Multilingual Young People as Writers in a Global Age

Abstract

This chapter is about sixteen-year-old Bahar (pseudonym) who grew up in Afghanistan and moved with her family to Norway at the beginning of her teens. Bahar is transnational in the sense that she has “moved bodily across national borders while maintaining and cultivating practices tied–in varying degrees–to [her] home countr[y]” (Hornberger, 2007: 325). She draws on a range of languages on a daily basis, including, but not limited to, Dari, Norwegian and English. Multilingualism is a natural part of most transnational people’s lives. This is certainly also the case for Bahar. To analyse her writings, Li Wei’s concept (2011) of translanguaging space, which embraces creativity and criticality, is presented in the next section. Following this, my own study is introducted, focusing on Bahar as a writer in the remainder of the chapter. The final version of this chapter has been published as a part of "New Perspectives on Translanguaging and Education. © Multilingual Matters.