Digital text production as narrative: an analysis of text production in a multilingual classroom at primary school

Abstract

In the study presented digital text production in a multilingual classroom is discussed. This involves students aged 7-8, manifesting their literacy by making use of both their writing and reading competence. To be able to discuss the text production, Bakhtin’s theories about heteroglossia are crucial, allowing for both social and historical contexts of utterances (Bakhtin 1994). These theories are here intertwined with Bruner’s notion of human beings as constituted by ‘narratives’ (Bruner 2002). By the use of linguistic ethnography (Creese 2008) and text analysis based on sociosemiotics (Kress, van Leeuwen 2006), the following questions are discussed: How do multilingual students make use of digital tools for meaning making in their digital text productions, and in what sense could they by creating these texts be said to contribute to their own literacy development? Text productions from four students are analysed to illustrate how multivocal spaces are created, and how these ‘spaces’ can explain the students’ literacy development.

Keywords

• meaning making
• literacy processes
• multilingualism
• narratives
• sociosemiotics