dimensions of their identity. The sharing of these texts creates a space for intercultural exchange and affirms the children’s bilingualism and identity (Cummins, 2004; Naqvi et al., 2012; Taylor et al., 2008). The materialization of the children’s funds of knowledge in dual language books allows teachers to incorporate the learners’ linguistic resources into their teaching. Some teachers used these texts as the main reading material in class (Martínez-Alvarez & Ghiso, 2014). The production of such bilingual books can be one initiative of linguistically and culturally inclusive pedagogies, which systemically draw on children’s and parents’ funds of knowledge and expertise (Hélot, 2008; Kenner & Mahera, 2012). The next section sheds some light on pedagogies that capitalize on children’s entire language repertoire. 9.2.3 Multilingual pedagogies

Following the ‘multilingual turn’ (Conteh & Meier, 2014), new developments in language teaching called for more open and flexible approaches to multilingualism at school, including early childhood education. Despite the calls for innovative and inclusive approaches like those from the NLG, schools and early childhood institutions largely continued to be underpinned by monolingualizing language ideologies, which contrasted with the children’s multilingual reality. Multilingualism was perceived as a hindrance rather than a resource and was not promoted (Panagiotopoulou, 2016). García and her colleagues in the United States of America were amongst the first to implement and research multilingual pedagogies (García & Flores, 2012). These pedagogies are built on social constructivist learning theories and encourage inclusive, collaborative and transglossic practices that put the learners at the centre, value their linguistic and cultural resources, and give them some choice over their language use (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017; Conteh, 2017; García et al., 2017). Translanguaging, the deployment of a person’s entire semiotic repertoire is a legitimate communicative practice (García & Otheguy, 2019). It is based on the understanding that people have one complex linguistic repertoire from which they select features according to the situation of

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communication. The strategic and pedagogical use of translanguaging in class helps learners construct knowledge, make meaning, communicate and mark their identities (García & Otheguy, 2019; Kirsch, 2020; Lewis et al., 2012). Studies on translingual practices in early years institutions provide insights into the teachers’ scaffolding strategies and the children’s learning (García, 2011; Kirsch, 2020; Palviainen et al., 2016). Young and Mary (2016), for instance, reported that the nursery teacher they observed in France translanguaged at specific moments to respond to the children’s needs, facilitate learning, value home languages and help children make links between home and school languages. She engaged children in regular literacy activities, had words in French and the children’s home languages pinned on the wall to familiarize children with print, and invited parents to come to class to read bilingual books. The bilingual teachers in Israel studied by Schwartz and Asli (2014) encouraged the use of Arabic and Hebrew in class and furthered literacy by drawing the children’s attention to the different scripts in bilingual books. According to Panagiotopoulou (2016), translingual literacy practices familiarize children with the ‘universal meaning of print culture, the relationship between literature and education, and the connection between language diversity and multilingual literacy’ (Panagiotopoulou, 2016: 33). Children enjoy opportunities to cross language and cultural barriers and immerse themselves in diverse literacy practices. This first theoretical part exposed some of the social and economic factors that lead some scholars to conceptualize literacy in terms of diversity and multiplicity of use, modes and languages. It provided insights into the ways in which children engage in multiliteracies, and teachers draw on the children’s linguistic and cultural resources. Next, I examine literacy development through new technologies. 9.3 Literacy Development Through Digital Storytelling and the App iTEO

The first two sections focus on literacy development in general and through digital tools while the last one presents the app iTEO and findings related to its use. 9.3.1 Literacy development in the early years through storytelling

Approaches to literacy development in the early years should enable children to have rich, meaningful and varied experiences with print. Roskos et al. (2003), who researched literacy activities in classrooms, identified four foci: oral skills; storytelling and book reading, emergent writing and, finally, phonemic awareness and code-related skills

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(e.g. letter identification, letter-sound correspondence). Sverdlov et al. (2014) reported that preschool teachers in Israel highly valued book reading and oral language development. A study in Athens similarly showed that nursery teachers emphasized the development of oral language, relying on a range of activities such as conversations, singing, play, book reading and storytelling (Englezou & Fragkouli, 2014). In keeping with the focus of this chapter, the relationship between storytelling and literacy development will be further explored. Stories expose children to rich vocabulary, complex structures and a range of styles, and familiarize them with decontextualized language use. According to Mallan (1991) the linguistic features of storytelling display ‘a sophistication that goes beyond the level of conversation’ (Mallan, 1991: 14). The language use in written texts is generally more precise, concise, explicit and sophisticated, the sentences are longer, and the organization of the text is more complex and logical. There may also be a greater density of ideas and more varied points of views, plots and styles (Nickel, 2007; Snow, 1999). Frequent book reading and storytelling expose children to these features of language and text. The meaningful context and the repetitiveness of the language facilitate the acquisition of new vocabulary in a first (Levy et al., 2006; Snow, 1999) and a second language (Anderson & Chung, 2011) and help learners infer grammatical rules (Glazer & Burke, 1994). Furthermore, several researchers reported on improved narrative competence (Berman, 1995; Mallan, 1991; Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2001). Listening to and retelling stories helps children develop a sense of story, which, in turn, enables them to make predictions, sequence events, understand story structure (e.g. characters, scene, plot) and construe coherent stories (Haven & Ducey, 2007; Morrow, 2001). Children draw on this very ability when they read texts and produce coherent and well-developed stories. This helps explain the correlation between narrative competence and reading comprehension (Cain, 2003; Haven & Ducey, 2007; Miller et al., 2006). Narrative competence is a precursor for literacy both for monolingual children (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001; Snow, 1999) and bilinguals (August & Shanahan, 2006). 9.3.2 Developing literacy and storytelling through digital technology

Mobile technologies are a common feature of language classes because they allow for flexibility and adaptability, widen opportunities for interaction, connect formal and informal learning environments, and promote life-long learning (Bachmair & Pachler, 2015; KukulskaHulme, 2013; Stavans et al., this volume). It is therefore surprising that Wells Rowe and Miller (2016) found limited research on the use of iPads used to promote literacy development in early childhood and

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to facilitate the production of children’s own texts. Flewitt et al. (2014) and Lynch and Redpath (2012) reported that most teachers used apps with closed content where preschool children practiced traditional print-based literacy skills such as alphabetic skills and sound-letter correspondence. This is in line with an earlier literature review on the use of technology and early literacy development. Burnett (2010) showed that most research studies were underpinned by a psychologicalcognitive model of print-based literacy. There are, however, also some studies based on sociocultural perspectives, and these show that young children are able to use apps with open content and compose personal multimodal texts (Flewitt et al., 2014; Lynch & Redpath, 2012; Navqi et al., 2012; Wells Rowe & Miller, 2016). Storytelling was a dominant feature of these apps. Digital storytelling enhances traditional storytelling by allowing learners to weave together picture, sound, film and narration. These apps tend to be learner-centred and draw on the learners’ experiences with digital tools and multimodal texts (Hafner, 2014). They promote autonomy and encourage learners to produce personally meaningful texts where they mobilize their funds of knowledge. As seen in the first part of this chapter, these ‘identity texts’ promote language, literacy and identity development especially if they are produced collaboratively and shared with members of the community (Navqi et al., 2012; Taylor et al., 2008). Research studies on storytelling apps used by younger children frequently focused on engagement and language learning. Pellerin (2014) reported that the six- to seven-year-olds she worked with in Canadian French immersion classes, were motivated to produce texts, reflected on the language used, and made multiple recordings when dissatisfied with the first. Kucirkova et al. (2014) identified a relationship between the engagement of Spanish four- to five-year-olds and language learning. Di Blas and Paolini (2013) and Flewitt et al. (2014) found improved communication skills of the children in their study. The opportunity to produce multimodal texts may be especially useful for learners with less developed skills in a home language or a target language because they have a choice of how to express themselves. Hafner (2013) and Nelson et al. (2008) reported that second language learners made meaning and demonstrated knowledge in more powerful ways in digital texts than in print-based ones. It is worth remembering that the impact of an app is influenced by the classroom pedagogy, which is informed by social, historical and political factors. Wells Rowe and Miller (2016) found that language ideologies influenced the production of bilingual texts in the preschool classes they researched in the United States of America. When the researchers reviewed the personalized, multimodal dual language eBooks the four-year-olds had produced at the end of the first year of the project, they noticed that the Spanish-speaking children but not children

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of other language backgrounds had created bilingual texts. To encourage all children to produce bilingual texts, the team provided individual language support and encouraged the production of meaningful texts that were publicly valued. By the end of the second year, all children had produced at least one bilingual text. The teachers (and in this case the researchers as well) found it hard going to get the children to produce bilingual texts. By contrast, the multilingual children in Luxembourg worked largely autonomously with the app iTEO and translanguaged frequently (Kirsch, 2017). 9.3.3 Using iTEO to develop multiliteracies

Multilingualism is a lived reality in the Luxembourgish society and its development is an aim of the trilingual education system. Luxembourgish and German are the languages of instruction at primary school, the former being used in non-academic subjects and the latter in academic ones. Aged six, children become literate in German and begin their study of French. The system is challenging, particularly so for the many children of ethnic minority background and lower social class of which many tend to underachieve (MENJE and LUCET, 2016; MENJE, 2018). To enhance equal opportunities and facilitate integration, the Ministry of Education focused on the development of Luxembourgish in early childhood. Luxembourgish is the main language in the précoce, a non-compulsory school year for three-year-olds, and the compulsory two-year preschool for four-year-olds. Since 2017, teachers also need to familiarize children with French and value their home languages. In 2013, Kirsch and Gretsch secured funding from the Ministry of Education and the University of Luxembourg to develop the app iTEO out of the computer programme TEO and research its use. The aim was to encourage teachers to deploy inclusive methods for language teaching that capitalize on children’s diverse language profiles and facilitate collaborative and open-ended language learning. The app is based on Bakhthin’s theory of dialogism and social-constructivist language learning theories. It allows users to record and edit oral text. The recording appears as a numbered icon on the interface. Learners can edit their production by rearranging and deleting these icons, add written text and insert pictures with the iPad camera. They can listen to their own texts and those of others and share them via email with their community (e.g. peers, teacher, parents). The automatic replay materializes the language used and provides opportunities for revision, analysis, negotiation of meanings and interpretations of discourse (Kirsch, 2017). The app is so easy to operate that the preschoolers taught each other. The research project iTEO (2013–2017) examined the use and role of the tool in two preschool and two primary school classes over two

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academic years drawing on interviews, observations, video recordings, audio-recorded iTEO stories, photos and documents. The findings show that the primary teachers allowed children to invent and narrate stories in a language of their choice but tended to design language learning tasks to practice vocabulary or sentence structures in German and French. They valued the development of language awareness and conscious reflection on language, which were the result of children collaboratively producing oral texts, listening to these, and giving each other feedback. They perceived iTEO as a language learning tool and emphasized the children’s achievements in the target languages (Kirsch & Bes, 2017; Kirsch & Gretsch, 2015; Kirsch, 2017). By contrast, the nursery teachers gave children more control over the app and many children used it daily to tell stories in Luxembourgish and their home language (Kirsch, 2017, 2018). Like the children studied by Pellerin (2014), the preschool children in Luxembourg were focused, motivated and engaged, and did not hesitate to delete parts of texts they were dissatisfied with. The app created a safe space that promoted autonomy and collaboration: the children collectively decided on the genre of the text and the language to be used, planned, constructed, evaluated their productions and corrected them (Kirsch & Bes, 2017). The use of the app together with the meaningful task contributed to the development of their language and narrative competence (Kirsch, 2017, 2018). These findings are in line with those of Di Blas and Paolini (2013) and Flewitt et al. (2014). In sum, this second theoretical part clarified the relationship between storytelling and literacy development, showed that young children are able to use storytelling apps efficiently to develop language and literacy skills and, finally, presented the app iTEO. Drawing on Lynch and Redpath (2012) and Wells Rowe and Miller (2016), I reiterate that it is not the app per se that leads to development and change but the way in which it is used. The next section, therefore, illustrates how iTEO is embedded in daily literacy practices. The tool perfectly fitted the multilingual pedagogies of the teachers (Conteh, 2017; García, 2017). 9.4 Multiliteracies and Storytelling Practices: Examples from the iTEO Project

