‘Scattered remnants of identity’: translanguaging and multimodality as agentive choices in plurilingual youths’ identity artifacts

The identity development of children growing up speaking multiple languages has become a recent research concern in an increasingly diverse society. What has received less attention is the intersection of translanguaging, semiotic choices, and identity development as represented in the agentic choices made by plurilingual children when asked to explain their unique identities and contexts to others. This paper addresses this gap by providing a detailed analysis of a series of multimodal identity artifacts created by children growing up plurilingual with Chinese heritage, in the diaspora. Encouraged to use any mode, language, or combination thereof, the 132 artifacts created by children and young people across the UK and four other countries offer a unique opportunity to understand what plurilingual children wish to share about themselves, and how they choose to do so. The findings highlight relationship between multimodality and translanguaging, arguing for creative and arts-based approaches to enable identity expression as being more likely to elicit plurilingual responses, with single-mode responses (e.g. essays) potentially being subconsciously linked to monoglossic ideologies of formal and heritage language education, leading to ‘translanguaging-under-constraint’.