Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 1-7

3. Theoretical Orientations

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 9-49

4. Methodological Approaches

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 51-79

5. Sociopolitical Level of Context

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 81-104

6. Access, Availability and Sponsors of Literacy in Mirpur

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 105-139

7. Literacy Mediation and Cultural Brokerage in the Family’s Migration Literacies

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 141-172

8. Digital Literacies

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 173-207

9. The Discursive Construction of Online Vernacular Writing

   • Tony Capstick

   Pages 209-228

10. Conclusions

    • Tony Capstick

    Pages 229-239

11. Back Matter

    Pages 241-255

    PDF

This book explores the language and literacy practices which sustain transnational migration across generations and across traditional boundaries such as school and home. The author has conducted extensive fieldwork in Pakistan and the UK to study migration between the two countries. Individuals’ access to the dominant literacies of migration are contrasted with the vernacular practices which migrants take up at home as part of their digital literacies. The study explores the blurring of boundaries between home and school as well as the blurring of boundaries between language varieties. Tracing access to literacy in this way also shines a light on the literacy mediators migrants turn to for help with English language learning and when trying to access the bureaucratic literacies of migration. The study ends by exploring how migrants use all of their language resources, not just English, to fit into their new homes once they have arrived in the UK.

• integration
• multilingual literacies
• ethnography
• Critical Discourse Studies
• translanguaging
• discourse
• education
• English
• language
• linguistics
• migration
• multilingualism
• social science
• sociolinguistics
• teaching
• discourse analysis

“The volume is a timely contribution on a major topic of growing significance. With a particular focus on the complex issues of multilingual reality in the context of migration and power inequality, it provides rich and fascinating insights into how migrants mobilise their available multilingual resources to stay connected with their support networks, to deal with institutional gate-keeping requirements and to get on with their lives. These practices represent migrants’ grassroot responses to linguistic hierarchies imbued by power differentials in the society at large and can only be understood from a close examination of migrants’ trajectories, histories and aspirations.” (Zhu Hua, Professor, Birkbeck, University of London, UK)

“Tony Capstick's Multilingual literacies, identities and ideologies is an innovative fusion of literacy studies and migration research. It highlights the role of literacy in the migration process in an ethnographic study that is rich in insights intoboth literacy practices, both in Pakistan and the U.K.,  particularly literacy mediation and cultural brokering as well as into migration processes. It is written in a lucid and readable style.” (Mike Baynham, Professor, Leeds University, UK)

• University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom

  Tony Capstick

Tony Capstick is Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading, UK where he teaches on the MA and BA programmes including the module Literacy: Social, Educational and Cognitive Perspectives. Prior to this he was the BA Linguistics and Language Programme Director at Birkbeck, University of London. As a teacher educator, Tony has worked in Pakistan, Indonesia and Cambodia. He has also carried out work exploring the language in education needs of Syrian refugees in the Middle East.

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