Course description
This course will allow students to engage directly with the current theoretical and methodological trends in the field of multilingual writing, with a focus on four different domains a) digitally mediated communication, b) linguistic/semiotic landscapes, c) literacy and education, d) scripts and orthography.
The course will draw on examples from various areas across the world (including Norway) to illustrate the diversity of contexts where multilingual writing appears. We will employ different analytical approaches to diverse data sets of multilingual writing. One aim of this course is to connect the different perspectives in order to find some common ground concerning the study of multilingual writing. An important part of the students’ work will consist in an empirical hands-on project that they will carry out, which includes data collection and analysis.
Learning outcome
- identify the theoretical and methodological challenges in studying multilingual writing as well as the societal relevance of it;
- describe and discuss different types of multilingual writing in diverse international contexts (Norway, Senegal, Mexico, USA, Hong Kong…)
- engage with multilingual writing and digraphia/biscriptality in digital communication, education, art, media, family and public signs;
- collect and analyze multilingual written data from digital communication, linguistic and semiotic landscapes and the educational context in an empirical hands-on project for which students will be responsible, and present their results in a students’ conference at the end of term