Written Communication Jan 2023

Writing Toward a Decolonial Option: A Bilingual Student’s Multimodal Composing as a Site of Translingual Activism and Justice

Eunjeong Lee University of Houston

Abstract

Drawing on discussions of (de)coloniality and translanguaging, this article reports findings from a classroom-based ethnographic study, focusing on how a self-identified Latina bilingual student resists colonial constructs of language and literacies in her multimodal project. Based on an analysis of the student’s multimodal composition, other classroom writings, and a semistructured interview, I examine how she creatively and critically draws on her entire language and literacy repertoire in her multimodal composing. More specifically, I demonstrate how she draws from and builds on her lived experiences of linguistic injustices and racialization and transforms such experiences into embodied knowledge making and sharing through her multimodal composing. I argue that students’ engagement with multimodality can and should be cultivated, sustained, and amplified as a site of translingual activism and justice with decolonial potential, and I suggest, further, that such a shift requires a change in approaching, reading, and valuing students’ multimodal meaning making.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2023-01-01
DOI
10.1177/07410883221134640
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
decolonial rhetorics qualitative research multimodality multilingual writers translingualism literacy studies
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Citation Context

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