Exploring Pluriliteracy As Theory and Practice in Multilingual/Cultural Contexts

TIlls paper is situated in language and literacy studies (Gee 1996) and Malaysian Studies(Tan, 1992; Shamsul, 1999;Maznah andWong,2001; Ooi, 2001) and explores what I theorise to be the pluriliteracy (Koo 2004) of Malaysian tertiary learners in relation to the discourses of the community, nation-state and globalisation. It takes the perspective of linguistic practices as involving culture (as interpretive systems of meaning involving webs of significance (Geertz, 1973) and linguistic processes as sociocultural practice (Kress, 1989). The pluriliteracy of the multilingual meaning-makers in English is viewed in terms of a third space phenomenon (Bhabha, 1994) a deep sociopolitical space marked by power and ideological divides. Pluriliteracy views meaning-making and knowledge production as sociopolitical phenomena involving decisions and reflections around the ideological embeddings of dominant cultures. The third space is a complex and challenging space fraught with tensions for the multilingual learner, where various literacies are accommodated, nativised and transformed within the intersection and contradictions of community, nationa