Thinking, Practicing and Living Plurilingualism
Kapitola“I was not alone”: Autoethnographic vignettes of plurilingual learning
Rok vydání: 2026https://doi.org/10.5817/CZ.MUNI.M280-0880-2026-1
Abstrakt
This chapter employs autoethnography to explore plurilingual learning as a relational and collective practice, grounded in the author’s lived experiences as a Kosovo Albanian scholar, teacher, and learner. Centred on a summer school taught in Prizren, Kosovo, the chapter interweaves memory, observation, and theory to examine how plurilingual practices unfold in higher education. Through a series of evocative vignettes, it illustrates how learners mo-
bilize diverse linguistic and semiotic resources, such as translation, gesture, and collabora-
tive meaning-making, to navigate communication, foster belonging, and move from silence to participation. Framed against the sociopolitical legacies of monolingualism and English dominance in contexts like Kosovo and Türkiye, the chapter reconceptualizes plurilingualism as both pedagogical and political. It highlights how seemingly marginal practices become acts of agency and resistance, challenging deficit views of multilingual learners. By situat-
ing these insights within an underrepresented regional context, the chapter contributes to plurilingual scholarship by foregrounding lived experience, emphasizing the interconnected-
ness of language, identity, and power, and advocating for more inclusive, ecologically grounded approaches to language education.
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