# Multimodal Worlds, Multilingual Selves: Fictional Linguistic Landscapes in Transnational Education

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new educational approach using fictional worlds to help transnational youth explore language, identity, and power in multilingual settings.

## Contribution

The paper introduces Fictional Linguistic Landscapes (FLL) as a novel pedagogical framework for transnational language education.

## Key findings

- FLL positions learners as world-builders, enabling them to experiment with language hierarchies and visibility in safe environments.
- The FLL in L2TL cycle includes four phases and five design spaces to address issues like raciolinguistic valuation and identity negotiation.
- Imagination is framed as a necessary process for learning, linking creative production to linguistic objectives and reflection.

## Abstract

Transnational youth frequently navigate multiple languages and continually negotiate not only affiliation, but also the legitimacy of the languages they use within changing linguistic hierarchies. However, their educational experiences are often framed through fragmented classroom practices, deficit-based assessments, and nationally bounded curricular frameworks. In this paper, I respond by theorizing Fictional Linguistic Landscapes (FLL) as a transdisciplinary pedagogical approach that utilizes fiction and participatory cultural practices to position language learning as a form of semiotic design, critical inquiry, and identity (re)work. Grounded in linguistic landscape studies, multiliteracies pedagogy, and fan-based meaning-making, FLL positions learners as world-builders and allows them to experiment with visibility, hierarchy, and language(s) in safe fictional environments. This study outlines the four-phase FLL in Second Language Teaching and Learning (L2TL) cycle and provides five pedagogical design spaces to address issues of raciolinguistic valuation, deficit institutional representations, affective harm, peer-level marginalization, and translocal or return migrant identity negotiation. Rather than viewing imagination as an outcome of teaching, FLLinL2TL structures it as a necessary process for learning, linking creative production to explicit linguistic objectives and reflective justification. I conclude by discussing implications for classroom practice, teacher education, and future research on the potential of the FLLinL2TL approach in transnational education research.