Translanguaging in Higher Education

Beyond Monolingual Ideologies

Catherine M. Mazak, Kevin S. Carroll

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783096633
• eBook ISBN: 9781783096664
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Adult Education
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book examines translanguaging in higher education and provides clear examples of what translanguaging looks like in practice in particular contexts around the world. While higher education has historically been seen as a monolingual space, the case studies from the international contexts included in this collection show us that institutions of higher education are often translingual spaces that reflect the multilingual environments in which they exist. Chapters demonstrate how the use of translanguaging practices within the context of global higher education, where English plays an increasingly important role, allows students and professors to build on their linguistic repertoires to more efficiently and effectively learn content. The documentation of such practices within the context of higher education will further legitimatize translanguaging practices and may lead to their increased use not only in higher education but also in both primary and secondary schools.

1Introduction: Theorizing Translanguaging Practices in Higher Education

Catherine M. Mazak

Translanguaging is many things. It has become a rather trendy and at times controversial term as it has gained traction in academia over the last several years. However, the way in which it has been taken up by researchers, particularly in education, is evidence that it is filling a gap in our descriptions of language practices in educational settings. This introduction reviews the history of translanguaging as an evolving term, relates it to current thinking in socio- and applied linguistics and answers the question ‘what is translanguaging?’ as this author understands it. It then goes on to explain the importance of this volume’s special focus on translanguaging in higher education and finally previews each chapter in the volume, particularly emphasizing what the chapter contributes to our ever-evolving understanding of translanguaging.

The Development of Translanguaging as a Term

The history of translanguaging is firmly rooted in the field of bilingual education, though it has developed alongside several other terms that use the prefix trans-, including translingualism (Canagarajah, 2014). The term translanguaging was first coined in Welsh as trawsieithu by bilingual education researcher Cen Williams (1994, 1996). Baker (2006: 297), in Foundations of Bilingual Education, states that when translanguaging in the classroom, ‘the input (reading or listening) tends to be in one language, and the output (speaking or writing) in the other language, and this is systematically varied’. He further explains that Williams’s research found that this type of translanguaging worked well as a teaching strategy in Welsh high schools to ‘develop both languages successfully and also result in effective content learning’ (Baker, 2006: 297). Research on translanguaging continues to be produced in the Welsh context, and scholars there have published several excellent reviews of the term and its development, including Lewis et al. (2012a, 2012b) and more recently Beres (2015). The definition of translanguaging that first came out of Bangor, Wales, essentially described a teaching strategy that worked well in developing both language and content knowledge. This is part – but not all – of our current understanding of translanguaging. For that we need to turn to the work of Ofelia García.

García (2009: 45) first explained the concept of translanguaging in her book Bilingual Education in the 21st Century as the ‘multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds’. This definition emphasizes existing bilingual practices, not teaching strategies, as in the work of Williams and Baker. Though it is often cited, the definition is rather broad and open to interpretation. Since 2009, García has worked to refine this definition, articulating the theory behind the term. She argues that ‘language is an ongoing process that only exists as languaging’ (García & Leiva, 2014: 204; emphasis added). This ongoing process of languaging both shapes and is shaped by people as they interact in specific social, cultural and political contexts. The emphasis on process – the –ing – purposefully shifts the focus away from discrete ‘languages’ and makes the act of meaning-making central. Thus, García argues, translanguaging refers to the constant, active invention of new realities through social action.

