From language choice to mode choice: how artefacts impact on language use and meaning making in a bilingual classroom

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay of languages and artefacts as resources for meaning making in bilingual education. While previous research on classroom interaction concentrated on either code switching or multimodality, here, I integrate both perspectives and propose a framework for the study of multimodal interaction embedded in a multilingual environment. The paper draws on research in a German–Italian two-way-immersion classroom in Frankfurt, Germany. The focus of the analysis is on objects and their role in shaping language practices and social interaction. The analysis sheds light on two dimensions of a biliteracy teaching and learning event that centres on objects brought to class by learners: first, it shows how the presence of objects intersects with the conventionalised language choice practices of this classroom. Second, it looks at how interactions around objects alter habitual ways of using languages for both the purpose of teaching and for identifying people, material culture and bodies of knowledge. To conclude I argue that interactions around learner-centred objects can modify pedagogical practice and thereby challenge monolingualising language ideologies. Rather than reifying monolithic identities, social roles and bodies of knowledge, learner-centred objects invite the creation of semiotic spaces in which the multiple life worlds of multilingual learners can thrive.