Liminality in Immigration-Adjacent Stories: A Critical Content Analysis of Identity Negotiation in Intercultural Graphic Novels

Main Article Content

Chen Su
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7541-2657
Jason Griffith

Abstract

As educators and researchers with experiences related to historically marginalized students, we endeavored to provide a space to reveal their underrepresented stories, and we propose that intercultural graphic novels can serve as an emergent and transformative liminal space to help them navigate multiple identities. As a foundational step in the application of graphic novels in multilingual education, and under the tenets of Identity Negotiation Theory and Multimodality, we conducted a critical content analysis to examine six intercultural graphic novels. This study finds that the characters’ identity negotiation process- containing identity insecurity, identity inclusion, identity transformation, and “satisfactory” identity negotiation- forms a dynamic liminal space, and characters navigate in this in-between status. Also, we found that multiple modes contribute to revealing characters’ different identities and revealing their stories. Our findings will be helpful to inform additional studies on the use of graphic novels to embrace intercultural, immigrant, and immigrant-adjacent students’ voices in multilingual education.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

Section
Articles