Languages, Modes, and Belonging in Multilingual School Literacy: Translanguaging, Multimodal Composition, and Academic Participation
Keywords:
translanguaging, multimodal literacy, multilingual learners, identity texts, digital storytelling, academic language, linguistic legitimacyAbstract
Multilingual pupils often encounter school literacy through a narrower set of communicative resources than those available in their homes, peer groups, and communities. This article examines how translanguaging and multimodal composition change that relationship in school-based literacy and disciplinary learning. In this study we compared through a critical narrative review centred on five bodies of evidence: Zaidi and Sah's scoping review of 17 studies; Veum, Siljan, and Maagero's analysis of 97 multimodal texts created by 23 newly arrived learners in Norway; Karlsson, Nygard Larsson, and Jakobsson's three-year study of Arabic-Swedish science learning in Sweden; Macleroy and Shamsad's Bengali-English digital storytelling work with 11--14-year-olds in East London; and Carbonara and Scibetta's school-level translanguaging project spanning five Italian schools and 71 focus groups. Across these settings, home languages, photographs, oral explanation, digital stories, visual design, and culturally meaningful objects enabled learners to connect prior knowledge with disciplinary language, represent identities with greater precision, and participate before full command of the institutional language had been achieved. The studies also identify clear limits: multilingual activity was less productive when language was simplified excessively, when translation distorted disciplinary meaning, when multimodal elements were treated as decoration, or when assessment privileged only dominant-language accuracy. A repertoire--mode--audience relation is proposed to account for the recurring pattern. Multilingual literacy becomes academically consequential when learners can mobilise existing communicative resources, match modes to intellectual purpose, and address audiences that respond to the meanings produced. The evidence supports literacy teaching that develops academic language while preserving access to the linguistic and semiotic resources through which learners already reason and communicate.
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