Navigating and Hybridizing Interpretive Claim-Making Across Discursive Communities

Abstract

In order to better understand how the full range of students’ semiotic resources may be marshalled for learning, we analyze the role of interpretive claim-making across fandom and disciplinary communities. Using a framework of syncretic literacies with a focus on navigation, we analyze data from a series of writing conferences in a U.S.-based, fandoms-themed English course serving diverse high school students. Our analysis attends to shifts in convergent and divergent intersubjectivity to trace students’ navigation of interpretive practices as they talked with their peers and their instructor. Discursive claims emerged as an important tool functioning differently across these interactions. Specifically, the claim-making practices of one focal student demonstrate an emerging understanding of the distinctly different functions that claims serve as tools for navigating between, and hybridizing, discursive communities. Our findings highlight the importance of using discourse to analyze the presence of multiple or conflicting discursive practices, and designing learning environments in ways that support students’ use of hybrid discursive tools.