Reading between the Texts: An Ethnographic Multiple Case Study of the Literate Lives of Three Multilingual Writers

This doctoral research project is an ethnographic multiple case study of the literate lives of three adult multilingual English writers conducted in order to describe how their socioculturally embedded literacy activities enriched their writing lives. Adopting sociocultural and sociolinguistic writing theories, this dissertation describes how the participants’ belief systems, discourses, and sociocultural contexts generated the literacy activities that they engaged with and how those activities enriched their writing lives, particularly their English writing. The project is rooted in theoretical frameworks that refuse to conceptualize writing as merely an individual activity or the outcome of an entirely cognitive process. They instead regard every piece of writing as a unit of discourse and an artifact carved by complicated sociocultural, sociopolitical, and power relational forces and dynamics. This inquiry, accordingly, illustrates (1) the participants’ literacy practices, (2) the sociocultural circumstances and discourses that influence these activities, (3) how these activities have empowered the lives of these participants through their writing practices, especially writing in English, and (4) how the project’s findings can be incorporated into everyday writing pedagogies and curriculum development. The major findings from this project include: the significance of active writing identity formation; the impact of semiotic agility on writing; the necessity of creating more genre possibilities to foster student expression; the importance of using writing as a tool of inquiry in order to learn, to doubt, and to question (as well as to present); the transformational potential of regarding writing as a collaborative act. In-depth analyses of these findings indicate that the lack of above considerations is not necessarily the consequence of lack of knowledge, shortage of empirical studies, or theoretical evidence. The dissertation concludes that what prevents the development of curricula with the said practices is the result of industrial, colonial, and neoliberal structures.Ph.D.2020-11-19 00:00:0