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Article In: Linguistic Landscape: Online-First Articles

Schoolscapes as sites of interculturality

Discourses in multicultural Chilean schools

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de O’Higgins
ORCiD logo with link | University of British Columbia
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Abstract
The study analyzes how interculturality is discursively constructed in multicultural and multilingual schools in Chile through semiotic practices in their schoolscapes and how it is reproduced, maintained, and/or resisted by the school community. To this end, we worked with five different schools with a high proportion of international and multilingual students in Chile to explore their school settings. The corpus consists of 222 photographs taken in December 2022, which were analyzed multimodally to identify how different languages and cultures are conceptualized and enacted by the school communities and external institutional agencies. Results indicate that the school community is sensitive to their students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, thus challenging the normalized homogenization from institutional discourses through collective efforts from the extended school community. Conversely, institutionalized discourses in the schoolscape tend to address students as a homogenous collective, although their educational policies state otherwise.
Resumen
El estudio analiza cómo se construye discursivamente la interculturalidad en escuelas multilingües y multiculturales en Chile a través de paisajes lingüísticos (schoolscapes) y cómo ésta es reproducida, mantenida y/o resistida por la comunidad escolar. Con este fin, se trabajó con cinco escuelas diferentes con un alto número de estudiantes internacionales y multilingües en Chile, con el objetivo de explorar sus entornos escolares. El corpus está compuesto por 222 fotografías tomadas en diciembre de 2022, las cuales fueron analizadas de manera multimodal para identificar cómo las diferentes lenguas y culturas son conceptualizadas y utilizadas por las comunidades escolares y las agencias institucionales. Los resultados evidencian que la comunidad escolar es sensible a la diversidad cultural y lingüística de sus estudiantes, desafiando así la homogeneización normalizada presente en los discursos institucionales mediante esfuerzos colectivos de toda la comunidad escolar. Por el contrario, los discursos institucionalizados en el schoolscape tienden a dirigirse a los estudiantes como un colectivo homogéneo, aunque sus políticas educativas indiquen lo contrario.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language and interculturality in Chile: An overview
  • 3.Schoolscapes: Language and identity
  • 4.Data, methods, and analytical framework
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Visibility of intercultural and plurilingual identities
    • 5.2Reinforcement of social norms and values
    • 5.3Promotion of intercultural interactions
  • 6.Discussion and final remarks
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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