Lire et écrire les "Chroniques de cités" : une étude sur les pratiques mutlilingues et les dynamiques translocales dans les réseaux numériques

English title:
Reading and writing "Chroniques de cités" : a study on mutlilingual practicies and translocal dynamics in digital networks

Violaine BIGOT is Professor of Linguistics at the Laboratory of Linguistics and Didactics of Mother Tongues (Lidilem) at the University of Grenoble (UGA) in France. She works on language socialisation in plurilingual contexts, and in particular, with Nadja Maillard, on online re-creative literacy practices.

Abstract

"Chroniques" are serial stories published on the internet (facebook, wattpad...) written by young girls from diverse backgrounds origins, most often from post-colonial migrant backgrounds. Most of these stories describe daily life in multilingual and multicultural suburbian districts (« Les cités »). These stories blur a number of boundaries: those separating fact and fiction, authors and readers, digital and 'IRL' identities, the country (or countries) of origin that nurture family cultures and everyday life among peers in multicultural cities.

Our research (conducted with N. Maillard - De la Corte Gomez) examines the role of translanguaging practices in these border 'crossings'. It describes the richness of the language repertoires of these Internet users and their ability to mobilise it to reflect their own diversity and the diversity of their environment. They show how these interactions in multilingual communities contribute to the development of the plurilingual repertoire and hence the agentivity of the participants.