In this presentation we discuss how linguistic care work (Henner & Robinson, 2021) is manifested in classroom interaction between students and teachers in adult education for immigrant d/Deaf and hard of hearing students in Sweden. The empirical material consists of video- and audio-recordings, images and fieldnotes from classroom interaction and audio-/video-recorded interviews with teachers and students. This is part of an action research project where the aim is to develop teaching practices involving various visual resources to promote student participation and language learning in education, as well as to provide knowledge about teachers’ and adult students’ experiences of visual resources in teaching and learning. 

By drawing on social semiotics and Crip Linguistics – which provides critical linguistics with a necessary disability lens – we explore how meaning is co-constructed in the classroom, through embodied communication, use of visual resources, technology and translanguaging between signed and spoken languages. We are illustrating and examining conditions forefronting respect and patience for language user’s own linguistic repertoire and resources as the essence of linguistic care work in joint meaning-making in the classrooms. The results illuminate how combined multiple resources support student participation and investment in communication and learning when languaging practices are enmeshed in particular material conditions. This linguistic care is embedded in crip time (Samuels & Freeman, 2021), which we use to problematize how adult education in Sweden, lacking linguistic justice, is framed in ideas of effective language learning with emphasis on quick establishment on the labor market through instrumental ‘language as skill’ acquisition. This stands in stark contrast to what is conducive to relational conditions, as we argue linguistic work is care work.  

References:

Henner, J., & Robinson, O. (2021). Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: Imaging a Crip Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7bzaw

Samuels, E. & Freeman, E. (2021). Introduction: Crip temporalities. South Atlantic Quarterly 120(2). 245–254. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-8915937