This part presents the multilingual and multiliteracies practices of the two preschool classes and the ways in which a native Portuguesespeaker used iTEO to tell multimodal stories. 9.4.1 Methodology

Below are some details on the sample and the methods used to collect and analyse the data presented. (Further details can be found in Kirsch,

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2017, 2018.) The research questions that frame this case-study read as follows: • What are the literacy practices in the preschool classes? • What types of stories does Ariana narrate on iTEO and what funds of knowledge (e.g. personal, linguistic and cultural resources) does she draw upon? The sample consists of the two preschool teachers who participated in the iTEO project, their classes, and one five-year-old focus child. The teachers had been selected on account of their language background, professional experience and the location of the schools. Both grew up in Luxembourg and speak Luxembourgish, German, French, English and Italian. Both obtained their teaching qualification in Luxembourg. At the start of the project, one teacher had taught for fifteen years and the other one for two. Both teachers had taken part in a 20-hour professional development course on the pedagogical use of the tool prior to the research project. Ms Donatiello worked in a school in the East of Luxembourg close to the French border catering in general for more middle-class families, while Ms Di Letizia’s school was in the South and catered mainly for families of ethnic minority background. Finally, it is important to note that Ms Di Letizia worked part-time as a research assistant in the project iTEO, collecting data. Five focus children of different linguistic backgrounds were chosen in the preschool classes but this paper, focuses on Ariana. Born in Luxembourg to Portuguese speaking-parents, she speaks Portuguese with her parents and learned Luxembourgish in the précoce aged three. My choice is purely pragmatic: I had published less on her storytelling practices compared to those of her peers. Table 9.1 provides an overview of the classes. The project abides by the ethical principles of the University of Luxembourg. We protected the dignity of all participants and asked teachers and parents for informed consent. The teachers and children have opted not to remain anonymous and agreed to our posting of educational videos on the use of iTEO practices on the university’s website (https://iTEO.uni.lu). The data presented draw on various methods. Ms Di Letizia spent one day every six weeks in each preschool class to observe and take Table 9.1  Details about the classes Ms Donatiello

Ms Di Letizia

Number of children

18

18

Number of children speaking Luxembourgish at home

9

5

Other languages spoken at home

P, F, E, I, B, Se

P, F, E, So, A

The following abbreviations have been used: L (Luxembourgish), P (Portuguese), F (French), E (English), I (Italian), B (Bosnian), Se (Serbian), So (Somali), A (Arabic)

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Table 9.2  Details about the data collection Nursery school Amount

Hours (approx.)

Classroom observations of literacy practices

24

(24 mornings)

Interviews with the two teachers

10

5 hours

Interviews with Ariana’s parents (2013, 2014)

2

1 hour

Video recordings of the focus children working on iTEO

108

32 hours

Video recordings of Ariana working on iTEO

21

7.5 hours

Ariana’s recordings on iTEO

77

field notes of literacy practices and interactions between teachers and children, and to video-record children working on iTEO. In both classes, she conversed with the children about their storytelling experience and the use of iTEO. Kirsch carried out five semi-structured interviews with each teacher, focusing on literacy practices, storytelling, the use of iTEO and the language use of all participants. She also interviewed Ariana’s parents twice, asking questions on home literacies, the use of new media, and the child’s language use. In addition, the researchers and the teachers collected all audio-recorded iTEO stories, took pictures and made copies of the children’s work. Table 9.2 gives more details on the amount of data collected. The data analysis drew on thematic analysis and text analysis and was assisted by the software Nvivo (Kirsch, 2017). All interviews and video-recordings were transcribed in the original languages and when relevant, the children’s non-verbal behaviour (mime, gestures, action, tone of voice) were described in detail. To analyse literacy practices, the research team identified the various types of routine classroom activities (e.g. telling stories, copying words), the language used, the mode (e.g. oral, written, multimodal), the participants (e.g. children, teachers, parents) and the material (e.g. book, computer, iTEO). To examine Ariana’s storytelling on iTEO, I used the 21 video-recorded sessions and her 77 audio-recordings on iTEO. I analysed the genre of the production (e.g. story, song), the language used in several situations (e.g. telling and planning a story, managing the task) and her non-verbal behaviour. The following sections present the multiliteracy practices in the classrooms and show that iTEO was firmly embedded in a multilingual pedagogy (García & Flores, 2012). 9.4.2 Multiliteracy practices in the nursery classes

The national curriculum in Luxembourg expects teachers to develop language and literacy skills. Preschoolers should be able to express themselves in Luxembourgish using simple language when speaking about

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familiar topics by the time they enrol in primary school. They also need to be able to identify particular sounds and letters, recognise their written name, know how to handle a book and understand the social functions of books (MENFP, 2011: 8). Both teachers developed the children’s oral language, alphabetic code and concept of print but they put a clear focus on the development of oracy, like the teachers studied by Sverdlov et al. (2014) and Englezou and Fragkouli (2014). Their main pedagogical approach was rooted in socio-constructivist learning theories and based on the use of stories. Ms Donatiello perceived stories as ‘multimodal, multidisciplinary and multidimensional’ (interview, 30 January 2014) by which she meant that they allow the use of verbal and non-verbal modes of communication; bridge several curricular domains such as language education, arts and science, and connect home and school. Both teachers explained that storytelling consisted of a range of activities such as reading, painting, dictating and playing a story and recording it on iTEO and listening to it (interview with Ms Di Letizia, 19 December 2014). In this sense, they drew on the same range of activities combined in a holistic way than other teachers (Dyson, 1997; Englezou & Fragkouli, 2014; Paley, 1992). The following representative example illustrates this range of activities. Each week, the teachers used a specific book to introduce a topic. When Ms Di Letizia presented ‘the story of the week’ called ‘The book of dreams’ by Shirin Adl featuring a dragon, the children retold the story, role-played dragons, invented their own one, drew pictures of dragons, dictated dragon stories to the teacher and invented stories on iTEO. The children engaged in multiple literacy modes (e.g. linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial) and became familiar with a range of meaning-making systems akin to the ‘pedagogy of multiliteracies’ developed by the New London Group (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). Details of the activities involving iTEO and dictating will be presented next. The app iTEO was a storytelling ‘tool’ used daily by children in both classrooms. Both teachers promoted collaboration on iTEO because they believed that collective storytelling gives a purpose to listening to, narrating, interpreting and transforming stories (interview with both teachers, 30 June 2015). The teachers encouraged the children to tell stories in any language and insisted that they listened to each other’s stories. The children in the main produced stories in Luxembourgish but they also narrated in French, Portuguese or English. At times, they deliberately included phrases or words in their home language within their Luxembourgish stories (Kirsch, 2017). The teachers and the class regularly listened to stories and commented on them. When stories were in languages other than Luxembourgish, the authors of the text translated and used pictures and gestures to help peers understand. Knowledge construction and meaning-making are multimodal processes (Kress, 2000). Dictating stories was another frequently used method. The children frequently dictated a story to the teacher. Thereafter, they often ‘read’

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their text to the class, that is, they retold it, or acted out the story. While Ms Di Letizia wrote these stories on loose sheets which she pinned to the wall to make the stories and, for that matter, the print more visible, Ms Donatiello took the stories down in the children’s ‘story book’. To further legitimize the children’s home languages, she invited the parents to have children tell stories in the home language and write these down in this very storybook. The book was a bridge between home and school literacies. Furthermore, the teachers made bilingual books asking parents to assist with translations. Figure 9.1 is an example of an English story written by a mother at home, and Figure 9.2 a bilingual Luxembourgish-Portuguese book. On occasions, parents with home languages other than Luxembourgish were invited to school to read or tell stories. Children translated for their peers who had an opportunity to listen to some French, English, Albanian and Portuguese. In this way, the teachers showed once again that they valued all home languages. Both teachers stated that these regular activities were part of a ‘storytelling culture’ firmly established in their class. The presentation of the stories created a classroom culture that connected children and events, and fuelled the children’s imagination and creativity. (Interview with Ms Donatiello, 30 January 2014)

Figure 9.1  A dictated story in English

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Figure 9.2  Excerpt of a bilingual book

The parents played an active role in this learning community and helped bridge any differences between home and school literacy practices (Kenner & Mahera, 2012; Kirsch, 2018; Sneddon, 2008). The teachers valued this expertise and involved the parents in the children’s literacy learning similarly to the teachers studied by Naqvi et al. (2012), Taylor et al. (2008) and Young and Mary (2016). Many of the children’s stories – whether told, drawn, acted out, dictated to an adult, or narrated on iTEO – are what Cummins called ‘identity’ texts (2004, 2009). The content of the stories, exemplified in Figures 9.1 and 9.2, shed light on some of the children’s events and values. The first provides insights into the home language, cultural festivities (e.g. Christmas celebration with the family, gifts), values (e.g. relevance of books) and a well-known story the child is familiar with (e.g. Rudolf the reindeer). The second text features a girl who organizes a birthday party for her three-year-old brother, blows up balloons, makes a cake and eats it with him (page shown). The books materialise the children’s experiences and funds of knowledge and make them visible to the child, peers and adults. The learners’ individual capital can be shared and become the class’s social capital (Naqvi et al., 2012).

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Figure 1 also informs us of the boy’s knowledge of picture books and some of his literacy skills. He combined pictures and print (his mother’s and his own) in his own story book. He drew the planets and the gifts and wrote the words choco, money, DVDs and books. The children in both classes had opportunities to develop their knowledge of letters and print. As seen before, they were in daily contact with print in different languages through books and their own texts. In addition, both classes had wall displays, the alphabet, for instance, and all material placed at the children’s eye level was labelled. During the project, we observed the older children choose books from the class library and read these, that is tell stories, and write on the computer or in the writing corner. They often wrote the names of peers or copied words from cards prepared by the teachers. These cards presented a picture and a word in German or French as indicated by the flag on the card. As each word was available in both languages, the children could perceive differences in the scripts such as accents or capital letters. The children also asked the teachers to write down words of their choice. Ms Di Letizia translated the words into German, the language the children were to become literate in Year 1. When the children dictated words or stories, they had an opportunity to observe the teacher write and notice the shape of letters and the directionality of the script. This first part has illustrated that language and literacy development in both classes was underpinned by a sociocultural perspective on literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998) and social constructivist learning theories (Vygotsky, 1980). Learning happened when children were cognitively and emotionally involved in meaningful social and cultural activities such as storytelling with peers, the teacher and, at times, the parents. The children (and the teachers) made use of their entire language repertoire and mobilised their experiences made out of school when they produced monolingual and bilingual multimodal stories, some being identity texts (Cummins, 2004; Wedin, this volume). They used a range of material including computers and iPads. Like Wells Rowe and Miller (2016), the teachers supported children individually and encouraged the production of meaningful texts which they publicly valued. The teachers’ pedagogy is in line both with a ‘pedagogy of multiliteracies’ (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009) and multilingual pedagogies (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017; García et al., 2017). The app iTEO was fully embedded in this pedagogy which helps explain why Ariana and her friends used their funds of knowledge with great ease when working on iTEO. 9.4.3 Ariana’s storytelling experience with iTEO: Multiliteracies and multilingualism

