Translanguaging, place and complexity

Abstract

Prevalent approaches to classroom languaging and bilingual education interpret the practices of multilingual groups of people through a monolingual lens that obscures the fluid languaging and semiotic practices of contemporary communities who engage in dynamic semiotic and linguistic practices, rather than ‘add’ one language to another in the form of a double monolingualism. The paper examines the arguments for and constraints upon a translanguaging paradigm as a pedagogic strategy in classrooms and it considers how translanguaging practices have different consequences in Southern settings as contrasted with Euro- or North American contexts. The paper critically examines a spatiotemporal or scalar perspective on language-linked social inequalities and language-evaluation processes in school as an account for why the fluid language practices characteristic of everyday interaction and of certain kinds of learning-helpful interaction in classrooms do not transfer to a rationale for translanguaging becoming the norm in schooling. The research finds that innovative and emerging translanguaging practices happen ‘under the covers’ as it were, and make learning possible under constrained conditions. Researching classroom practices as a rhizometically assembled network of actors, materials, resources and practices, in their complexity and particularity, helps us to concretely identify possible points of attack to tackle persisting educational inequality.