Language Minorities and Disasters: The Ecological Literacies of Transnational-Multilingual Migrants

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dc.contributor.advisorShepley, Nathan
dc.contributor.advisorDuran, Chatwara Suwannamai
dc.contributor.committeeMemberButler, Paul
dc.contributor.committeeMemberZebroski, James Thomas
dc.contributor.committeeMemberVieira, Kate E.
dc.creatorLee, Soyeon
dc.date.accessioned2020-06-02T03:17:53Z
dc.date.createdMay 2020
dc.date.issued2020-05
dc.date.submittedMay 2020
dc.date.updated2020-06-02T03:17:53Z
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation explores the literate lives of transnational migrants in the US in the aftermath of an environmental disaster. While many scholars have examined the mobility of people, resources, and literate activities across borders, I propose that the ecological literacies of transnational migrants in local places and environmental disruptions should be further studied. By using the scalar analysis of data from four case studies and transcontextual analysis of participants’ literacy networks and technologies, I argue that transnational-multilingual migrants, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and the ensuing floods in 2017, have leveraged what I call transnational ecological literacies, that is, linguistic and semiotic resources across different systems, contexts, and modalities in a post-disaster context. Drawing from audio- or video-recorded interviews, observations, and written artifacts of twenty multilingual survivors and ten first responders and community workers, I illustrate how language minorities adopt rhetorical scaling to navigate the disaster recovery process and its monolingual-based norms and how they assemble heterogeneous language resources and technologies such as culturally specific social networking applications through rhetorical agency. Ultimately, this ethnographic case study contends that the recovery process and disaster-specific literate activities help transnational-multilingual survivors reshape their relationships to land, places, and environments and offer implications for transnational literacy studies, environmental communication studies, disaster management fields, and writing pedagogy.
dc.description.departmentEnglish, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/6571
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectTransnational migrants
dc.subjectDisasters
dc.subjectecological literacy
dc.titleLanguage Minorities and Disasters: The Ecological Literacies of Transnational-Multilingual Migrants
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
local.embargo.lift2022-05-01
local.embargo.terms2022-05-01
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.departmentEnglish, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglish
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy

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