Ariana was observed for 7.5 hours working with her friends on iTEO. Using iTEO posed no challenge to her, rather, it was

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an opportunity to draw at school on her experience of using new technologies and making-sense of multimodal texts at home (Hafner, 2014). According to her parents, Ariana was versed in new technologies, which she regularly used to listen to and watch the Disney movie Violetta. Her mother explained that ‘she always listens ( … ) she knows every story’ (interview, 19 December 2014). She believed that Ariana loved the movie because of the music, the language (Spanish) and the character. Disney character Violetta, a teenage girl, is a highly talented musician who moves from Spain to her home town Buenos Aires where she secretly studies music and comes to terms with several love stories. Both Ariana and Violetta must find their feet in a new environment, Ariana in the preschool where she develops Luxembourgish and Violetta in a new country. Music helped both construct their identity. Ariana frequently sang and danced at school, Violetta does so in the movies. Ariana watched all sequels of Violetta on a Portuguese channel and played Nintendo games in French featuring the character. She used her parents’ iPhones and iPads to visit YouTube (on her own) and find songs and excerpts of videos from her favourite movie. She listened to these in any language, including Spanish and Russian. She regularly listened to CDs in several languages and danced to the rhythm of songs in front of the PlayStation. Ariana had also many Violetta books in Portuguese. She liked looking at the pictures and making up her own stories. Her parents explained that they found it difficult to read stories to her. As a fouryear-old, she listened for several minutes and, thereafter, tried to shift the parents’ attention to the pictures and have them narrate. When she was five, she told stories to her parents in the light of the pictures and enjoyed collaging her drawings to produce picture books. The interviews revealed that Ariana’s experiences with media were not different from those of her peers or those reported elsewhere (Gregory & Williams, 2000; McTavish, 2009; Taylor et al., 2008) but unlike other children, she could mobilize these experiences at school (McTavish, 2009). Ariana was an eager storyteller at school. She regularly told and dictated stories, many of these being ‘identity texts’. She also drew pictures, which she assembled into a strip, unlike the books she created at home. On one occasion, she produced a 2 m-long strip of drawings of Violetta and produced several iTEO stories based on this strip. When working on iTEO Ariana often chose Portuguese-speaking partners because the team could communicate in Portuguese and Luxembourgish. She translanguaged consciously and frequently during the process of planning, narrating, singing and commenting on productions. Ariana drew on Portuguese in 17 out of the 21 video-recorded observations. Portuguese was used to discuss the content and genre of a production, clarify turn-taking and explain a feature of the iPad (Kirsch, 2017). Of the 77 iTEO productions, 27 were songs and, of these, 13 were in Luxembourgish. She sang 10 Portuguese songs, mostly about Violetta.

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The four other songs included some in English, Spanish and Russian. Of the 50 stories, 13 featured Violetta and only one was in Portuguese. This indicates that she had, firstly, realizsed that most stories are told in one language and, second, understood that Luxembourgish was the focus in the preschool albeit other languages being valued. Although Ariana never mixed languages within a story, she produced recordings that consisted of Portuguese songs followed by a text in Luxembourgish. These recordings, that featured in the main Violetta, were heavily inspired by the movies which combined a story narrated in Portuguese and Spanish songs. These examples, together with the excerpt below, show that iTEO was a space that allowed Ariana to interconnect the linguistic and cultural experiences made at home and at school (Gregory, 2001; Kenner et al., 2004; Kukulska-Hulme, 2013). The story in the excerpt, translated into English, was produced on 24 November 2015. The capital letter in the second column refers to the speaker: Ariana (A) and Miley (M), her Portuguese-speaking friend. 1

A:

finishes a Portuguese song. She then starts a new recording

2

looks at Miley (M), emphasizing ‘beautiful’

Once upon the time there was Violetta and she was beautiful.

3

looking at M

And Leon dances with Violetta.

4

role-playing being in love, looking up with big eyes, smiling, speaking in a sweet storytelling voice

Leon, I want a kiss. I, I will always stay with you. I love you too.

5

walking her feet under the table, making a noise

And they went for a walk.

6

And then they slept. And then they got up and ate biscuits.

7

smiling at M

And they have drunk coffee.

8

making movements with her hands

And then they danced again.

9

changing the tone of her voice

And over there

10

A: M:

11

A: M:

there is a cow and the book is closed. both move their hand to the iPad to end the recording.

The video recording illustrated the children’s translanguaging: Ariana sang in Portuguese (line 1) and narrated in Luxembourgish. Once the children had listened to the story, Ariana passed the iPad to Miley and asked her in Portuguese to narrate a story. Miley continued in Luxembourgish. The content of the story and Ariana’s storytelling voice illustrate her social and cultural experiences. The story includes typical Violetta features (dancing, being in love) and routine, mundane activities (e.g. sleeping, eating, drinking). In the story, Violetta has a boyfriend called Leon. Ariana’s real friend is called Leon too. Inspired by

Promoting Multilingualism and Multiliteracies through Storytelling  205

the movies, Ariana used a storytelling voice in lines 2 and 4 and enacted being in love, walking and dancing in lines 4, 5 and 8. Her tone of voice changed in lines 6 and 7 when she calmly recounted everyday events and, again in lines 9 and 10, when she closed the story with a rhyme aided by Miley. The actions, gestures, facial expressions and the tone of voice enabled Ariana to tell her story in an expressive way. She had only begun to learn Luxembourgish two years earlier and would not have had the vocabulary to express all her ideas. Therefore, the multimodality of her storytelling was an important language scaffold (Hafner, 2013; Nelson et al., 2008). According to Dyson (1997) and Paley (1992) stories have the power to connect themes, cultures and children, in this case Ariana, Miley and their peers who will listen to the texts. Although Ariana told the story on her own, she worked in a team with Miley, who she looked at several times. In line 6, she smiled at her when she uttered ‘drinking coffee’ alluding to a phrase that Miley had used in her previous story. Miley’s text was partly based on Ariana’s: a girl went to the park, ate an ice-cream and went to bed. This sequence ‘going for a walk – sleeping – eating – drinking’ was used in many stories (Kirsch, 2017). Ariana skilfully connected these regular activities, her hobbies (singing, dancing) and her languages with the fantasy world of the Disney figure who had lived through various adventures including having her cat stolen, falling (over and over) in love and being pregnant. The repetitive language use in a meaningful context enabled children to develop language and narrative skills, a precursor for literacy. According to García (2017), iTEO’s main value is the link it creates between oracy and literacy. This fourth section has illustrated that the work with the app iTEO is firmly embedded in a pedagogy that builds on multiliteracies and capitalizes on children’s resources. It gives children a voice and some autonomy and encourages collaboration. In this atmosphere of respect and trust, children are inspired to produce texts of several genres. 9.5 Conclusion

This chapter reviewed literature on multiliteracies, multilingual pedagogies and digital technologies and exemplified it with examples from the project iTEO. It became clear that the issues identified by the NLG in their first meeting in 1994 still exist today with populations becoming ever more diverse, channels of communication and systems of meaning making ever more complex and the speed of change accelerating. Following the calls of the NLS and the NLG to draw on the children’s funds of knowledge and help them weave together their various literacy experiences, a pedagogy of multiliteracies was implemented in several schools in Luxembourg. Our findings demonstrated that capitalizing on children’s resources is beneficial.

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The children were perceived and perceived themselves as capable learners whose resources are legitimated at school and whose identity is affirmed. These findings resemble those of Cummins (2009), MartínezAlvarez and Ghiso (2014), Naqvi et al. (2012) and Wells Rowe and Miller (2016). Furthermore, they deeply engaged in language learning and developed their language repertoire. The teacher’s multilingual pedagogy enabled them to capitalise on children’s linguistic resources, for instance by putting the learner at the centre, fostering collaboration and participation and making translanguaging a legitimate classroom practice. Findings testify to the success of this pedagogy, for instance in raising academic achievement (García & Sylvan, 2011). Nevertheless, schools seem to be slow in taking up innovative practices of multiliteracies and multilingualism. This holds true for a wider and more creative implementation of new technologies. According to Lynch and Redpath (2012), iPads can support literacy development but their impact depends to a large extent on the ways the apps are designed and used. Findings on storytelling apps show that they are engaging and further communication and literacy skills, for instance when children produce personalized multimodal texts (Flewitt et al., 2014; Lynch & Redpath, 2012; Wells Rowe & Miller, 2016). Findings of the iTEO project showed that children improved language and narrative skills, developed metalinguistic awareness, translanguaged strategically, and developed an interest in reading and writing (Kirsch, 2017, 2018). These are the result both of use of the tool and the pedagogy in which its use is embedded. The storytelling culture in the classroom motivated the children to engage in storytelling of various forms. The early reading and writing activities such as (pretend)-reading, writing names and copywriting emerged and provided children with opportunities to further develop their literacy skills (Miller & Pennycuff, 2008). I conclude that an educational app will not lead children to construct multilingual and multimodal texts unless the pedagogy promotes respect, authentic use of languages and meaningful literacy practices. Using an app is relatively easy, but implementing inclusive, linguistically and culturally appropriate pedagogies where apps are embedded, needs to be learned. References Anderson, J. and Chung, Y.Ch. (2011) Finding a voice: Arts based creativity in the community languages classroom. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 14 (5), 551–569. August, D. and Shanahan, T. (2006) Report of the National Literacy Panel on LanguageMinority Children and Youth. Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bachmair, B. and Pachler, N. (2015) Sustainability for innovative education - The case of Mobile Learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education 1 (17), 1–12. Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (1998) Local literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community. London: Routledge.

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Bergman Deitcher, D., Johnson, H. and Aram, D. (2021) Multilingual preschoolers’ word learning from parent-child shared reading of informational and narrative books. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 213–232). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Berman, R.A. (1995) Narrative competence and storytelling performance: How children tell stories in different contexts. Journal of Narrative and Life History 5 (4), 285–313. Burnett, C. (2010) Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: A review of research. Journal of Early Childhood literacy. See_http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6087244X (accessed March 2018). Cain, K. (2003) Text comprehension and its relation to coherence and cohesion in children’s fictional narratives. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 21, 335–351. Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (2017) Minority languages and sustainable translanguaging: Threat or opportunity? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 38 (10), 901–912. Conteh, J. (2017) Translanguaging as pedagogy – A critical review. In A. Creese and A. Blackledge (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity. London: Routledge. Conteh, J. and Meier, G. (2014) The Multilingual Turn in Languages Education: Opportunities and Challenges. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal 4 (3), 164–195.  Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2015) The things you do to know: An introduction to the pedagogy of multiliteracies. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds) A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Learning by Design (pp. 1–36). London: Palgrave. Cummins, J. (2004) Multiliteracies pedagogy and the role of identity texts. In K. Leithwood, P. McAdie, N. Bascia and A. Rodrigues (eds) Teaching for Deep Understanding: Towards the Ontario Curriculum that we Need (pp. 68–74). Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and the Elementary Federation of Teachers of Ontario. Cummins J. (2009) Pedagogies of choice: Challenging coercive relations of power in classrooms and communities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 12 (3), 261–271. Dickinson, D.K. and Tabors, P.O. (2001) Beginning Literacy with Language. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. Di Blas, N. and Paolini, P. (2013) Beyond the school’s boundaries: PoliCultura, a large-scale digital storytelling initiative. Educational Technology & Society 16 (1), 15–27. Dyson, A.H. (1997) What Difference Does Difference Make? Berkeley, CA: University of California. Englezou, E. and Fragkuli, E. (2014) Literacy in the early years and English as an additional language: The case of a British international school. Journal of Research in International Education 13 (1), 46–62. Flewitt, R., Messer, D. and Kucirkova, N. (2014) New directions for early literacy in a digital age: The iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 15 (3), 289–310. García, O. (with Makar, C., Starcevic, M. and Terry, A.) (2011) The translanguaging of Latino kindergartners. In J. Rothman and K. Potowski (eds) Bilingual Youth: Spanish in English Speaking Societies (pp. 33–55). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Garcia, O. (2017) iTEO: examining the use of the App iTEO for teaching and learning languages in primary schools. Educational videos. https://iTEO.uni.lu (accessed May 2017). García, O. and Flores, N. (2012) Multilingual pedagogies. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge and A. Creese (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 232–246). New York, NY: Routledge. García, O. and Otheguy, R. (2019) Plurilingualism and translanguaging: Commonalities and divergences. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. doi: 10.1080/13670050.2019.1598932 (accessed January 2020).

