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Research topic/aim/ theoretical framework

This paper presents preliminary results from the pilot phase of a project that explores issues related to young people’s language usage and identity positioning in different types of social practices inside and outside school settings. Broadly, our study takes sociocultural perspectives on learning and communication and ethnographic perspectives including videotaping as methodological points of departure. The central aim of our project can be formulated in terms of exploring how participants invoke linguistic and cultural identities through the usage of literacy resources. This is framed within linguistic and cultural rights of minorities more generally.

Methodology/research design

12-13 year old children at a Sweden Finnish (minority) bilingual educational setting are being followed in a long term ethnographic study, initiated in the spring of 2010. We will present the study design, the empirical data and describe the theoretical underpinnings that have framed the progress of the study. We will also discuss how this process has contributed to the structuring of the main study, initiated during the second half of 2010.

Membership in the Sweden Finnish bilingual school will be critically discussed on the basis of the “language and cultural backgrounds” of students and adults in our empirical study. Furthermore analytical descriptions of everyday mundane activities and language usage from classroom settings, web-arenas and physical settings outside the school will form the basis for attending to the linguistic repertoires that young people are members of. Special attention will be paid to the literacies that young people use and consume in their everyday lives in a range of settings. How and in what ways possible identities are marked and subscribed to through the use of linguistic and literacy resources will also be explored.

Expected findings/conclusions

Our preliminary findings indicate that children and young adults who are members of “bilingual school settings” employ a number of resources as they stage, make visible and (co)construct their social and cultural identities. These identity repertoires can be seen to have a bearing to both local order and larger societal issues, including the linguistic and cultural rights of minorities.