Abstract
This qualitative pilot study explores how multilingual college students in Washington, D.C. negotiate linguistic identity, cultural belonging, and translanguaging awareness through two multimodal representational practices: hand-drawn depictions of linguistic landscapes and student-guided generative AI visualizations. Situated within an English-dominant metropolitan environment where immigrant multilingualism is visible yet institutionally marginalized, the study examines how participants articulate the meanings, tensions, and possibilities embedded in visualizing their language practices. Three guiding questions structure the inquiry: (1) How does co-creating AI-generated representations of linguistic landscapes shape multilingual students’ awareness of translanguaging and cultural belonging? (2) How do students describe differences between drawing their linguistic identities and generating them through AI? (3) What challenges and opportunities arise when employing AI—an inherently biased technological tool—for cultural affirmation? Grounded in critical SLA, translanguaging theory, and linguistic landscape research, this study documents how multimodal representations can surface identity narratives not easily captured through language alone. Findings highlight the value of combining analog drawing and AI visualization as complementary windows into multilingual experience, while also revealing concerns around technological bias and cultural misrecognition. Implications point toward integrating multimodal and AI-augmented practices within translanguaging pedagogy, particularly in higher education contexts where linguistic diversity is often underrecognized.
Presenters
Yueqing ZhongStudent, College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, Virginia, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Translanguaging, Generative AI, Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingual Identity, Multimodal Representation