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García, O. and Sylvan, C.E. (2011) Pedagogies and practices in multilingual classrooms: Singularities in pluralities. The Modern Language Journal 95, 385–400. García, O., Johnson, S. and Seltzer, K. (2017) The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon. Glazer, S.M. and Burke, E.M. (1994) An Integrated Approach to Early Literacy. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Gregory, E. (2001) Sisters and brothers as language and literacy teachers: Synergy between siblings playing and working together. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 1 (3), 301–322. Gregory, E. and Williams, A. (2000) City Literacies: Learning to Read Across Generations and Cultures. New York: Routledge. Haven, K. and Ducey, M. (2007) Crash Course in Storytelling. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Hafner, C.A. (2013) Digital composition in a second or foreign language. TESOL Quarterly 47 (4), 830–834. Hafner, C.A. (2014) Embedding digital literacies in English language teaching: Students’ digital video projects as multimodal ensembles. TESOL Quarterly 48 (4), 655–685. Hélot, C. (2008) Awareness raising and multilingualism in primary education. In N.H. Hornberger (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Language and Education. New York: Springer. Kelly, C. (2010) Hidden Worlds. Young Children Learning Literacy in Multicultural Contexts. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Kenner, C. and Mahera, R. (2012) Connecting children’s worlds: Creating a multilingual syncretic curriculum through partnership between complementary and mainstream schools. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13 (3), 395–417. Kenner, C., Kress, G., Al-Khatib, H., Kam, R. and Tsai, K.C (2004) Finding the keys to biliteracy: How young children interpret different writing systems. Language and Education 18 (2), 124–144. Kirsch, C. (2017) Young children capitalising on their entire language repertoire for language learning at school. Language, Culture and Curriculum 31 (1), 39–55. Kirsch, C. (2018) Dynamic interplay of language policy, beliefs and pedagogy in a nursery class in Luxembourg. Language and Education 32 (5), 444–461. Kirsch, C. (2020) Translanguaging practices in formal and non-formal education in Luxembourg. In C. Kirsch and J. Duarte (eds) Multilingual Approaches for Teaching and Learning. From Acknowledging to Capitalising on Multilingualism in European Mainstream Education (pp. 15–33). Abingdon: Routledge. Kirsch, C. and Bes, A. (2017) Emergent multilinguals learning languages with the iPad app iTEO: a study in primary schools in Luxembourg. Language Learning Journal 47 (2), 204–218. Kirsch, C. and Gretsch, G. (2015) L’apprentissage langagier avec l’App iTEOMultilinguisme: enseignement, littératures et cultures au Luxembourg. Synergies Pays Germanophones 8, 37–48. Kress, G. (2000) Multimodality. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds) Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (pp. 182–202). Melbourne: Macmillan. Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K. and Panadero, C.F. (2014) Children’s engagement with educational iPad apps: Insights from a Spanish classroom. Computers & Education 71, 175–184. Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2013) Re-skilling language learners for a mobile world. The International Research Foundation for English Language Education. See http://www. tirfonline.org/english-in-the-workforce/mobile-assisted-language-learning (accessed August 2015). Levy, B.A., Gong, Z., Hessels, S., Evans, M.A. and Jared, D. (2006) Understanding print: Early reading developments and the contributions of home literacy experiences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 93, 63–93.

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Lewis, G., Jones, B. and Baker, B. (2012) Translanguaging: Developing its conceptualization and contextualization. Educational Research and Evaluation: An International Journal on Theory and Practice 18 (7), 655–670. Lynch, J. and Redpath, T. (2012) ‘Smart’ technologies in early years literacy education: A meta-narrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 14 (2), 147–174. Mallan, K. (1991) Children as Storytellers. Newtown, Sydney: PETA. Martínez-Alvarez, P. and Ghiso, M.P. (2014) Multilingual, multimodal compositions in technology-mediated hybrid spaces. In R.S. Anderson and C. Mims (eds) Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience (pp. 193– 218). Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global. McTavish, M. (2009) I get my facts from the internet: A case study of the teaching and learning of information literacy in in-school and out-of-school contexts. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 9 (1), 3–28. Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2021) Developing multiliteracies in on-line multilingual interactions: The example of chat-room conversations in Romance Languages. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 165–186). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle (MENFP) (2011) Plan d’études. École fondamentale. [National curriculum. Primary school.] Luxembourg: MENFP. Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale, de l’Enfance et de la Jeunesse (MENJE) (2018) Les chiffres clés de l’Éducation nationale: statistiques et indicateurs - Année scolaire 20162017. [Key numbers of the national education system: statistics and indicators – school year 2016-2017.]. See https://statistiques.public.lu/en/publications/theme/socialconditions/key-figures-education/key-figures.pdf (accessed December 2018). Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale, de l’Enfance et de la Jeunesse and Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing (MENJE & LUCET) (2016) PISA 2015: rapport national Luxembourg / Nationaler Bericht Luxemburg [national report Luxembourg.]. See http://www.men.public.lu/fr/actualites/publications/secondaire/pisa/pisa-2015rapport/index.html (accessed November 2016). Miller, S. and Pennycuff, L. (2008) The power of story: Using storytelling to improve literacy learning. Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Education 1 (1), 36–43. Miller, J., Iglesias, A., Heilmann, J., Fabiano, L., Nockerts, A. and Francis, D. (2006) Oral language and reading in bilingual children. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice 21 (1), 30–43. Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D. and González, N. (1992) Funds of knowledge for teaching. Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice 31 (2),132–141. Morrow, L.M. (2001) Literacy Development in the Early Years. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Naqvi, R., McKeough, A., Thorne, K. and Pfitscher, C. (2012) Dual-language books as an emergent-literacy resource: Culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13 (4), 501–528. Nelson, M.E., Hull, G.A. and Roche-Smith, J. (2008) Challenges of multimedia selfpresentation taking, and mistaking, the show on the road. Written Communication 25 (4), 415–440. New London Group (1996) A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66 (1), 60–93.   Nickel, S. (2007) Beobachtung kindlicher Literacy-Erfahrungen im Übergang von Kindergarten und Grundschule. [Observation of children’s literacy experiences during the transition of nursery and primary school.] In U. Graf and E. Moser Opitz (eds) Diagnose und Förderung im Elementarbereich und Grundschulunterricht [Diagnosing and promoting in nursery and primray school education.] (pp. 87–104). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag.

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Paley, V.G. (1992) You Can’t Say You Can’t Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Palvainen, Å., Protassova, E., Mård-Miettinen, K. and Schwartz, M. (2016) Two languages in the air: a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 19 (6), 614–630. Panagiotopoulou, A. (2016) Mehrsprachigkeit in der Kindheit Perspektiven für die frühpädagogische Praxis. [Multilingualism in Early childhood. Perspectives for the pedagogy of early childhood]. Eine Expertise der Weiterbildungsinitiative Frühpädagogische Fachkräfte [Expert guide of the initiative of professional development of pedagogical staff in early childhood.]. See https://www.weiterbildungsinitiative.de/ uploads/media/Exp_Panagiotopoulou_web.pdf (accessed November 2016). Pellerin, M. (2014) Language tasks using touch screen and mobile technologies: reconceptualising task-based CALL for young language learners. Canadian Journal for Learning and Technology 40 (1). See http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/803 (accessed June 2015). Purcell-Gates, V. (ed.) (2007) Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice and Power. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Riley-Ayers, S. (2006) Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the preschool years. National Institute for Early Education Research (NEER) 10, 1–11. Roskos, K.A., Christie, J.F. and Richgels, D.J. (2003) The essentials of early literacy instruction. National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1–8. Schwartz, M., and Asli, A. (2014) Bilingual teachers’ language strategies: The case of an Arabic – Hebrew kindergarten in Israel. Teaching and Teacher Education 38, 22–32. Sénéchal, M. and LeFevre, J. (2001) Storybook reading and parent teaching: Links to language and literacy development. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 92, 39–52. Sneddon, R. (2008) Young bilingual children learning to read with dual language books. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 7 (2), 71–84. Snow, C. (1999) Facilitating language development promotes literacy learning. In L. Eldering and P. Leseman (eds) Effective Early Education: Cross-cultural Perspectives (pp. 141–161). New York: Falmer. Stavans, A., Eden, M.T. and Azar, L. (2021) Multilingual literacy: The use of emojis in written communication. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 233–259). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Street, B. (1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sverdlov, A., Aram, D. and Levin, I. (2014) Kindergarten teachers’ literacy beliefs and selfreported practices: On the heels of a new national literacy curriculum. Teaching and Teacher Education 39, 44–55. Taylor, L., Bernhard, J., Grag, S. and Cummins, J. (2008) Affirming plural belonging: Building on students’ family-based cultural and linguistic capital through multiliteracies pedagogy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 8 (3), 269–294. Wedin, Å. (2021) Construction of identities in diverse classrooms: Writing identity texts in grade five. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds.) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 145–162). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wells Rowe, D. and Miller, M. (2016) Designing for diverse classrooms: Using iPads and digital cameras to compose eBooks with emergent bilingual/ biliterate four-year-olds. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 16 (4), 425–472. Vygotsky, L.S. (1980) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press. Young, A.S. and Mary, L. (2016) Autoriser l’emploi des langues des enfants pour faciliter l’entrée dans la langue de scolarisation. [Allow the use of children’s home languages to facilitate access into the language of scolarisation.] La Nouvelle Revue de l’Adaptation et de la Scolarisation (NRAS) 73, 75–94.