Translanguaging and Poststructuralism

In Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, García and Li (2014) attach translanguaging to recent shifts in the fields of socio- and applied linguistics. They situate translanguaging particularly within the poststructural turn that interrogates the notion of languages as discrete, separate entities. This notion is perhaps best articulated by Makoni and Pennycook (2007), who argue that the concept of a ‘language’ was an invention of colonialism. The Romantic notion that one state equals one culture equals one language was essential for nation-state building, and in that sense separate languages are ‘inventions’ that met the needs of the colonial project. The idea that languages are discrete entities is further questioned by Canagarajah (2014) in his theory of translingual practices, where he describes global semiotic practices that defy the supposedly rigid borders between languages. García and Li (2014) argue that in fact bilinguals do not have two distinct linguistic systems in the brain, but rather one integrated repertoire of linguistic and semiotic practices from which they constantly draw. Thus, the idea of ‘code-switching’ does not fit neatly into the theory of translanguaging because bilinguals are not shuttling between separate codes, but rather performing parts of their repertoires, which contain features from all of their ‘languages’. The ‘one system’ idea is perhaps the most controversial aspect of current notions of translanguaging, particularly among linguists studying code-switching, but it is precisely where García and Li link translanguaging to the poststructural turn in applied linguistics.

This poststructural paradigm shift, also referred to as the ‘trans turn’ in applied linguistics, has refocused research away from ‘homogeneity, stability, and boundedness as the starting assumptions’ in favor of ‘mobility, mixing, political dynamics, and historical embedding’ as ‘central concerns in the study of languages, language groups, and communication’ (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011: 3). As a result, the ideology of ‘one nation one language’ has been critiqued as leading to monolingual ideologies of language and the ‘two solitudes’ approach to bilingualism (García & Li, 2014; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). Canagarajah (2014: 6) claims that understanding translingual practice involves two key concepts: (1) ‘communication transcends individual languages’ and (2) ‘communication transcends words and involves diverse semiotic resources and ecological affordances’. García and Li (2014: 21) posit that translanguaging ‘refers to new language exchanges among people with different histories, and releases histories and understandings that had been buried within fixed language identities constrained by nation-states’. This definition captures the historical, political and social embeddedness of language practices and how these practices are and have been intertwined with ideologies. When we use the term translanguaging, we are indexing this poststructural paradigm shift in applied linguistics.

What is Translanguaging?

The previous sections help us to understand the theoretical underpinnings of translanguaging, but the question remains: What is translanguaging exactly? What do researchers actually mean when they use the term? The answer is, of course, that it means different things for different researchers in different contexts. Creese and Blackledge (2010) explore the relationship between translanguaging practices and identity in complimentary schools in the UK. They use the term flexible bilingual pedagogy and argue,

This pedagogy adopts a translanguaging approach and is used by participants for identity performance as well as the business of language learning and teaching. … we think the bilingual teachers and students in this study used whatever signs and forms they had at their disposal to connect with one another, indexing disparate allegiances and knowledges and creating new ones. (Creese & Blackledge: 2010: 112)

Thus, they argue that translanguaging is a pedagogical approach that at once serves to enhance teaching and indexes the speakers’ shifting multilingual and multicultural identities.

Canagarajah (2011) investigates multilinguals’ use of ‘whatever signs and forms’ are available to them and the deep connections that this use has to identity enactment in texts. In one of the few studies of translanguaging in texts, and one of even fewer looking at higher education, he explores how one graduate student used code-meshing to make meaning by employing Arabic, English, French and symbols in her academic writing. His emphasis on the process of the graduate student exploring the ways in which she could use all of her communicative repertoire as an integrated system shows how translanguaging in texts is strategic, and at the same time he raises important questions on how to assess translanguaging competence in academic settings. In Canagarajah’s (2011: 408) synthesis of research on translanguaging, he notes that ‘what current classroom studies show is that translanguaging is a naturally occurring phenomenon for multilingual students’. That is, in bi- and multilingual environments, translanguaging is when students (and often teachers) use their entire linguistic repertoire strategically to teach and learn, which they do with a keen awareness of the identity consequences of linguistic performance. Hornberger and Link (2012) reinforce this notion from a biliteracy perspective. They conclude,

Two things are clear from the research though, in connection with fostering transfer, and both of them suggest the significance of translanguaging for biliteracy development: one, that individuals’ biliteracy develops along the continua in direct response to contextual demands placed on them; and two, that individuals’ biliteracy development is enhanced when they have recourse to all their existing skills (and not only those in the second language). (Hornberger & Link, 2012: 244–245)

