(Im)migrant women’s translingual literacy practices as problem-solving and learning resources: perspectives from a community-based English literacy program

ABSTRACT

This paper calls for an expansion of translingual studies to include the examination of learners beyond university contexts to further our understanding of translingual literacies and practices. The authors present findings from a larger ethnographic study about practices and repertoires that (im)migrant women mobilize and employ when learning how to write in a community-based English literacy program. The study provides insights into the intersections of their identities as mothers and professionals and their literacy learning. Findings show how these women drew on diverse modalities and literacies to navigate new conventions for writing and challenges they face as (im)migrants in the United States, illustrating how their practices are linked to their professional and gendered identities. The findings illustrate the need to expand translingual studies to further theorize multilingual lives, language learning, and literacy practices cultivated in non-traditional education programs.

KEYWORDS:

• multilingual (im)migrant women
• translingual literacy practices
• adult learners
• learner identities
• community-based programs
• multilingual writing

Acknowledgments

We would like to express gratitude to the reviewers and editors for providing invaluable feedback and supporting us during the writing process. We would also like to thank Aishwarya Devarajan for providing feedback during the final revision process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We would like to clarify that we are not viewing or orienting to writing as a binary as it does not align with a translingual orientation, although the language we use would suggest that we are indeed doing that. However, interactions with the participants about genre conventions and literacy practices were constructed as binaries and it is their conceptualizations and understandings of conventions that we are presenting.

2 Thank you to Tianfang Sally Wang for transcribing and translating the Mandarin portion of the data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Su Yin Khor

Su Yin Khor is Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and the Director of the Writing Program at College of the Atlantic. Her research interests include second language writing, writing education, second language and literacy socialization, and classroom discourse. Her most recent publication is a co-written book called The Practical Nature of L2 Teaching: A Conversation Analytic Perspective (Routledge).

Suresh Canagarajah

Suresh Canagarajah is Evan Pugh University Professor at Pennsylvania State University. He has written numerous articles and books about multilingualism, translingual practices, and issues in English language teaching. He was awarded the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award from the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 2017.