Multiliteracy Play: Designs and Desires in the Second Language Classroom

February 2025 – Volume 28, Number 4

https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.28112r1

Multiliteracy Play: Designs and Desires in the Second Language Classroom
Author:	Chantelle Warner (2024)
Publisher:	Bloomsbury
Pages	e-ISBN	Price
pp. ix + 226	99781350338371 9781350338388	$120.00 (print) $108.00 (e-book)

Notable paradigmatic shifts in second language education have taken place over the course of the last several decades. During the mid-1990s, the ‘social turn’ was marked by moves away from the understanding of second language acquisition as a purely cognitive process toward a more holistic understanding of a language learner’s agency and situatedness within dynamic sociolinguistic contexts (Ellis, 2021). Over the last 10 years, the ‘multilingual turn’ has built upon the social turn to include critical and post-structural perspectives that address sociocultural and sociolinguistic power dynamics. These perspectives value learners’ fluid multilingual competencies, such as translanguaging, in an increasingly globalized world (Ellis, 2021). Presently, this shift continues to drive increased interest in linguistic plurality, multimodal learning and expression, and what is known as multiliteracies (Zapata et al., 2023). Multiliteracies refers to a theoretical and practical approach to literacy pedagogy developed by the New London Group (1996) which calls for educators to acknowledge the ever-increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of modern globalized societies as well as the increasingly diverse forms of texts, information, and technologies that circulate throughout them. In doing so, educators can better engage the contextual discourses, or “lifeworlds,” of learners, providing opportunities for the process of agentive (re)design, or meaning-making. In Multiliteracy Play: Designs and Desires in the Second Language Classroom, Chantelle Warner builds upon the New London Group’s framework by providing a vision for further realizing the current paradigmatic shift in second language teaching. The author’s core argument is that multiliteracy play, described as creative (and sometimes subversive) “tinkering” with linguistic, cultural, and semiotic meaning, further emphasizes and explores facets of the second language learning process that remain neglected: affect, aesthetic, design, and desire.

The book is organized in two parts consisting of six chapters (in addition to introduction, intermezzo, and concluding sections). Part 1 (Designs and Desires) includes two chapters, the first of which introduces the New London Group’s (1996) Multiliteracies Framework and its theoretical groundings, subsequent research and literature that have further shaped multiliteracies discussions, as well as a discussion of multiliteracies’ recent uptake within the domain of second language-culture education. Chapter 1 additionally explores terms used within the context of the multiliteracies concept (e.g., designs, designing, designers, and redesigners), which make up part of the author’s vision for language and culture learning that centers the learner as the constructor of meaning, as opposed to traditional approaches which prescribe or anticipate fixed meanings and outcomes. Chapter 2 focuses on the concept of desires, where the author provides a discussion of the oft-neglected affective and aesthetic dimensions of the language and culture learning process, illustrating their manifestation in the second language classroom through two vignettes of university-level German language and culture lessons. Warner describes language and culture learning as an inherently aesthetic process whereby learners negotiate meaning through their own subjective emotions, senses, and perceptions. In the Intermezzo section, the author provides a helpful summary of the two preceding chapters as well as an invitation for readers to reflect on multiliteracies concepts within their own educational contexts.

Part 2 (Play and Poetics: Toward a Critical-Affective Approach to Multiliteracies) is organized in two sections: Chapter 3, which presents a review of theory and scholarship surrounding play and its application to second language-culture education; and Chapters 4-6, which present additional vignettes that illustrate multiliteracies at play in German-, Spanish-, and Italian-language classrooms. An in-depth review of play scholarship in Chapter 3 forms the basis for Warner’s multidimensional conceptualization of play: bricolage, the modulation of affect and meaning, and subversive literacy action. Here the author invites readers to understand multiliteracy play as a stance or orientation rather than a set of pedagogical strategies or tools. With this, Warner explains to readers that the vignettes presented in Chapters 4-6 are intended to provide examples of multiliteracy play in action, rather than models to be transposed across language learning contexts. Chapter 4 provides an example of how a poetry assignment in a beginner-level university German course provided a gateway for representational play and a critical-aesthetic interrogation of the value of material objects. Here the author points out the affective web of experience brought forth by poetic play, and potentially overlooked by textbook content and prompts. Chapter 5 presents examples of student work from a university-level Spanish translation and interpretation course. Through the creation of public service announcements, Warner demonstrates how students were able to play with modalities of messaging and translation. Paralleling discussions of the future-self in the domain of second language acquisition (e.g., Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009), Chapter 6 provides examples of speculative play in a university-level Italian course, in which students subverted anticipatable learning outcomes by imagining themselves in future multilingual lifeworlds of their own subjective meaning and design. In the concluding section, the author summarizes and reiterates core features of the book’s arguments and concludes by urging second language educators to make space for the complex dimensions of languaging often missed in the classroom.

Multiliteracy Play: Designs and Desires in the Second Language Classroom is an important contribution to the field of second language-culture education. Building upon growing interest in and attention to multiliteracies, Warner provides a vision for a path forward in second language-culture education that acknowledges the aesthetic, affective, and subjective realities of learning an additional language. The book’s content can provide a prompt for language educators who wish to critically interrogate their own approaches or pedagogical materials which may overlook or restrict students’ ability to play with aesthetic and affective elements of the language and culture learning process. Furthermore, academics and researchers seeking theoretical and conceptual discussions about multiliteracies and their relation to second language education will benefit from the depth and breadth of the discussions provided.

Despite its theoretical strengths, practitioners may find the book to be unbalanced or theory heavy, lacking in concrete, actionable strategies that prompt or allow for multiliteracy play in the second language classroom. However, as Warner reiterates at several points throughout the book, the concept of multiliteracy play is intended to describe more of a stance or orientation than a clearly-defined pedagogical approach, and the included classroom vignettes are intended to serve as examples rather than exemplars. Additionally, while Warner’s arguments intentionally push back against overly-prescribed and outcome-focused language instruction, some educators may find it difficult to adopt a multiliteracy play stance without a firmer understanding of the potential benefits, growth, or proficiency that students may experience as a result.

Overall, Multiliteracy Play: Designs and Desires in the Second Language Classroom provides a well-written and thorough discussion of what multiliteracies means in the context of second language education. Although the book’s examples are drawn from US-based modern language courses, the content is applicable and relevant to English-as-a-second-language contexts, and other contexts in which students explore additional languages and cultures. The overarching question that drives the book’s discussion asks language education stakeholders to consider a critical-affective approach to teaching languages and cultures. The book’s discussion will be of great value to educators, researchers, and scholars who wish to further explore the aesthetic and affective dimensions of the language and culture learning process.

About the Reviewer

James Cahan is a student in the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College’s joint Phd in Education program. His research interests include multilingual education, study abroad, and teacher education. <jcahan@uri.edu> ORCID ID: 0009-0006-6716-5370

To Cite this Review

Cahan, J. (2025). [Review of the book. (2024), Multiliteracy play: Designs and desires in the second language classroom by Chantelle Warner]. Teaching English as a Second Language Electronic Journal (TESL-EJ), 28 (4). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.28112r1

References

Dörnyei, Z. & Ushioda, E. (2009). Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847691293

Ellis, R. (2021). A short history of SLA: Where have we come from and where are we going? Language Teaching, 54(2), 190–205. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000038

New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u

Zapata, G. C., Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2023). Multiliteracies in international educational contexts: towards education justice. Routledge.

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