Abstract:

This special themed issue includes a selection of articles that emerged from a larger qualitative, ethnographic study of multilingual children’s identity construction, identity politics and cultural positioning in heritage language contexts in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The McGill Multilingual Literacies Research team formed in 2000 is like a microcosm of the very phenomena of multilingualism under consideration. Most team members are people who were multilingual from earliest childhood, went to and/or taught in heritage language contexts and are aware of the nuanced meanings of their particular contexts . Our ‘coming together’ occurred naturally out of a shared interest in the experiences of multilingual students, multiple languages and literacies in a province where French is spoken by a large majority of the population and a city where communities speak in languages from all over the world. Although we have since become more consciously aware of Montreal as a unique space for understanding identity politics and multiple languages (Maguire, Beer, Attarian, Curdt-Christiansen and Yoshida 2005), we were only tacitly aware of its significance in our initial research endeavours. Indeed we were engaged and immersed in multilingual research without knowing how to do it or that we were consciously doing it! (Roth 2006).

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and the National Council of Teachers of English for a grant-in-aid from the Research Trust Foundation.

I appreciate the time and expertise of Hourig Attarian who formatted the articles, checked for missing information and always offered encouragement throughout the process in putting this issue together.

I am especially grateful to and thank Xoán Paulo Rodríguez-Yáñez of the Universidade de Vigo for his invitation to guest edit this special themed issue and his continued support throughout the process

Author: Mary H. Maguire