Transpositioning in linguistically diverse science classrooms: material inscription space for shifting linguistic and discourse identities

Transpositioning, which emphasises fluidity of identity, refers to how individuals delimit their prescribed roles and take up different perspectives in translanguaging. Only a few research studies examine how linguistically diverse learners position themselves in different discourse and linguistic identities during multimodal communicative practices in content classrooms. In this paper, we propose that a material inscription space can provide linguistically diverse students’ transpositioning to different discourse and linguistic identities. This study investigates how a group of Grade 7 linguistically diverse learners’ transpositions various discourse and linguistic identities while they reflect on their science activities using drawing and writing in content classrooms. We use a coordinate system to illustrate turn-by-turn analysis of how multilingual learners’ linguistic and discourse identities were shifted. Our findings indicated that material inscription provides a space to shift along different coordinate positions, indicating various linguistic and discourse identities. The shifts in intertwining linguistic and discourse identities encourage learners to use different linguistic resources in Cantonese content classrooms. The findings imply that transpositioning with material inscription opportunities can value diverse linguistic identities in content classrooms.<br>