Exploring multilingual writer agency through autoethnography
Bargaining, resistance and translingual reality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12738447 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Qianqian Zhang-Wu (Universidad del Noreste, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-15 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-05 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Multilingualism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1479-0718 • E-ISSN: 1747-7530 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14790718.2026.2625406 |
| OpenAlex | W7127911743 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
Agency during translingual writing is closely connected with multilingual communicators’ identity and ideology. While previous research has explored the role of agency during translingual writing, there is a lack of inward investigation turning multilingual researchers themselves into research sites and studying their lived multilingual written communication. This autoethnographic study fills the void by looking inward at how I, a multilingual writing teacher and researcher of colour, adopted agency to navigate written communication in academia and what opportunities and challenges arose in the process. Data include my research statement for tenure and promotion, written feedback from my colleagues, journal reflections on my tenure and promotion statement writing process, and related written artefacts. My findings indicate that while I was able to adopt agency in actively resisting ‘standard’ English norms in my written communication, I remained under the pressure from the strong hold of monolingual ideologies in academia. Implications of the study shed light on the importance of critical self-inquiry about agency during the multilingual writing process, which facilitates further discussion about how multilingual writers could agentively negotiate ‘standard' English norms while engaging in translingual meaning-making.
Agency (philosophy · Discourse analysis · Linguistic landscape · Multilingualism · Multimodality · Resistance (ecology · Sociolinguistics · Comparative and World Literature · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy
Identity in Written Discourse
Language as a Local Practice
Applied Thematic Analysis
Rethinking Translingualism in College Composition Classrooms
Heart of the Matter
Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages
Rethinking Reader and Writer Responsibility in Academic English
Anti-racist translingualism
“Now I Don’t Use It at All … It’s Gone”
I Want to Be Pè Adedayo”
Negotiating Translingual Literacy
The Intersectionality of Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Native-speakerness
My English Is Its Own Rule”
Where are you from? Your English is so good’
Translingual Practices for EAL Writing Education in Non‐ EMI Contexts
Diversifying academic communication in anti-racist scholarship
Undoing Appropriateness
Codemeshing in Academic Writing
The transformative limits of translanguaging
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography
Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom
There are Survivors
| Highly cited | No |
|---|