10 Multilingual Preschoolers’ Word Learning from ParentChild Shared Reading of Informational and Narrative Books Deborah Bergman Deitcher, Helen Johnson and Dorit Aram

10.1 Introduction

Young children around the world often grow up in situations where they hear, speak and read multiple languages. In the United States alone, nearly one in three children lives in a home where a language other than English is spoken (Child Trends Databank, 2016). In this chapter, we refer to a specific subset of the multilingual population – those who are acquiring two or more languages in the preschool years. More specifically, these are children who ‘are exposed to and speak only one language at home during the first one or two years of life and then attend daycare or preschool programs in which another language is used’ (Genesee, 2010: 1). These children are thus learning two or more languages sequentially, the first in their home setting, and the second by exposure in daycare or preschool settings. In this chapter we focus on the difficulties facing this population regarding vocabulary development, and the possibility of using shared book reading (SBR) as an intervention that can promote the learning of new words. We then present our study, which examined the use of both informational and narrative books in shared reading, and the impact that book genre has on multilingual children’s acquisition of target vocabulary in their home language through incidental exposure, as well as on the parent-child interaction surrounding the books. Lastly, 213

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we highlight the importance of including informational books in SBR repertoires in multilingual early childhood settings. 10.1.1 Vocabulary development among multilingual children

Studies have found that the overall trajectory of second language learning seems to follow along similar lines to that of first language learning (Bialystok, 2001; Tabors & Snow, 2001). At the same time, research has found that multilingual learners have a need for increased oral fluency, particularly for increased vocabulary knowledge (August & Shanahan, 2006; Goldenberg, 2008). A review by Hammer et al. (2014) found that young multilingual children often have smaller vocabularies in each language compared to their monolingual peers. As young children’s vocabulary levels have been linked with their later reading ability (Lonigan et al., 2008), difficulty with vocabulary can have far-reaching effects. Moreover, studies have shown that vocabulary learning poses special challenges for children speaking and learning two or more languages. For example, August et al. (2005) discuss how multilingual children with slow language development tend to have lower reading comprehension, and at times, are at risk of being diagnosed as learning disabled as an outcome of the gaps in reading comprehension. Compounding the difficulties, vocabulary instruction is often overlooked in the early childhood settings in which these children grow up (Pizzo & Paez, 2017). To date, much of the work on vocabulary learning in multilingual children has focused on elementary and middle school-ages. Bialystok (2015) and others (Hoff & Rumiche, 2012) have emphasized the need for research that examines the processes of earlier word learning, including as it occurs naturally in caregiving situations. In line with this recommendation, the study presented herein focused on 4- to 6-year-old multilingual preschoolers’ vocabulary learning in the home setting. 10.1.2 SBR as a context for early vocabulary learning

Research over the past decades has demonstrated the effectiveness of SBR as a supportive context for young monolinguals’ language development, including vocabulary acquisition (e.g. Mol et al., 2008; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). SBR promotes the development of oral language, which has been identified as a critical component of efforts to promote literacy in multilingual children (Goldenberg, 2013). It also may provide a context in which they can build connections between their knowledge in their two languages, another key feature identified by Goldenberg (2013). Supporting this, Quiroz et al. (2010) examined shared book reading in mother-child dyads of Spanish-English bilinguals and found that being read to more frequently supported

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vocabulary development in both Spanish and English. These results highlight the connections between languages that are emphasized in the ‘translanguaging’ approach (e.g. Velasco & García, 2014). This model views the languages of multilingual children as an integrated whole, as opposed to separate linguistic systems, where the learner selects elements from their entire linguistic repertoire in order to communicate more effectively (Breuer & Van Steendam as well as Jessner et al., this volume). To more successfully facilitate vocabulary learning amongst multilingual children, other studies, including our current study, have begun to explore the SBR context in greater depth (e.g. Collins, 2010; Correa et al., 2015). One aspect that we particularly examined in this study was the use of informational books and whether they might be more effective than narratives in stimulating vocabulary growth in the children’s home language – English. Informational texts frequently contain language that is more abstract, and often, more difficult and technical (Chall & Jacobs, 2003). Additionally, some initial studies have demonstrated that parents use more extra-textual talk surrounding informational books with their preschoolers (Mol & Neuman, 2014; Price et al., 2009). As such, informational books may better stimulate parent-child discourse during SBR, and in turn, may provide a more effective vocabulary-learning context for multilingual children. 10.1.3 Current study

In light of this background, our study extended the research on multilingual children’s vocabulary learning by exploring SBR interactions with English- and Hebrew-speaking preschoolers and the impact of text genre on their acquisition of English target vocabulary. Our research questions were: (1) do SBR interactions between parents and their multilingual preschoolers vary based on book genre? and, (2) do multilingual preschoolers learn more target vocabulary words in their home language from narrative or informational texts? 10.2 Method 10.2.1 Participants

Participants were recruited from communities in Israel with high percentages of residents who are immigrants from native Englishspeaking countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa). In total, 45 mother-child dyads participated in the study, all from middle to upper-socioeconomic status (SES) homes. While both parents were invited to participate, only mothers volunteered. All parents were native English speakers and English was the primary language spoken

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in the home. The participating children were evenly divided between genders (22 male, 23 female) and ranged in age from 48 months to 72 months (M = 60.4, SD = 6.84). With the exception of one child in first grade, the children were all preschoolers. None of the participating children was diagnosed with a language disability or delay. 10.2.1.1 Language use

Two thirds of participating children (66.7%) were either born in Israel or had lived there for more than four years, while only three children (6.7%) had been in Israel for less than one year. As might be anticipated, length of time living in Israel was associated with language use in and out of the home. Although all the children used English as the dominant language in the home, those born in Israel spoke a mixture of both Hebrew and English to their siblings, and 76.7% of children born or living in Israel for more than four years spoke Hebrew to their friends. Regarding schooling, 93.3% of the children had no English language instruction in school, and more than half did not participate in any English language instruction outside of school. 10.2.1.2 Home literacy environment

In line with studies showing associations between SES and home literacy environment (e.g. van Steensel, 2006), these participants from middle-upper SES reported a strong home literacy environment. Nearly half of the families (48.9%) reported owning more than 100 children’s books and in more than half of the families (57.8%), the parents read to their children five times per week or more. These children also engaged in literacy activities via electronic media. Nearly 3/4 of the children used the computer at least once a week, primarily in English. The participating children thus experienced a rich language and literacy environment in the home, mainly in English. Hebrew is their ‘new language’, to which they gained exposure primarily upon entering a daycare or preschool environment. 10.2.2 Materials 10.2.2.1 Books

Based on a previous study (Bergman Deitcher & Johnson, 2012), we selected four sets of English language books, each containing one informational and one narrative (a total of eight books), focused on themes that are common for the participating age group (books are listed in Appendix 10.A). All eight books included genre-specific features. Specifically, the four informational books had an emphasis on the visual, including illustrations and diagrams; they contained expository text structures, timeless verbs and generic nouns and various access formats such as index and glossary (Gill, 2009; Yopp, 2007). The four narrative

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books contained a story structure consisting of setting, characters and plot; past tense verbs and nouns referring to individuals; and visually attractive presentations, including the use of illustrations and design layouts. 10.2.2.2 Words

In keeping with the examination of reading in a natural setting, target words for this study were selected from those occurring in the existing texts. To avoid floor and ceiling effects and to include some words that children would find easier and not become frustrated, 12 nouns of varying difficulty were selected from each book. Level of difficulty conformed to Beck et al.’s (2002) concept of tiers of words: easy words (Tier 1) are the most basic words that usually do not need to be defined; medium difficulty words (Tier 2) occur frequently and are used in a variety of domains; difficult words (Tier 3) are low frequency words that are often domain-specific. At the same time, Tier 3 words tend to have only a single definition and may be learned more easily than certain Tier 2 words, which can have different meanings in different contexts. From each book, we selected three words that conformed to Tier 1, six medium-difficulty words that conformed to Tier 2 and three difficult words that conformed to Tier 3. Words and the books from which they were selected can be seen in Appendix 10.B. 10.2.3 Measures 10.2.3.1 Parents’ measures

Home Language & Literacy Environment Questionnaire: Mothers filled out a researcher-designed questionnaire on the language environment and literacy activities in the home. This included the languages spoken at home, parents’ frequency of book reading, frequency of SBR, etc. 10.2.3.2 Children’s measures: Pretest

Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) – 4th Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) was administered individually to the children. Children were asked to point to one of four pictures that identified the word said by the researcher. The total number of correct answers serves as the receptive vocabulary score. Expressive Vocabulary Knowledge: The Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT) – 4th Edition (Martin & Brownell, 2011) is a norm-referenced test of expressive (productive) vocabulary that requires users to name objects, actions and concepts from illustrated pictures. A basal score was first established when the child answered eight consecutive correct responses. Items continued to increase in

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difficulty and testing was halted when six items in a row were answered incorrectly. PPVT – Hebrew: The PPVT was adapted for Hebrew language (Solberg & Nevo, 1979) and contains 58 items. The format and scoring follow the English-language PPVT. Target Word Pretest – Expressive: The researcher-constructed test was modeled after the EOWPVT described above. Testing plates with four pictures per plate were developed for the purposes of this study, one picture for the target word and the remaining three pictures serving as foils. Children were asked to label the item being pointed to by the researcher; correct answers were scored 1, incorrect answers were scored 0. The test is similar to that used by Justice (2002), and like Justice, we evaluated only expressive vocabulary knowledge of the target words at pretest to avoid sensitizing the children to the words. 10.2.3.3 Children’s measures: Posttest

Target Word Posttest – Receptive: Similar to the pretest, this researcher-designed test of target words was styled like the PPVT. Twelve plates per book (96 total plates) were designed to match the relevant target words. Each plate contained four pictures, one that matched the target word and three foils. Test administration was like that of the PPVT. Target Word Posttest – Expressive: Similar to the Target Word Pretest, with the locations of the pictures switched to reduce the chance that children would recognize the picture based on its location. Test administration was the same as in the pretest. 10.2.4 Procedure

Three meetings took place in each participant’s home, with a oneweek interval between meetings maintained across participants. In the first meeting, mothers filled out the demographic and home language surveys while the first author administered the PPVT-English, EOWPVT and PPVT-Hebrew measures to the child. Shared book reading took place during the second and third meetings, with mothers reading one set of books (one informational and one narrative) at each meeting. Mothers were randomly presented with sets of books, one at a time, until two sets of books were found that were both unfamiliar to the mother. Mothers were then invited to look at and read the books while the researcher administered the relevant expressive vocabulary pretests to the child. If the child knew more than five words across the set of books, a new set of books (also unknown to the mothers) was pretested. Following the pretests, the mother read one book to the child while being video recorded. Once all conversation between mother and child

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related to the book was completed, the researcher administered the relevant receptive and expressive posttests to the child. After a short break where the researcher played a movement game with the child, the second reading interaction took place, following the same format as the first. The third meeting followed the same format as Meeting 2 with the books read in a counterbalanced fashion from Meeting 2. That is, if a narrative book was read first in Meeting 2, an informational book was read first at Meeting 3 and vice versa. 10.3 Results

We first present results from the shared interactions and how they varied based on book genre. Following this, we present the results relating to children’s acquisition of vocabulary, including descriptive results of the variables, correlations between the variables and analysis of children’s vocabulary acquisition. 10.3.1 SBR Interactions & Book Genre

In coding the videos from the SBR interactions, we used the ‘idea unit’ – a comment or multiple comments related to a particular idea – as the primary unit of analysis. This helps capture the back and forth that occurs between parent and child relating to the same idea (e.g. question and answer). Within an idea unit, two additional elements were examined: ‘initiation’, the person (mother or child) who initiated the idea unit, and ‘turns’, the number of times the mother and/or child spoke within the idea unit. Although the number of turns is often reasonably balanced during a conversation, in SBR interactions, mothers often have more turns as they tend to expand upon an answer, restate what a child says, or provide encouragement, thus leading to more turns compared to the child. For example, in reference to the use of the words ‘summer’ and ‘fall’ in one of the books, the following exchange occurred: Mother: What are we in now, are we in summer or fall? Child: Summer. Mother: That’s right.

In this example of an idea unit, the mother initiated, and had two turns while the child had one turn. Initiations and turns were tallied and totaled for each book reading. Results showed that for both mothers and children, the number of initiations and turns were significantly higher during readings of informational texts compared to narrative texts, demonstrating more overall talk during informational text readings (see Figure 10.1).

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Figure 10.1  Parents and children’s initiations and turns by book genre

To examine the SBR interactions in greater depth, we coded idea units into categories, as follows: Parents’ General Reading Process encompassed the overall style of reading – elaborations, supportive comments, text to reader connections, etc.; Book Features included book awareness and references to vocabulary; and Cognitive Demand was divided into two subcategories referred to as low cognitive demand questions (e.g. labeling questions) or high (why questions) cognitive demand questions. Incidents within a category were tallied and totaled for each book reading (see Figure 10.2).

