Nicolas Femia has published article 2

PhD student Nicolas Fermia's latest article has been published Taylor & Francis.

The artikle "When we talk about language: a narrative perspective on (in)visible multilingualisms in a Swedish school" is available to read here. External link, opens in new window.

Abstract:
While multilingualism has become increasingly visible in educational contexts, narratives portraying multilingual students as a homogeneous group continue to have a dominant presence. These widespread narratives, grounded in colonial logic, perpetuate the problematic idea of multilingualism as a singular, unchanging and predictable phenomenon, despite recent scholarship pointing out the complexity and diversity of multilingualisms in different environments. To avoid the risk of erasing non-dominant stories about language, this article investigates the co-construction of multilingualisms through narratives in a Swedish school environment. Drawing on linguistic ethnography to reach the participants’ voices and understandings of language, this study focuses on data from semi-structured interviews with three female students at an upper-secondary school by taking a ‘small story’ perspective that highlights the entangled and dialogic nature of narratives. By doing this, this study explores how different orders of visibility are embedded in these stories about language, revealing the students’ realities of multilingualism as heterogeneous and in constant tension and showing how certain experiences of multilingualism become centred while others are relegated to the margins. Thus this study points to the destabilising potential of dialogic narratives when conditions are met for diverse and complex stories about language to be worth listening to.