Multiliteracies, Metalanguage and the Protean Mind: Navigating School English in a Sea of Change

Abstract

Textuality is 'core business' in school English but its nature is increasingly problematic, especially within a multiliteracies context. Understanding how texts work puts pressure on our metalanguages, making them strange. In this paper, I explore this issue through a seafaring metaphor, picturing English as a ship we are steering through uncertain waters where films, posters and video games jostle Shakespeare's plays and contemporary novels, all demanding analysis. What kinds of tools will serve our navigational needs as we journey across a sea of change? What instruments will bring stability in troubling cross currents? Teachers need access to a metalanguage adequate to four coordinates of the new territory: diversities, hierarchies, innovation and convention. Not any metalanguage will do here. In order to work productively with the tensions introduced by these different parameters, we need a protean mind. The protean mind is alive to changes of form and also to continuities within these. It is sensitive to the realities of institutions and the possibilities of new semiosis. In this paper I consider the impact of multiliteracies on three senior assessment tasks. I consider what kinds of metalanguage will be needed if we are to deal productively with the demands of such tasks and what they imply about the pressures of diversities, hierarchies, innovation and convention. I argue that any metalanguage we develop will only 'hold' through these pressures if we can make our navigational tools adequate to the realities and complexities of multiliteracies.