Learning to write or writing to resist? A primary school child's response to a family writing intervention

Abstract

This article examines a primary-school child's response to a writing initiative arranged by his academic parents to address his writing deficiency in a context of “crisis” discourses about children's writing. While the child protested the intervention, he wrote reluctantly for 18 months and produced 205 texts of over 25,000 words. Analyses of the texts using children's “agency” and “subjectification” showed his linguistic resistance to the writing routine. While he capitalised his dislike of the parental intervention as a recurrent writing topic, he also exploited linguistic transgression, translanguaging and language play as vital mechanisms for resistance. Paradoxically, such forms of resistance also pointed to his mastery of rhetorical conventions and linguistic resources. The findings provide rationale for applied linguists, language educators and researchers to reflect on children's writing development and their agency on one hand and ethical issues in intervening in and researching children's writing life on the other.