Hybrid discursive practices in a South African multilingual primary classroom: A case study

The data discussed in this paper is drawn from research conducted in a multilingual urban primary school in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the official language of instruction is English and the majority of learners are African language speakers, frequently with very limited English proficiency. The paper presents a case study of one child who uses her own multilingual resources in order to draw her peers into the routines and meaning-making processes of classroom life. It explores the extent to which this learner, despite being in year one of formal schooling, uses hybrid discursive practices to cross several boundaries: adult-child; teacher-learner; peer/friend-teacher; English-proficient-multilingual. It considers the opportunities for peer participation in classroom activities created through the case-study learner's hybridising of identity positions and examines the way in which this learner "reads" the classroom environment and positions herself in the classroom space. The paper argues that the case-study learner is using her bi\multilingual resources to induct other learners into ways of doing and being at school, and as such to construct a classroom community.