Home Linguistics & Semiotics Chapter 7. Bridging language and STEM
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Chapter 7. Bridging language and STEM

Using an Anzalduan framework to center Latinx Elementary and Middle School students’ understanding of robotics
  • Rachel G. Salas and Lizeth I. Lizárraga Dueñas
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company

Abstract

This chapter illustrates how combining an Anzalduan framework with critical ethnography and social semiotics provides a unique approach centering Latinx students’ STEM knowledge, language, and literacy use as legitimate ways of conocimiento and communicating. Using longitudinal data, authors examine how Latinx middle-grade students use their linguistic repertoires through multimodal representations to bridge their un­der­stand­ing of a real-world STEM FIRST LEGO League (FLL) challenge and their community, conceptualized through Anzaldúa’s (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983) work on mestizaje and imagery of the mestiza body as a bridge. The chapter further documents how to rethink Anzalduan theory through overlaying Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) characteristics of a minor literature as an additional lens to deterritorialize language and promote equitable research centering Latinx ways of languaging, knowing, and being.

Abstract

This chapter illustrates how combining an Anzalduan framework with critical ethnography and social semiotics provides a unique approach centering Latinx students’ STEM knowledge, language, and literacy use as legitimate ways of conocimiento and communicating. Using longitudinal data, authors examine how Latinx middle-grade students use their linguistic repertoires through multimodal representations to bridge their un­der­stand­ing of a real-world STEM FIRST LEGO League (FLL) challenge and their community, conceptualized through Anzaldúa’s (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983) work on mestizaje and imagery of the mestiza body as a bridge. The chapter further documents how to rethink Anzalduan theory through overlaying Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) characteristics of a minor literature as an additional lens to deterritorialize language and promote equitable research centering Latinx ways of languaging, knowing, and being.

Downloaded on 23.1.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/rmal.11.07sal/html
Scroll to top button