Geographies of Discourse Revisited: Mapping Trajectories of Multilingualism

This discussion explores multilingualism through the lens of Geographies of Discourse (GoD) in diverse educational contexts, specifically the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and a Sino-US joint venture EMI (English Medium Instruction) University in China. Building upon multimodal frameworks related to sociolinguistics data collection, Dr Andy Jocuns examines how mapping tasks, language portraits, and digital portraits create insights into networks of mobility within language repertoires.

Geographies of Discourse (Jocuns & de Groot, 2025; Scollon, 2013) provides a framework for analysing multilingual spaces by emphasising cross-semiotic associations and relationships among various material objects. In Kurdistan and China, language portraits and mapping tasks elicited narratives highlighting participants' orientation towards language, mobility, and digital literacies, reflecting complex intersections within multilingual practices.

These intersections become transformative through multimodal mediated actions, reinforcing Latour's (2005) assertion that transformation and meaning emerge from social interactions between actors rather than purely material or immaterial conditions. Findings from the data from Kurdistan reveal how language portraits as a methodological tool offer a nuanced analytical tool for participants to creatively visualise their linguistic repertoire in a multimodal, idealised manner.

Whereas the mapping task provides a similarly creative mediational means that emerges more realistically around actual social practices.

In parallel, preliminary findings from interviews with undergraduate and graduate students at a Sino-US joint venture EMI university in China offer insights into their attitudes toward multilingualism, global citizenship, and intercultural citizenship. Utilising language portraits as a methodological tool, clear connections emerged between language, identity practices, and associated material objects, such as smartphones, television and the internet.

Languages were symbolically linked with colours, such as pink for Korean and French, red and yellow for Chinese, and blue and yellow for English, reflecting deeper cultural and emotional associations. Many participants identified regional dialects or minority languages (fangyan) as integral yet poorly mastered components of their idiolects.

These findings highlight a complex dynamic wherein students at EMI institutions recognise multilingualism conceptually yet struggle with personal identification as multilingual individuals. As a way to compare other aspects of their linguistic repertoire, a digital portrait was also collected and, similar to the mapping task findings, reveals more realistic practices with regard to linguistic repertoires.

Together, these insights from Kurdistan and China demonstrate the transformative potential within multilingual and multimodal discourse practices, emphasising the importance of examining language use and identity through spatial, cultural, and digital dimensions in contemporary educational settings. Similarities with regard to each of the two sets of data reveal how languages like English are mobile and also how varieties of languages (varieties of Kurdish and Fangyan) are a part of linguistic repertoires but are also sites of contestation.

The language policies of Kurdistan and China differ immensely but also influence how participants in both regions perceive their linguistic repertoires.

Date

Thursday 24 April 2025

Time

1 to 2 pm

Location

Online via Zoom

Speaker

Dr Andy Jocuns
Wenzhou-Kean University, China