“Everybody is 1% of everything”: Youth ethnoracial positioning and constructing a semiotics of race

Abstract

Making meaning in transnational communications involves the use of transmodal resources that go beyond simply written and spoken language. The social semiotics of race, gender, and class also influence these communications, although they are not often accounted for. This study works to better understand the way in which the semiotics of race are constructed and interpreted by youth (aged 9–11) engaged in an educational, transnational communication project designed to improve their English language and technology skills. Drawing from a year-long ethnographic study of the youth participating in the project, I conduct a transmodal narrative analysis to show how the youth use small stories to position themselves and others in relation to ethnoracial identities. Using a micro-analysis of a segment of one meeting in which youth are responding to a video from their peers in Mexico, I show how the stories that emerge are polyphonic, transmodally composed, and work to ultimately position the youth as having a shared ethnoracial identity. In this, they challenge narratives that position them monoracially. The stories help us expand the way we can conceptualize counter-stories and raciolinguistic ideologies as emergent and interactionally constructed.