Multiple becomings in digital story creation

ABSTRACT

Using ethnographic approaches, we document encounters of humans and materials in environments where a digital tool was used to create multilingual and multimodal stories. Thinking with theories of the sociomaterial and concepts of agencement and becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), we reflect on identity construction as a collective process of coming into being. To do so, we examine relationships formed among young children, adults, digital devices and platforms, language and literacy norms, as well as discourses about monolingualism, multilingualism and literacy instruction to better understand how they converge during story creation.

Inspirées par une approche ethnographique, nous documentons les rencontres humaines et matérielles lorsqu'un outil numérique est utilisé pour créer des histoires plurilingues et multimodales. En nous appuyant sur les théories sociomatérielles et les concepts d'agencement et de devenir (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), nous redéfinissons la construction identitaire comme processus collectif émergent. Ainsi, nous examinons les relations entre enfants, adultes, outils numériques, normes linguistiques et de littératies et discours sur le monolinguisme, le plurilinguisme et l'enseignement des littératies pour mieux comprendre comment tout ceci converge dans la création des histoires.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• literacy
• minority languages
• multilingualism
• multiliteracies
• plurilingualism

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Diane Dagenais is Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Canada). Informed by new materialism and posthumanism, her recent research in applied linguistics documents encounters of multilingual learners, digital tools and literacy practices in and out of school.

Geneviève Brisson is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Canada). Her scholarship explores bi/plurilingualism in relation to literacies and identities, and she is interested in documenting the literacy practices of plurilingual children and youth.

Gwénaëlle André is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Canada). Her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action, particularly for youth.

Magali Forte is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Canada) and a K-12 teacher in Vancouver. Her research interests focus on the process of identity construction in second language education, including French and English, and with multimodal literacies.

Notes

1 We conducted this research with consent from the research ethics review committees at Simon Fraser University and the participating institutions, as well as from participating children, their parents, teachers and community librarians. We are grateful to the participants who welcomed us in their homes, classrooms and libraries to undertake the fieldwork. We recognize as well the invaluable contributions of Forte and André, both doctoral research assistants, who have been working alongside Dagenais and Brisson on all phases of this project.

2 In the narrative excerpts, text enclosed in square brackets, e.g. [laughs], provides extralinguistic information such as bodily movements.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2018-0076] awarded to Dagenais and Brisson, 2018-2021.