‘Red is the colour of the heart’: making young children’s multilingualism visible through language portraits

Abstract

The increasing occurrence of multilingualism in the educational sphere is challenging teachers to deal with the coexistence of different languages in the classroom. The present paper presents the analysis of language portraits as a tool to make students' multilingualism visible by using colours to represent their multilingual repertoires. Through a mixed methods design, our research analyses 570 language portraits and sociolinguistic surveys, as well as 21 semi-structured interviews with children aged 6 to 13 in order to investigate the ways in which pupils represent and reflect upon their multilingual repertoires. Using a qualitative content analysis, we have classified the most common patterns within pupils' choices of colours and placement of languages on their portraits, later analysed through a semiotic approach. Results show three recurring patterns of colour choices: colours of national flags, associations with life experiences, and associations with feelings. As for language placement, results show two recurring patterns: structuring languages according to linguistic skills, and according to body functions. The analysis also revealed a tendency among participants of representing their languages through a "monolingual lens" (García and Flores) and draws implications for the implementation of multilingual education.

Exploring Migrant Students’ Attitudes towards Their Multilingual Identities through Language Portraits

“…However, most researchers working with language portraits recognize the limitations of this research tool and, therefore, they use a multi-modal approach to data collection by either interviewing participants or asking them for a written/oral description of their language repertoire refs. [12,13,16]. According to ref.…”

“…There has been an increasing interest in the field of sociolinguistics in exploring individuals' multilingual identities through different methodologies, especially in school contexts refs. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]; a new type of visual representation of student linguistic repertoires that has drawn researchers' interests has been the so-called language portraits refs. [9,16].…”

“…Refs. [12,13] worked with visual narratives with Portuguese migrant children in Germany, and the visual narratives proved to be a useful tool to gain access to the children's languages, patterns of experience, and feelings, as well as represent how multilingual minds make sense of the relationship between their linguistic repertoires. Ref.…”

Visual and Artefactual Approaches in Engaging Teachers with Multilingualism: Creating DLCs in Pre-Service Teacher Education

“…This layering also increases the distance between the languages in terms of frequency of use, proficiency, and learning context. The symbolic choice of colour in this artefact is especially important, as colours are considered signifiers (Tabaro Soares et al 2021), carrying 'a set of affordances from which sign-makers and interpreters select according to their communicative needs and interests in a given context' (Kress and van Leeuwen 2002, p. 355). Norwegian, the ST's mother tongue, is the biggest heart and is 'designed in a blue heart.…”

Designing Critical Multilingual Multiliteracies Projects in Two-Way Immersion Classrooms: Affordances and Impacts on Students

“…Multilingual project-based learning and multilingual language awareness projects have been taken up across a variety of international contexts, including but not limited to Europe (Hélot et al, 2018) and Canada (Cummins & Early, 2011;Galante, 2020;Lau & Van Viegen, 2020;Payant & Maatouk, 2022), as a way of affirming students' identities and literacy expertise. Language portraits, a multimodal autobiographic method to explore students' perception of their language experiences and language repertoires (Busch, 2006(Busch, , 2010Jasor, et al, 2022;Krumm & Jenkins, 2001;Prasad, 2014;Soares et al, 2020), are an example of a powerful multilingual and multimodal approach to help children represent their diverse linguistic identities. Implementing multilingual multiliteracies projects in classrooms provides ways for students to understand others' linguistic and cultural practices and raise their multilingual language awareness.…”