Creating a safe house for active literary book-group discussions in a contact zone classroom

Abstract

This study explores student-led literary book-group discussions in a linguistically diverse upper-secondary language classroom. It employs linguistic ethnography and focuses on minoritized migrant students’ fictive and factive readings of a novel; the participation roles they assumed; and how they reflected on different book-group formations over time. A stance analysis based on chronotopic concepts in relation to contact zone classrooms and safe houses demonstrates how students positioned themselves as knowledgeable discussants of literary texts and life. It also shows how the students were able to create a circle of trust in the safe house and aspire to contact zone contexts beyond the language classroom. Furthermore, the findings are indicative of students’ increased sense of social belonging and linguistic participation as a result of flexible grouping strategies and student autonomy in terms of how to engage with literary texts.