Li (2011: 1233) describes translanguaging practices as ‘creative’, ‘critical’, ‘flexible’ and ‘strategic’ in his ‘moment analysis’ of multilingual Chinese youth in the UK. He describes translanguaging spaces as ‘interactionally created’ and emphasizes the performative nature of these spaces:

For me, translanguaging is both going between different linguistic structures and systems, including different modalities (speaking, writing, signing, listening, reading, remembering) and going beyond them. It includes the full range of linguistic performances of multilingual language users for purposes that transcend the combination of structures, the alternation between systems, the transmission of information and the representation of values, identities and relationships. The act of translanguaging then is transformative in nature; it creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity into one coordinated and meaningful performance, and making it into a lived experience. I call this space ‘translanguaging space,’ a space for the act of translanguaging as well as a space created through translanguaging.

(Li, 2011: 1223)

Thus, for Li translanguaging is linguistic performance that not only includes the use of different features of the speakers’ repertoire, but also creates something new that ‘transcends the combination of structures’ and creates a ‘translanguaging space’.

In Sayer’s (2013) ethnographic study of the classroom language practices of Mexican American second graders and their teacher in San Antonio, Texas, he refers to translanguaging as method. He argues that a

translanguaging lens is less focused on language per se, and more concerned with examining how bilinguals make sense of things through language…. The excerpts illustrate how translanguaging through TexMex enables teacher and students to create discursive spaces that allow them to engage with the social meanings in school from their position as bilingual Latinos. (Sayer, 2013: 84)

Although he emphasizes translanguaging as a method, he also argues that it is (1) ‘a descriptive label that captures the fluid nature of [students’] language practices’ and (2) ‘a theoretical and analytical tool that allows researchers to portray the multifaceted ways that the children’s bilingualism is not merely monolingualism times two’ (Sayer, 2013: 85; emphasis added). Thus, Sayer includes multiple understandings of translanguaging: as a method, as a descriptive label for language practices and as an analytical tool.

In sum, based on the research cited here and my own work (Mazak & Herbas-Donoso, 2014a, 2014b, 2015), I see translanguaging as the following:

(1)Translanguaging is a language ideology that takes bilingualism as the norm.

(2)Translanguaging is a theory of bilingualism based on lived bilingual experiences. As such, it posits that bilinguals do not separate their ‘languages’ into discrete systems, but rather possess one integrated repertoire of languaging practices from which they draw as they navigate their everyday bilingual worlds.

(3)Translanguaging is a pedagogical stance that teachers and students take on that allows them to draw on all of their linguistic and semiotic resources as they teach and learn both language and content material in classrooms.

(4)Translanguaging is a set of practices that are still being researched and described. It is not limited to what is traditionally known as ‘code-switching’, but rather seeks to include any practices that draw on an individual’s linguistic and semiotic repertoires (including reading in one language and discussing the reading in another, and many other practices that will be described in this book).

(5)As such, translanguaging is transformational. It changes the world as it continually ...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Theorizing Translanguaging Practices in Higher Education
• 2 Translanguaging Practices in a South African Institution of Higher Learning: A Case of Ubuntu Multilingual Return
• 3 A Call for (Trans)languaging: The Language Profiles at Roskilde University
• 4 The Ecology of Language and Translanguaging in a Ukrainian University
• 5 Professors Translanguaging in Practice: Three Cases from a Bilingual University
• 6 Translanguaging in a Multimodal Mathematics Presentation
• 7 Multilingual Policies and Practices in Indian Higher Education
• 8 Translanguaging within Higher Education in the United Arab Emirates
• 9 Teachers’ Beliefs about Translanguaging Practices
• 10 Concluding Remarks: Prestige Planning and Translanguaging in Higher Education
• Index