Multiliteracies in the Making – Multidisciplinary Conceptualization

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of multiliteracies from a multidisciplinary point of view. By analyzing texts that were created to discuss differing research foci and relationships with the concept, a nonhierarchical and dynamic model, a wheel of multiliteracies, is formulated for understanding the processes of multiliteracies. Communication, temporality, and contextuality form the hoop of the wheel and the spokes include agency, competencies, expressions, individual experiences, and collectivity. The intertwined spokes can be examined through the tensions connected to communication, contextuality, and temporality: individuality/relationality, local/global, and the tensions built in the concept of time, respectively. The conceptualization reflects recent discussions on multiliteracies and develops the concept further through the dynamics emerging from the built-in tensions in the wheel. Furthermore, this text is an exploration of collective knowledge production through academic writing and the processual quality of multiliteracies – or multiliteracies in the making.