A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging

TLDR

Translanguaging, a recent concept in bilingual education, challenges the notion of discrete languages by promoting a heteroglossic ideology that some scholars argue renders multilingualism illusory. The paper proposes an integrated multilingual model of individual bilingualism that separates political language naming from social and structural idealizations, offering a new multilingual perspective on translanguaging. The author distinguishes grammars from linguistic repertoires, asserting that bilinguals possess a single repertoire yet maintain a richly diverse mental grammar.

Abstract

Translanguaging is a new term in bilingual education; it supports a heteroglossic language ideology, which views bilingualism as valuable in its own right. Some translanguaging scholars have questioned the existence of discrete languages, further concluding that multilingualism does not exist. I argue that the political use of language names can and should be distinguished from the social and structural idealizations used to study linguistic diversity, favoring what I call an integrated multilingual model of individual bilingualism, contrasted with the unitary model and dual competence model. I further distinguish grammars from linguistic repertoires, arguing that bilinguals, like monolinguals, have a single linguistic repertoire but a richly diverse mental grammar. I call the viewpoint developed here a multilingual perspective on translanguaging.