Sociocultural and Power-Relational Dimensions of Multilingual Writing

This book examines the writing practices of three adult multilingual writers through the prism of their writing in English as an additional language. It illustrates some of the social, cultural and political contexts of the writers’ literacy activities and discusses how these impact their literate and intellectual lives. It reflects on the para- and meta-textual dimensions of writing because organic writing practices are almost always performed within sociocultural and power-relational contexts. In our highly compartmentalized educational structures, writing education has been severed from those organic components, focusing mainly on writing stylistics. This book proposes creating space for organic writing practices in our everyday writing pedagogies, and argues for a writing pedagogy that acknowledges the complex interactions of social, emotional and identity-related layers of writing.

Amir Kalan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at McGill University, Canada. He is the author of Who’s Afraid of Multilingual Education? (Multilingual Matters, 2016).