Annaliina Gynne

Languaging in the twenty-first century : exploring varieties and modalities in literacies inside and outside learning spaces

The study presented in this paper focuses on young peoples languaging, or ways-with-being-with-words, including literacies, in everyday practices that stretch across formal and informal learning spaces. Taking sociocultural and ethnographic points of departure, the aim of the study is to investigate aspects of young peoples situated and distributed ways of engaging in knowledge production in academic ‘writing’ genres, as well as their agency in relation to pedagogic goals as administered by teachers in these practices. Through analysis of data sets consisting of field notes, video recordings and particularly literacy data, the study presents analysis of three cases of students’ work in project-based learning and instructional tasks inside and outside a ‘bilingual–bicultural’ school setting. The paper puts forth a multi-dimensional analysis of communicative and learning practices and suggests refocusing scholarly interests of ‘multilingualism’ towards an examination of different dimensions of modalities and language varieties in languaging practices. The findings indicate that student agency is central in contributing to the shaping of the nature of their languaging across the interrelated dimensions of time and space. Furthermore, this study suggests that pedagogical practices in language, including literacy, classes need to be transformed and recontextualized in order to embrace student agency.

Practiced Linguistic-Cultural Ideologies and Educational Policies: A Case Study of a "Bilingual Sweden Finnish School".

ABSTRACT This article explores linguistic-cultural ideologies and educational policies as they emerge and are negotiated in everyday life in a bilingual school setting located in the geopolitical spaces of Sweden. Taking sociocultural theory and discourse analysis as points of departure, we focus on empirical examples of classroom interaction and locally established formal policing. Linguistic-cultural ideologies and educational policies that frame life at the school are investigated by employing nexus analytical methods, focusing on social (inter)actions through which a number of locally and nationally relevant discourses circulate. Our findings indicate that refocusing ideology and policy research from the lens of a practiced perspective allows the situated and distributed nature of everyday life to inform issues related to bilingualism as well as their relations to wider societal discourses. Furthermore, our analysis highlights the crucial role of educators in (re)locating bilingual education in its societal contexts as well as making these connections visible in classrooms.

“Janne X Was Here”. Portraying Identities and Negotiating Being and Belonging in Informal Literacy Practices

The study presented in this chapter examines young people’s identity work and informal literacy practices in two separate, yet intertwined settings: in a “bilingual” school context located in Sweden and a social network site. Drawing on sociocultural approaches and (n)ethnographic data, the main aim of the chapter is to expand understandings dealing with identity work and heteroglossic languaging, including informal literacy practices, in settings across the offline-online continuum. Through analysis of data sets consisting of video recordings, photographs and screen grabs, the concepts of languaging and identity-as-agency are explored from a discourse analytical perspective. The findings illustrate the ways in which interactions, agency and social positionings emerge at the intersection of people, discourses, spaces, practices and technologies. Portraying identity positions and negotiating being and belonging becomes possible in and through practices where multiple aspects of communicative repertoires and modalities are employed.