Migration, mass media, and changing semiotic practices of peer socialization

Abstract Recent forces have led to vast increases in global migration. As nondominant youth struggle to maintain family literacies and belong in school settings with peers from a variety of communities, they develop rich multilingual repertoires and practices. In this chapter, I draw on Ana Celia Zentella’s anthropolitical linguistics to make sense of changing semiotic practices that children and youth socialize each other to in their peer-group interactions. This is an approach which illuminates “a stigmatized group’s” response to dominant language ideologies that associate them with disparaged identities and practices. The scholarship reviewed illuminates how the heteroglossic practices and transcultural styles that children and teens develop within their peer groups resignify stigmatized linguistic practices and provide a means for them to revitalize heritage languages, introduce intergenerational change, and create interethnic peer solidarity. Pedagogies that harness the creativities that nondominant youth already wield are discussed.