Translanguaging as showing-telling in digital compositions: learning from proyectos finales created by heritage speakers in college
Josh Prada, Indiana University (IUPUI)

In this talk, I explore digital compositions (i.e., digital collages) as spaces for identity representation through the proyectos finales produced by 22 students in a Spanish composition class for heritage/native speakers in a U.S. university. Digital collages are multimodal assemblages which include an array of elements organized and edited through digital technologies, such as tablets, computers and smartphones. Collages include combinations of photographs, emojis, written words and all kinds of overlaid adjustments created by the students individually, in order to capture their identities as U.S. Hispanics/Latinxs in 2020. Each digital collage was accompanied by two written documents: one describing the processes leading to its creation, and another one explaining the meaning of the collage and its components. Qualitative content analysis was used to investigate the submissions, with particular attention being paid to how complex orchestrations of flexible multilingual and multimodal meaning- and sense-making were articulated by means of trans-semiotizing corrientes in attempts to portray instances of identity and personal experience. The proyecto final is discussed in terms of the decolonizing curricular innovation for courses designed for racialized, minoritized multilingual students, while advancing an approach to digital composing that engages translanguaging as showing–telling.

Bio
Josh Prada (MA Birkbeck, University of London; PhD, Texas Tech University) is Assistant Professor of Spanish Applied Linguistics at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI where he teaches courses in applied language studies, language education and sociolinguistics and directs the Spanish for heritage speakers courses. He specializes in the field of bi-/multilingualism, with particular attention to critical and interdisciplinary approaches to heritage/community language education, and translanguaging. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in venues such as Foreign Language Annals, Classroom Discourse, the Heritage Language Journal, The Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and the Modern Language Journal. Josh serves as Reviews Editor at the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, and Associate Editor of the Spanish as a Heritage Language Journal.