Fostering multiliteracies: 1st conference day

Exciting first day at the conference on “Fostering multiliteracies through education: Middle Eastern Perspectives” at the American University of Sharjah. Suresh Canagarajah, who blogs on academic writing and publishing in a multilingual, yet English-dominant world, kicked off the day with a talk about code-meshing where he explored multilingualism in student writing. While academic writing is often seen as a bastion of monolingualism, it’s obviously possible for writers to use their multilingualism as a resource to enhance their writing and argument. While many in the TESOL profession have moved beyond deficit views of second language writers, the predominant view is still one of two or more separate languages, of entities rather than practices. Suresh uses the term “code-meshing” to transcend that apparent stability and to refer to the fluidity of language practices where the actual meaning of “English,” “Arabic” or any other language is constantly shifting and getting enmeshed in the language use of multilinguals. Another term for “code-meshing” that seems to be gaining ground is “translanguaging” – I like to call fluidity of linguistic practices “language and communication on the move” or L.CoM.