Figure 10.2  Shared reading interaction categories by book genre

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To explore whether there were significant differences in the categories based on book genre, negative binomial regressions were run (Coxe et al., 2009). This analysis was used in order to avoid some of the possible issues with traditional models when using count data (e.g. unstable regression coefficients, predicting negative values, see GraceMartin, 2008). This can help account for situations where the mean and the variance of the errors are not equal (Coxe et al., 2009; GraceMartin, 2008). Results showed that the model (adjusted for individual differences) provided a reasonable fit for the data. The odds ratio for narrative versus informational was 2.14 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.87 to 2.45. This indicates that, on average, mothers and children used approximately twice as many of a particular behavior during the informational text compared to the narrative text. For example, more than twice as many references were made to book features when reading the informational books compared to the narratives. Wald chi-square tests revealed significant differences (at p < 0.001) in favor of informational texts. Specifically, results showed 2.01 times more references to general reading processes [95% CI, 1.69 to 2.39], 2.19 times more references to book features [95% CI, 1.82 to 2.62], 1.57 times more low cognitive demand questions [95% CI, 1.26 to 1.96] and 1.82 times high cognitive demand questions [95% CI, 1.39 to 2.38] when sharing informational books compared to narratives. 10.3.2 Children’s acquisition of target vocabulary

After establishing strong differences between parental reading styles of the different genre books, we next explored whether this impacted upon the children’s acquisition of new words during shared reading. We first present the descriptive results and correlations of the relevant variables, followed by an analysis of children’s vocabulary acquisition. Descriptives. An examination of the means in Table 10.1 reveals that the children’s scores on both receptive and expressive English vocabulary measures (PPVT, EOWPVT) were quite high, while scores on the Hebrew Table 10.1  Descriptive results of variables Variable

Min

Max

Mean (SD)

English receptive vocabulary (PPVT)

73

108

93.44 (7.79)

Hebrew receptive vocabulary (PPVT)

0

43

22.27 (10.30)

58

118

99.42 (11.93)

English target word pretest

0

8

1.81 (3.69)

Hebrew target word pretest

0

20

5.18 (4.65)

Narrative posttest (English)

5

33

17.76 (5.79)

Informational posttest (English)

4

27

16.29 (9.24)

English expressive vocabulary (EOWPVT)

222  Part 4: Multilingual Literacy in the Home, Community and Cyperspace

receptive measure (PPVT) were much lower. The zeros reported on the pretest confirmed our expectation that children would not know the majority of target words at pretest. Moreover, the large SDs were taken into account in the statistical analyses. On average, children had lower scores on the English pretest than the Hebrew. At posttest, on average, children scored somewhat higher with narrative books than informational ones. Correlations. The two English vocabulary measures (PPVT, EOWPVT) were significantly correlated with each other (r = 0.56, p < 0.01), as were the English receptive measure and the English Target Word Pretest (r = 0.49, p < 0.01). Similarly, the Hebrew receptive vocabulary measure and Hebrew Target Word pretest were correlated with each other (r = 0.41, p < 0.01). Of all the measures, only the Hebrew receptive measure (r = 0.42, p < 0.01) and the Hebrew Target Word Pretest (r = 0.41, p < 0.01) were significantly correlated with the number of years the child was in Israel, and only the English target word pretest was significantly correlated with the child’s age (r = 0.50, p < 0.001). Target word knowledge. Results showed that children knew nearly twice as many words at posttest at the receptive level compared to the expressive level, across book genres. At the expressive level, a greater mean number of words were learned from narrative books compared to informational books. Overall, results showed that the number of target words learned from pretest to posttest at the expressive level nearly tripled, across both book genres. Paired sample t-tests comparing mean pretest and posttest scores for expressive vocabulary (only expressive was tested at pretest) revealed significant differences (t = –18.39, p < 0.001), and a repeated measures regression model revealed age to be a significant factor in explaining these differences, with older children showing increased word learning (F = 12.58, p < 0.001). Predicting children’s vocabulary acquisition. Cross-classified nonlinear models were used to predict the children’s receptive and expressive acquisition of target vocabulary words. Since word learning was a dichotomous variable (word is known/not known), we used a Bernoulli distribution. Only words that were scored incorrect at pretest were included in the analysis described below (on the assumption that if the word was already known as pretest it was not being ‘acquired’). Based on a priori considerations, the following predictors were included: word difficulty level, book genre, child’s age, gender and number of years in Israel, as well as the various vocabulary pretests (due to the correlation between the PPVT and the EOWPVT, only the latter test was included lest they mask one another’s effects). When predicting expressive word learning, receptive posttest score was added as a predictor. All the variables except for genre were grand-mean centered. Results showed that word difficulty level (B = -0.73, p < 0.01), expressive vocabulary (B = 0.01, p < 0.05), child’s age (B = 0.05,

Multilingual Preschoolers’ Word Learning at Home  223

p < 0.01), and the Hebrew Target Word Pretest (B = 0.51, p < 0.05) were significant in predicting receptive learning of target words. In predicting expressive learning, word difficulty level (B = –1.37, p < 0.01), expressive vocabulary (B = 0.04, p < 0.01), child’s age (B = 0.07, p < 0.01) and the number of years in Israel (B = –0.22, p < 0.01) were found to be significant. In contrast to predicting receptive learning, child’s score on Hebrew Target Word Pretest was not significant in predicting expressive word learning (B = 0.08, p = 0.79). However, receptive learning was a significant predictor (B = 2.25, p < 0.001), which may have masked the effect of the Hebrew Target Word Pretest. Interactions. A number of possible interactions were examined between the various predictors. Interactions between book genre x gender (B = –0.26, p = 0.20), and word level difficulty x gender (B = –0.03, p = 0.83) were all non-significant when predicting receptive word learning. However, when predicting expressive knowledge of target words (controlling for Hebrew knowledge at pretest), the interaction between book genre x gender was found to be significant (B = –1.18, p < 0.001), such that girls were predicted to be less likely to learn the words from informational texts compared to boys, even after controlling for prior knowledge of the word in Hebrew. The interaction between word level x gender approached significance as well (B = –0.41, p = 0.062), with girls predicted to be less likely to learn the words at the higherdifficulty level. As receptive word knowledge was found to be predictive of expressive word knowledge in the above-described models, we ran the interaction analyses controlling for receptive knowledge as well. In these analyses the interaction between book genre x gender was significant (B = –1.09, p < 0.001) and the interaction between word level x gender again approached significance (p = 0.057). Predicting word knowledge at pretest. An additional analysis was run to evaluate what might predict knowledge of the word at pretest (i.e. prior to any book reading). Results revealed that word difficulty level (B = –2.09, p < 0.001), expressive vocabulary score (B = 0.04, p < 0.001) and age (B = 0.07, p < 0.001) all explain success at pretest. Importantly, in a second analysis that included children’s score on the Hebrew pretest, the above three variables remained significant, and years in Israel (B = –0.23, p < 0.001) as well as score on Hebrew Target Word Pretest (B = 1.29, p < 0.001) were significantly predictive of knowledge of words at pretest. In total, these significant variables explain 22% of the unexplained variance at pretest. 10.4 Discussion

The current study set out to examine the impact of shared reading of narrative and informational texts on the vocabulary acquisition of multilingual (English-Hebrew) preschoolers. Results showed that

224  Part 4: Multilingual Literacy in the Home, Community and Cyperspace

the SBR context was effective in helping the participating children add a significant number of words to their repertoire, not only at the receptive level but also at the expressive level. Results also showed that knowing a word in Hebrew (new language) significantly predicted learning that word at the receptive level in English (home language). Lastly, our findings showed that parents and their multilingual children interact differently with different book genres, with significantly more talk surrounding informational texts, including more expansions, explanations of words and references to illustrations. 10.4.1 SBR and multilingual preschoolers

In line with studies with monolingual children that demonstrate that children can learn new words from incidental exposure in a SBR context (e.g. Aram, 2006; Elley, 1989; Robbins & Ehri, 1994), this study found that SBR can facilitate the incidental acquisition of new words among multilingual children, even at the expressive level. This is a particularly significant finding in light of research showing that multilingual children have a need for increased vocabulary knowledge (August & Shanahan, 2006; Goldenberg, 2008). Further, whereas the existing body of literature on shared book reading with multilingual children (e.g. Correa et al., 2015; Tsybina & Eriks-Brophy, 2010) has focused on dialogic reading, the current study explored reading in the natural home context, demonstrating the effectiveness of SBR with this population, even without a particular dialogic component. 10.4.2 Vocabulary acquisition processes among multilingual preschoolers

An important result from this study is that scores on the Hebrew Target Word Pretest were significantly predictive of receptive learning of target words in English from both narrative and informational texts. That is, knowing a target word in Hebrew predicted receptive learning of the word in English. While it is known that knowledge of a word in one’s home language can influence learning of words in a new language (Collins, 2010; Roberts, 2008), this study demonstrated that the reverse is also true – that is, knowing a word in one’s new language can impact learning of words in the home language. These results are in line with recent approaches to language learning that hold that multilingual learners need to be looked at in a more holistic manner (Jessner et al., this volume), taking into account how the languages are connected to each other and how they can support each other (Allman, 2005; Cenoz, 2013; De Houwer et al., 2014; Kecskes, 2010; Reyes, 2012; Velasco & García, 2014; Wedin, this volume). For instance, Kecskes (2008) sees multilingual learning as a bi-directional

Multilingual Preschoolers’ Word Learning at Home  225

system where the languages are in ‘constant interaction’ (Kecskes, 2008: 31). The ‘translanguaging’ approach also highlights this more unified view of language learning (e.g. Kirsch, this volume; Velasco & García, 2014). In line with these views, the study’s results seem to indicate that the learning of both Hebrew and English can support one another and that children can draw upon their entire body of language knowledge to express themselves meaningfully (Jessner et al., this volume). Some research has pointed to the similarities between the two (or more) languages being learned to explain the effectiveness of multilingual learning (Kaushanskaya et al., 2011). The current study explored Hebrew and English, which use different alphabets, different directions in reading and writing, and have different linguistic structures (e.g. Shimron & Sivan, 1994). Nonetheless, we found that Hebrew word knowledge can impact English language acquisition. Future studies can further explore how the similarities and differences between languages’ characteristics can impact on the interactions between them. 10.4.3 Book genre and multilingual preschoolers

The exploration of book genre in the current study further adds to our knowledge regarding the SBR context, and highlights the importance of this element in the expansion of vocabulary amongst young multilingual learners. While not significantly predictive of children’s learning of target words (though the data did show a trend in the direction of significance for word knowledge at the expressive level), book genre was predictive of elements of the SBR interactions. Both mothers and children showed more initiations and turns when reading an informational text. Additionally, mothers used a significantly greater number of questions, restatements and elaborations, as well as explanations of words and increased book awareness, when reading an informational text compared to a narrative text. Zauche et al. (2016) highlight the importance of ‘language nutrition’ for young children’s language and cognitive development. Specifically, they found that shared reading helps introduce new vocabulary and facilitates adultchild dialogue. Our findings indicate that reading informational books can serve to help on both levels, in terms of facilitating extra-textual dialogue and by focusing on new vocabulary. This can be particularly helpful in expanding the oral language fluency of multilingual children. Thus, encouraging parents to read greater numbers of informational texts has the potential to lead to greater interaction between parent and child during SBR. Additionally, increasing the number of these texts would also lead to increased awareness of the reading process for the child, and greater exposure to a wider variety of texts that can better prepare the children for the types of texts that will be encountered in a school setting.

