Plenary Talk: Ecologies of transformation in multilingual writing - Challenges and prospects for pedagogy and research

Övrigt konferensbidrag, 2024

The concept of ecology provides an apt analogy for reflecting on the changes that are currently occurring in the world of multilingual writing, and especially for academic purposes. It foregrounds two aspects writing that are particulary relvant in light of recent changes: relationships and environment. In recent years, we have seen considerable transformations in the ecologies of academic writing, which may not be totally reflected in pedagogy and research. Firstly, as students and researchers increasingly engage with writing that aims to communicate scientific knowledge beyond academia, different languages and modes are used for meaning-making, and new relationships are formed between academic and hybrid/popularized genres. A second, hard to ignore environmental transformation, is the increasing digitalization of writing, including the advent of Generative AI (GAI) and Large Language Models (LLM), posing both opportunities and threats to learning. The question we face now is how to tackle these ecological transformations, and how. How can multilingual writers become agile, agentive writers that can master knowledge recontextualization across different genres and languages, and through a critical use of technology? In this talk, I will explore this question through two cases, illustrating two pedagogical tasks that aim to address the challenges above. The first task re-connects to the concept of transfer, and proposes reformulation as a prospect for transformation in multilingual writing pedagogy. Data shows how writers can be scaffolded towards rhetorical flexibility and a meta-awareness of the relationships between genres, including contextually-motivated linguistic variations. The second task builds on the idea of self-regulation and metacognition, leading multilingual doctoral writers to practice and reflect upon on the implications of using GAI for scientific writing—critical AI literacy. These two cases aim to illuminate potential prospects for pedagogy and research.