This book uses rich visual data to investigate how multilinguals make sense of their use and knowledge of more than one language and to gain a better understanding of multilinguals and their lives. The topic is addressed as subjectively experienced and the book unites the current multilingual, narrative and visual turns in Applied Language Studies.

Shortlisted for the 2020 BAAL Book Prize

This book brings together empirical studies from around the world to help readers gain a better understanding of multilinguals, ranging from small children to elderly people, and their lives. The chapters focus on the multilingual subjects’ identities and the ways in which they are discursively and/or visually constructed, and are split into sections looking specifically at the multilingual self, the multilingual learner and multilingual teacher education. The studies draw on rich visual data, which is analysed for content and/or form and often complemented with other types of data, to investigate how multilinguals make sense of their use and knowledge of more than one language in their specific context. The topic of multilingualism is addressed as subjectively experienced and the book unites the current multilingual, narrative and visual turns in Applied Language Studies. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in the areas of language learning and teaching, teacher education and bi/multilingualism, as well as to those interested in using visual methods and narratives as a means of academic research.

Introduction. Paula Kalaja and Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer

Part I - The Multilingual Self

Chapter 1. Alice Chik: Becoming and Being Multilingual in Australia

Chapter 2. Nayr Ibrahim: Children’s Multimodal Visual Narratives as Possible Sites of Identity Performance 

Chapter 3. Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer and Alexandra Schmidt: Integration as Portrayed in Visual Narratives by Young Refugees in Germany

Chapter 4. Muriel Molinié: From the Migration Experience to its Visual Narration in International Mobility

Part II - The Multilingual Learner

Chapter 5. Kristiina Skinnari: Looking but not Seeing: The Hazards of a Teacher-Researcher Interpreting Self-portraits of Adolescent English Learners

Chapter 6. Liss Kerstin Sylvén: Looking at Language through a Camera Lens

Chapter 7. So-Yeon Ahn: Using Multimodal Analysis to Explore Language Learner Identity Construction 

Chapter 8. Vera Lúcia Menezes de Oliveira e Paiva and Ronaldo Correa Gomes Junior: Multimodal Language Learning Histories: Images Telling Stories

Chapter 9. Tae Umino and Phil Benson: Study-abroad in Pictures: Photographs as Data in Life-story Research

Part III - Multilingual Teacher Education

Chapter 10. Ana Carolina de Laurentiis Brandão: Imagining L2 Teaching in Brazil: What Stories do Student Teachers Draw?

Chapter 11. Ana Sofia Pinho: Plurilingual Education and the Identity Development of Pre-service English Language Teachers: An Illustrative Example

Chapter 12. Mireia Pérez-Peitx, Isabel Civera and Juli Palou: Awareness of Plurilingual Competence in Teacher Education

Chapter 13. Katja Mäntylä and Paula Kalaja: “The Class of my Dreams” as Envisioned by Student Teachers of English: What is there to Teach about the Language?

Conclusion. Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer and Paula Kalaja: Lessons Learnt With and Through Visual Narratives of Multilingualism as Lived, and a Research Agenda