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10.4.4 Limitations

A number of limitations exist relating to the generalization of the study’s results. First, the families in the current study were middlehigh SES, and as such, differ from many multilingual children, who often live below the poverty line and are considered at-risk for school failure (Goldenberg et al., 2011). Second, in order to reduce the possibility of sensitization to the pictures, only expressive knowledge of the target words was assessed at pretest (based on Justice, 2002). Consequently, only learning of target words at the expressive level could be evaluated from pretest to posttest. However, word meanings are often learned incrementally (Nagy & Scott, 2000), and evaluating receptive learning may provide a better picture of this. Last, as the focus of the current study was on the learning of English vocabulary through SBR, we examined knowledge of the target words in Hebrew only at pretest. Future studies should include posttest evaluations of Hebrew target words to deepen our understanding of multilingual preschoolers’ learning in both their languages and the support each language provides for the other. Further, to extend the results of the current study, future research can include those from varying SES, varying levels of home literacy environments and different language profiles. 10.4.5 Educational implications

Various educational implications emerge based on the results from the current study. Research has increasingly emphasized the importance of informational texts (e.g. Marinak & Gambrell, 2008; Moss, 2008). Our results demonstrate that these texts can be integrated into the home successfully starting from preschool age. Additionally, our results highlight the increased interactions between parents and children surrounding informational books. Including these types of books in shared reading situations can stimulate expanded extra-textual discourse with children, which can help promote multilingual children’s language and literacy development. This study also demonstrated the importance of both languages in shared reading with multilingual preschoolers (Collins, 2010; Roberts, 2008). Results demonstrated the unique predictive value of knowledge of a word in the children’s new language (Hebrew) to learning of the word in their home language (English), supporting both the interactive view of multilingual learners (Kecskes, 2008) and the translanguaging model (Velasco & García, 2014). More research is needed in this area to further determine what aspects of shared reading interactions might help children make the best use of their full language repertoire.

Multilingual Preschoolers’ Word Learning at Home  227

10.5 Conclusions

This study set out to examine the impact of both narrative and informational texts on parent-child SBR and on the vocabulary acquisition of multilingual (English-Hebrew) preschoolers. Results showed that children are able to learn new words from books of both genres from a single exposure in a natural, home-based context. Informational books stimulated greater adult-child interactions, providing increased extra-textual talk and greater discussion surrounding new vocabulary words. As ‘low levels of vocabulary knowledge have repeatedly been identified as a key impediment to successful comprehension’ (Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2011: 1546) in multilingual populations, the success of the current study in promoting children’s word learning ­indicates that SBR should continue to be encouraged with m ­ ultilingual preschool children in the home, particularly with the inclusion of ­informational books. References Allman, B. (2005) Vocabulary size and accuracy of monolingual and bilingual preschool children. In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism (Vol. 5, pp. 58–77). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Aram, D. (2006) Early literacy interventions: The relative roles of storybook reading, alphabetic activities, and their combination. Reading and Writing 19, 489–515. doi: 10.1007/s11145-006-9005-2. August, D. and Shanahan, T. (eds) (2006) Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. See http://www.cal.org/projects/archive/nlpreports/ executive_summary.pdf (accessed November 2018). August, D., Carlo, M., Dressler, C. and Snow, C. (2005) The critical role of vocabulary development for English language learners. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 20 (1), 50–57. Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G. and Kucan, L. (2002) Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. New York: The Guilford Press. Bergman Deitcher, D. and Johnson, H.L. (2012, June) The effect of genre on kindergarten teachers’ book reading styles. Poster presented at annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Toronto, Canada. Bialystok, E. (2001) Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy, & Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bialystok, E. (2015) Bilingualism and the development of executive function. Child Development Perspectives 9 (2), 117–121. Breuer, E.O. and Van Steendam, E. (2021) Multiple approaches to understanding and working with multilingual (multi-) literacy. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 1–18). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. (2013) The influence of bilingualism on third language acquisition: Focus on multilingualism. Language Teaching 46, 71–86. doi: 10.1017/S021444811000218. Chall, J.S. and Jacobs, V.A. (2003) The classic study on poor children’s fourth-grade slump. American Educator, Spring, 2003. See http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/ spring2003/hirschsbclassic.cfm (accessed November 2018).

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Child Trends Databank (2016) Dual language learners. See http://www.childtrends.org/ ?indicators=dual-language-learners. Collins, M.F. (2010) ELL preschoolers’ English vocabulary acquisition from storybook reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 25, 84–97. doi: 10.1016/j. ecresq.2009.07.009. Correa, V.I., Lo, Y.Y., Godfrey-Hurrell, K., Swart, K. and Baker, D.L. (2015) Effects of adapted dialogic reading on oral language and vocabulary knowledge of Latino preschoolers at risk for English language delays. Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners 15 (2), 3–21. Coxe, S., West, S.G. and Aiken, L.S. (2009) The analysis of count data: A gentle introduction to Poisson regression and its alternatives. Journal of Personality Assessment 91 (2), 121–136. De Houwer, A., Bornstein, M.H. and Putnick, D.L. (2014) A bilingual–monolingual comparison of young children’s vocabulary size: Evidence from comprehension and production. Applied Psycholinguistics 35 (06), 1189–1211. Dunn, L.M. and Dunn, D.M. (2007) The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition. Bloomington, MN: NCS Pearson, Inc. Elley, W. (1989) Vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories. Reading Research Quarterly 24 (2), 174–187. Genesee, F. (2010) Dual language acquisition in preschool children. In E.E. Garcia and E. Frede (eds) Young English Language Learners (pp. 59–79). NY: Teachers College Press. Gill, S.R. (2009) What teachers need to know about the ‘new’ nonfiction. The Reading Teacher 63 (4), 260–267. doi: 10.1598/RT.63.4.1. Goldenberg, C. (2008) Teaching English language learners: What the research does and does not say. American Educator Summer 2008, 8–44. Goldenberg, C. (2013) Unlocking the research on English language learners: What we know – and don’t yet know – about effective instruction. American Educator 37 (2), 4–11. Goldenberg, C., Reese, L. and Rezaei, A. (2011) Contexts for language and literacy among dual- language learners. In A. Durgunoglu and C. Goldenberg (eds) Language & Literacy Development in Bilingual Settings (pp. 3–25). New York: The Guilford Press. Grace-Martin, K. (2008) Poisson and negative binomial regression for count data. See http://www.theanalysisfactor.com/poisson-and-negative-binomial-regression/. Hammer, C.S., Hoff, E., Uchikoshi, Y., Gillanders, C., Castro, D.C. and Sandilos, L.E. (2014) The language and literacy development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (4), 715–733. Hoff, E. and Rumiche, R.S. (2012) Studying Children in Bilingual Environments. Research Methods in Child Language: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Jessner, U., Malzer-Papp, E. and Allgäuer-Hackl, E. (2021) Paving a new way to literacy development in multilingual children: A DMM perspective. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 97–122). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Justice, L.M. (2002) Word exposure conditions and preschoolers’ novel word learning during shared book reading. Reading Psychology 23, 87–106. Kaushanskaya, M., Yoo, J. and Marian, V. (2011) The effect of second-language experience on native-language processing. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics 8, 54. Kecskes, I. (2008) L2 effect on L1. Babylonia. The Swiss Journal of Language Learning 02/08, 30–34. Kecskes, I. (2010) Dual and multilanguage systems. International Journal of Multilingualism 7 (2), 91–109. Kirsch, C. (2021) Promoting multilingualism and multiliteracies through storytelling: A case-study on the use of the app iTEO in preschools in Luxembourg. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 187– 210). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Lonigan, C., Schatschneider, C. and Westburg, L. (2008) Identification of children’s skills and abilities linked to later outcomes in reading, writing, and spelling. Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy. Mancilla-Martinez, J. and Lesaux, N.K. (2011) The gap between Spanish speakers’ word reading and word knowledge: A longitudinal study. Child Development 82 (5), 1544– 1560. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01633.x. Marinak, B. and Gambrell, L. (2008) Elementary informational text instruction: A research review. The International Journal of Learning 15 (9), 75–83. Martin, N. and Brownell, R. (2011) Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (Test Plates and Manual). California: Academic Therapy Publications. Mol, S.E. and Neuman, S.B. (2014) Sharing information books with kindergartners: The role of parents’ extra-textual talk and socioeconomic status. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (4), 399–410. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.04.001. Mol, S.E., Bus, A.G., de Jong, M.T. and Smeets, D.J.H. (2008) Added value of dialogic parent-child book readings: A meta-analysis. Early Education and Development 19 (1), 17–26. doi: 10.1080/10409280701838603. Moss, B. (2008) The information text gap: The mismatch between non-narrative text types in basal readers and 2009 NAEP recommended guidelines. Journal of Literacy Research 40, 201–219. doi: 10/1080/10862960802411927. Nagy, W. and Scott, J. (2000) Vocabulary processes. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. Pearson and R. Barr (eds) Handbook of Reading Research, Volume III (pp. 269–284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. National Early Literacy Panel (2008) Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy. See http://lincs. ed.gov/publications/pdf/NELPReport09.pdf. Pizzo, L. and Páez, M. (2017) Early childhood education and care for Dual Language Learners. In E. Votruba-Drzal and E. Dearing (eds) Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies (pp. 187–210). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Price, L.H., van Kleeck, A. and Huberty, C.J. (2009) Talk during book sharing between parents and preschool children: A comparison between storybook and expository book conditions. Reading Research Quarterly 44 (2), 171–194. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.44.2.4. Quiroz, B.G., Snow, C.E. and Zhao, J. (2010) Vocabulary skills of Spanish – English bilinguals: Impact of mother – child language interactions and home language and literacy support’. International Journal of Bilingualism 14 (4), 379–399. doi:10.1177/1367006910370919. Reyes, I. (2012) Biliteracy among children and youth. Reading Research Quarterly 47 (3), 307–327. Robbins, C. and Ehri, L.C. (1994) Reading storybooks to kindergartners helps them learn new vocabulary words. Journal of Educational Psychology 86 (1), 54–64. Roberts, T. (2008) Home storybook reading in primary or secondary language with preschool children: Evidence of equal effectiveness for second-language vocabulary acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly 43 (2), 103–130. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.43.2.1. Shimron, J. and Sivan, T. (1994) Reading proficiency and orthography evidence from Hebrew and English. Language Learning 44 (1), 5–27. Solberg, S. and Nevo, B. (1979) Preliminary steps towards an Israeli standardization of the Peabody Test. Megamot 3, 407– 413. Tabors, P.O. and Snow, C.E. (2001) Young bilingual children and early literacy development. In S. Neuman and D. Dickinson (eds) Handbook of Early Literacy Research. (pp. 159–178). New York: Guildford Press. Tsybina, I. and Eriks-Brophy, A. (2010) Bilingual dialogic book-reading intervention for preschoolers with slow expressive vocabulary development. Journal of Communication Disorders 43 (6), 538–556.

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Van Steensel, R. (2006) Relations between socio-cultural factors, the home literacy environment and children’s literacy development in the first years of primary education. Journal of Research in Reading 29 (4), 367–382. Velasco, P. and García, O. (2014) Translanguaging and the writing of bilingual learners. Bilingual Research Journal: The Journal of the National Association for Bilingual Education 37 (1), 6–23. doi: 10.1080/15235882.2014.893270. Wedin, Å. (2021) Construction of identities in diverse classrooms: Writing identity texts in grade five. In E.O. Breuer, E. Lindgren, A. Stavans and E. Van Steendam (eds) Multilingual Literacy (pp. 145–162). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Yopp, R.H. (2007) Informational text in the preschool classroom. The California Reader 41 (1), 46–53. Zauche, L.H., Thul, T.A., Mahoney, A.E.D. and Stapel-Wax, J.L. (2016) Influence of language nutrition on children’s language and cognitive development: An integrated review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 36, 318–333.

