Abstract
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.
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Notes
- 1.
DIMuL is a part of the Swedish National Research School LIMCUL, Young People’s Literacies, Multilingualism and Cultural Practice in Everyday Society. The research school is supported by the Swedish Research Council.
- 2.
More detailed aspects of both the theoretical framework and ethnographic fieldwork are accounted for in previous and forthcoming writings (Gynne 2016; Bagga-Gupta, Messina Dahlberg and Gynne, forthcoming).
- 3.
Web 2.0 is a term which describes web-based applications that emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactivity through the written word and other multimodal content.
- 4.
See Appendix for an illustration of the classroom space.
- 5.
All names appearing in this paper are pseudonyms.
- 6.
The origins of the phrase “Kilroy was here” are debated, but the phrase and a distinctive accompanying doodle of a bald male figure peeking from behind a wall became associated with American soldiers in the 1940s.
- 7.
The Moomin characters were created by Tove Jansson, a Finnish author, cartoonist and artist. The characters have become emblematic for Finnish (children’s) culture during the last few decades. Figure 13.3 is published with the permission of ©Moomin Characters™.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Associate Professor Tommaso M. Milani, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Professor Sirpa Leppänen, Jyväskylä University, for their critical feedback received to early drafts of this chapter. The insightful comments from the blind reviewers have also been greatly appreciated. Any remaining flaws are my own.
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Appendix
Appendix
Layout of the classroom spring term 2010.
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Gynne, A. (2017). “Janne X Was Here”. Portraying Identities and Negotiating Being and Belonging in Informal Literacy Practices. In: Bagga-Gupta, S., Hansen, A., Feilberg, J. (eds) Identity Revisited and Reimagined. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58056-2_13
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