Border Thinking Through Diverse Modalities: An Ethnographic Case Study Of The Multimodal, Multiliteracy, And Translanguaging Practices Of Latinx Emergent Bilingual Youth

This three-article dissertation explores how translanguaging, multimodality, and multiliteracies intersect to support the learning, identity formation, and meaning-making practices of Latinx emergent bilingual middle school students in El Paso, Texas, a border city shaped by transfronterizx realities. Guided by the frameworks of Border Thinking (Mignolo, 2000) and Pedagogy of Border Thinking (Cervantes-Soon and Carrillo, 2016), this study foregrounds the cultural, linguistic, and epistemic fluidity that characterizes borderland communities. I approach this work as a bricoleur (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994); the three-article format allowed me to center distinct but interconnected theoretical and methodological orientations, reflecting my commitment to situated, decolonial knowledge production. Using an ethnographic case study approach, this research draws from classroom observations, interviews, artifacts, and student testimonios to examine the interactions between a bilingual teacher and his Latinx transfronterizx students. The first article analyzes the teacher's testimonio, showing how his experiencias de vida as a bilingual, bicultural educator, who himself straddled the border, shaped a translanguaging pedagogy rooted in convivencia and epistemic disobedience. The second article examines how multiliteracies and multimodality intersect with translanguaging and border thinking in the classroom, highlighting how digital tools, bilingual texts, and cultural modes such as music create inclusive learning environments that validate students' hybrid identities. The third article, written in Spanish, centers students' microtestimonios through a dialogic-performative methodology, illustrating how they navigate straddling, heteroglossia, and identity construction as they move between linguistic and cultural worlds. Together, these articles contribute to the fields of bilingual education and critical literacy by emphasizing the importance of culturally sustaining, multimodal, and translingual pedagogies within borderland contexts. This dissertation calls for listening to the voices of teachers and students in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to design more equitable and humanizing educational policies that reflect the lived realities of transfronterizx communities.