Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

Digitalization produces increasingly multimodal and interactive literary forms. A major challenge for foreign language education in adopting such forms lies in deconstructing discursive borders between literary education and digital education (‘romance of the book’ vs. euphoric ‘media heavens’) and crossing over into a vision in which digital and literary education are intertwined. In this talk, we will explore different (and new?) literary and digital literacy practices that are crucial for learners to engage with – or read – digital literary texts. In order to articulate such literacy practices at the intersection of the digital and the literary, we will provide an in-depth analysis of available digital literary texts (ranging from simple media-supported literature to complex interactive and multimodal texts). This analysis will yield a typology of digital literatures serving as a conceptual basis to define new, or combine established, digital-literary literacies. This might support the integration of new digital literary forms into foreign language research and teaching practice. We argue that the concept of multiliteracies is particularly productive in framing engagements with digital literatures in that they stress the necessity of fostering a competent command of diverse meaning-making modes (Kalantzis/Cope/Chan/Dalley-Trim 2016). To support our suggestions, we also draw on a range of international studies in the fields of literacies education and 21st century literatures.