From: Steve Fraiberg <sfraibe2gmail.com>
Subject: Call: Multiling and Multimodal Composing
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Steven Fraiberg and Xiaoye You are seeking contributors to an edited
collection, "Re-Mixing and Mashing: Multilingual and Multimodal Composing."
In the area of literacy and language studies, scholars have called for
crossing geographic and disciplinary borders in order to understand the
ways English is being taken up, resisted, and transformed in relation to
other languages and globalization. Responding to these calls, this edited
collection aims to develop a rich understanding of multilingual composing
processes across a range of contexts - classrooms, communities, workplaces,
institutions, home environments - and the ways these practices are deeply
linked to fluid and dynamic flows of capital, cultures, histories, and
ideologies resulting in hybrid identities and novel forms of discursive
Drawing on work in multiliteracies, we further aim to extend the scope of
multilingual research by developing rich descriptions of the ways that
multimodal activities are deeply blended into speaking, reading, and
writing practices co-constituting complex ecologies distributed across
space and time.
It is the assumption of this collection that such fine grained descriptions
of multimodal-multilingual literacy practices are critical for developing
broader methodological and theoretical frameworks related to teaching,
language policy, and research. To this end, we seek interdisciplinary
scholarship on multilingual and multimodal literacy practices across a wide
range of disciplines, including composition, literacy studies, ESL, new
media, World Englishes, linguistic anthropology, rhetoric, technical
communication, organizational behavior, applied linguistics, critical
discourse analysis, computer mediated communication, education, and a range
of other relevant disciplines.
We seek proposals that challenge and inform our work with or on
multilingual and multimodal literacy practices, considering such questions as:
- How do writers construct multilingual and multimodal texts and objects
(web pages, chats, graffiti, speeches, student papers, brochures, business
proposals, presentations, laundry lists)? We seek rich descriptions of
multilingual and multimodal literacy practices across a range of contexts -
classrooms, communities, workplaces, home environments - with links to
constellations of institutional, ideological, cultural, historical, and
- How is multilingual-multimodal writing embedded in a complex ecology of
texts, tools, people, institutions, histories, cultures, ideologies?
- How do multilingual and multimodal practices - in conjunction with
written texts, objects, talk, design, gesture, physical positioning and
alignment - coordinate activities? How are these activities intertwined
with broader sociocultural contexts?
- How can an understanding of unofficial multilingual and multimodal
literacy practices such as social networking, web page design, digital
story telling, and graffiti inform our officially sanctioned practices in
our research, teaching, and policy making?
- What theoretical and methodological frameworks should we use for
researching multilingual and multimodal texts and composing?
- What are the challenges that researchers face in multilingual and
multimodal research, teaching, and policy making? What benefits and
insights from attending to these issues can be gained?
We welcome 1-2 page (300-600 word) proposals for research-focused papers
that explore the complexities and issues of multilingual and multimodal
composing processes and texts across classrooms, workplaces, and community
Deadline for Proposals: September 1, 2009. Send electronically (prefer MS
Word) to Steven Fraiberg at sfraibe2gmail.com.
Notification of Acceptance: October 1, 2009
Manuscripts Due: February 1, 2010
Projected Publication: Spring 2011
Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Translation; Writing Systems
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