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Appendix 10.A – Selected Books Selected Books By Theme and Genre Theme

Genre

Title

Author

Illustrator

Animals

Informational

How & Why Animals Prepare for Winter

Elaine Pascoe

Dwight Kuhn (Photographer)

Narrative

Groundhog Stays Up Late

Margery Cuyler

Jean Cassels

Informational

Snow Is Falling

Franklyn M. Branley

Holly Keller

Narrative

The Mitten Tree

Candace Christiansen

Elaine Greenstein

Informational

From Cow to Ice Cream

Bertram T. Knight

Bertram T. Knight

Narrative

Curious George Goes to an Ice Cream Shop

Margaret & H.A. Rey’s

Margaret & H.A. Rey’s

Informational

Apples

Gail Gibbons

Gail Gibbons

Narrative

Apple Picking Time

Michele Benoit Slawson

Deborah Kogan Ray

Nature

Food/Natural World

Nature/Food

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Appendix 10.B – Word Selections By Book

Easy

Medium

Hard

Easy

Medium

Hard

Apple Picking time

Apples

Curious George Goes to an Ice Cream Shop

From Cow to Ice Cream

Summer

Baskets

Sprinkles

Refrigerator

Cushions

Insects

Mountain

Summer

Orchard

Awards

Cone

Sandwiches

Harvest

Colonists

Flavors

Pistachio

Canvas

Stands

Jars

Machine

Quilt

Fairs

Dish

Container

Valley

Soil

Walnut

Powder

Market

Village

Coconut

Blade

Shade

Products

Town

Tanks

Convent

Shades (color)

Sundae

Bacteria

Harness

Wilderness

Counter

Pasture

Procession

Crop

Crowd

Refinery

The Mitten Tree

Snow is Falling

Groundhog Stays Up Late

Animals Prepare for Winter

Family

Roofs

Berries

Cave

Shutters

Barns

Snowflake

Chipmunk

Stipes

Sled

Mud

Pond

Hedge

Mole

Color

Flock

Scraps

Chipmunk

Storm

Coop

Dawn

Cluster

Shelter

Burrow

Vines

Lawn

Fur

Litter

Porch

Town

Weasel

Beaver

Cap

Streetlight

Calendar

Stump

Wool

Power-lines

Woodpile

(Arctic) Tern

Brim

Vapor

Buttercups

Salamander

Lane

Flood

Opossum

Lodge

11 Multilingual Literacy: The Use of Emojis in Written Communication Anat Stavans, Maya Tahar Eden and Lior Azar

11.1 Introduction

Writing in any language requires linguistic, textual and cognitive skills, which develop throughout the lifespan. The process of learning to write in a given language is usually regarded as a scholastic task that spans our initial years in elementary school but accompanies us thereafter. It is often viewed as the main task of schooling and, as such, it takes on specific forms and functions with an underlying educational agenda grounded in traditional views of reading and writing skills. Literacy, and more specifically writing development, is a protracted process, which relies on different types of skills such as vocabulary, spelling and grammar (cf. Budde & Prüsmann, this volume). In education, we usually refer to writing in a single language with its specific rules and underlying sociocultural practices but less frequently we take the New Literacy perspective – which is not so new anymore – where literacy is understood as ‘something people did not inside their heads but inside society’ (Gee, 1991). New Literacies Studies (NLS) is not primarily a mental phenomenon but, rather, a social and cultural achievement of ways of participating within social and cultural groups. For example, different writing styles as well as different notations and symbols – not just alphabets – are used and accepted extensively and new and alternative means for communication in the written form, mainly in nonformal locutions and exchanges. Thus, grounded in the premises of NLS, the ‘new’ forms of writing deploy diverse notational forms which are becoming more and more prominent and need to be taken into account. In the past two decades, a ‘new’ language with a uniform notational system – emojis – has come into being. The language of short text

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messages in its different platforms (Skype, mobile phone (SMS), Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.) has become part of our lives. People of all ages use it irrespective of their native languages or cultures. Relying heavily on the visual modality, this language brings together the oral and written registers of various formal named languages (Otheguy et al., 2015) to communicate in what appears to be an emerging informal universal language. In this sense, the perspective taken in the present chapter is grounded in two theoretical frameworks: the NLS ideas that literacy is not just a skill or ability but also a social practice; and the idea that multilingualism inherently relies on the individual’s linguistic repertoire as viewed in the framework of translanguaging. Both theoretical models provide a window to understanding the evolution of a new notational encoding (use of emojis) of a language repertoire, driven by a societally conceived practice. This multilingual written communication crosses time and space in a non-‘classic’ but emerging literacy. This paper reports on two small-scale exploratory studies on the way multilinguals understand, interpret and report the way in which they use emojis. It was assumed that multilinguals have more experience with a broad linguistic repertoire that often includes multiple phonetic, graphemic and even alphabetic systems in their daily lives for different purposes and in different contexts. This linguistic repertoire and its use provide ample opportunities to code switch in speech and in writing and exercise in the most natural way translanguaging practices. The first study closely examines frequently used decontextualized emojis and evaluates how they are understood (lexical value) and used (grammatical value) by eight multilingual young adults. The second study explores the ‘translation’ of an emoji phone message (written by a young man to his woman friend). The emoji text was shown to twelve participants of different ages who were asked to read it out loud and then rewrite it in the language of their choice (most of them wrote it in their L1, Hebrew; only one participant chose to write it in the L2, English). That way, 24 ‘translated’ texts (12 orally and 12 in writing) were collected and analyzed for length, story organization and lexicon to compare modalities of production across ages. 11.2 Cyber-Literacy and Multilingualism

Digital communications of people both young and old, whether in emails, social media posts, instant messages, chat spaces or virtual conversations, are still mostly textual (Coulmas, 2003; Knobel & Lankshear, 2002). The birth, growth and spread of paralinguistic symbols to express ideas and emotions have rendered ubiquitous such expressions such as acronyms OMG for ‘Oh my God’, combinations of letters and numbers such as F2F for ‘face to face’, or conventional

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symbols or numbers as substitutes for words, such as @ for ‘at’. This growing trend introduces literacy as both a context-driven situated action and a socially recognized practice concerning ‘ways with words’ (Gee, 2001). The language, time and space where reading, writing and speaking are mediated by digital technologies become even more complex because they are scattered across time and space (e.g. via emails), they are essentially ‘language-less’ (albeit grounded in English) and ‘rules’ governing online practices have evolved to generate alternative literacy practices. These emerging alternative literacies are in line with theoretical and applied frameworks in new literacies (Kress, 2003) and a sociocultural approach to literacy/multiliteracy. The New Literacies Studies is a grounding theoretical outlook in our study for it concerns studying new types of literacy beyond print literacy, especially ‘digital literacies’ and literacy practices embedded in popular culture. Within this perspective of New Literacies Studies, we take different digital tools as technologies for giving and getting meaning, just like language (Coiro et al., 2008; Gee, 2004, 2007; Kist, 2004; Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, 2007). The meanings to which these technologies give rise are determined by the social, cultural, historical and institutional practices of different groups of people going beyond just using a digital tool – they involve, as well, ways of acting, interacting, valuing, believing and knowing, as well as often using other sorts of tools and technologies, including very often oral and written language (see Melo-Pfeifer, this volume). While the New Literacies Studies (originating in its predecessor New Literacy Studies and grounded in sociocultural approaches), apply mostly to monolingualism, in multilingualism they take on greater complexity due to the numerous components within the linguistic repertoire of the multilingual. These constitute not only the language forms and notational representations of each linguistic system, but also the cultural and social practices these forms take on in the communicative functions of these individuals to generate meaning (see Breuer & Van Steendam, this volume). In this sense, unlike monolinguals who might use visual notations – as a common means within today’s culture to express an emotion – the multilingual translanguages (García & Kleifgen, 2010; García & Li, 2014; Vogel & García, 2017) navigating through a complex repertoire with multiple writing systems, conventions and notations. The undergird translanguaging theory regards the multilingual entire linguistic repertoire based on three core premises (see Donahue, this volume). First, that multilinguals select and deploy features from a unitary linguistic repertoire in order to communicate. Second, that the multilingual has personal dynamic linguistic and semiotic practices beyond the named languages of nations and states. And last, there is a significance in the material effects of socially constructed named language categories and

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structuralist language ideologies, especially for minoritized language speakers. The translanguaging theory has been contested by those who while accepting some of these core premises make a distinction between the perspective and analysis especially of language contact situations. One such contentions relates to the notion of whether named languages have linguistic reality and specific grammars. Those who adhere to the linguistic reality of named languages defend the notion of code-switching (see, e.g. MacSwan, 2014, 2017) using the term translanguaging, but arguing that each language has a specific grammar and ignore the fact that speakers select features not by grammar, but by the social information that each individual speaker has regarding the particular communicative context in which the social interaction takes place. In this paper we argue that while the issue of named languages is important, when it comes to the use of emojis in written communication, the case of multilinguals and their translanguaging poses new and intriguing conceptualizations of multilingual literacy capabilities (see Jessner et al., this volume). One unique multilingual phenomenon is switching between linguistic codes – also referred to as code switching – in the case of technologically driven communication the use of non-language notations of emotions within an otherwise written alphabetic text (or code). Code switching has been studied as the alternation between two or more languages within an utterance, sentence, phrase, or even word (e.g. Stavans & Hoffmann, 2015). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, there is little knowledge on code switching involving the written forms of the languages and the combinations or alternations that multilinguals produce in informal, intimate writing, using not only canonical (alphabetic or other) written notations but also the introduction of other visual notations. Multilinguals using technologically mediated communications have several options to construct a text. They can combine (a) the writing systems of all languages; (b) the writing system of one language with the phonetically transcribed words of other languages; (c) the canonic writing system of one language with digital symbols (see below); or (d) emojis with mixed writing forms. In this sense, the written language produced by multilinguals generates affordances that are not only grounded in the written form of a specific language but also adds the technology-based options. The relation between culture and language in all its modalities, be it written signs that are interpreted in a language (Slobin, 1996; Whorf, 1940) or concepts of time and space encoded in language (Boroditsky, 2001) has been debated for decades. This debate has not extended to the realm of technology-based communication. Manual Castells (1996: 328) states that technology-based communication has developed a ‘Super Text and a Meta-Language’ combining ‘the written, oral and

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audio-visual modalities of human communication’ into a single system that allows for open and affordable interactions in real or deferred time through the global network. Likewise, Castells (2000: 356–357) states: ‘Communication decisively shapes culture … Because culture is mediated and enacted through communication, cultures themselves … become fundamentally transformed, and will be more so over time, by the new technological system’. Hence, the dynamic relationship between technological development and cyber-literacy is symbiotic in that technology shapes but is also shaped by literacy practices (see Kirsch, this volume). This symbiosis has resulted in a widespread communication practice using various notational symbols and non-lingual representations to express basic human emotions words seem to fail to express fully. In a word – emojis (see Stavans & Lindgren, this volume). 11.3 Emojis: Definition and Evolution

Emojis were originally created as a compact expression of emotions in online communications (Lu et al., 2016). Emojis are small pictures that provide emotional contextual cues on (usually mobile) internet platform. The term is a combination of the Japanese terms for picture (絵) and character (文字) (Skiba, 2016). Similar to emojis, emoticons are keyboard symbols, which are combined to make pictures, for example ‘