Visual multilingualism: validating teenagers’ multilingualism through a combination of language silhouettes and supporting narratives

Visual methods in researching multilingual children, not only gives them a participatory voice in the research process but allows them to uncover a complex and hybrid identity that very often remains invisible. This study explores French 14-year-old teenagers’ representations of their multilingual identity through the language silhouette approach, which was supported and reinforced by written explanations of their pictorial choices. These multimodal identity texts reflected the following children’s heritage connections, their linguistic educational experiences and an awareness of transnational living. Furthermore, the positioning of their languages in the different body parts created a personal metaphorical discourse of multilingual living. Rationale: This paper further researches multimodality in exploring children’s multilingual identity. I have the data but have not had an opportunity to present it yet and as this conference has a clear focus on multilingualism and identity, I have decided to submit an abstract. Also, Spain has a vibrant bilingual education policy with long-established CLIL programmes, which I am very much aware of as result of my previous work for the British Council. Hence, I have a network in Spain I would like to maintain and develop further.