This CLIC Research Workshop will offer an opportunity for the Rice Community to analyze connections among language, language ideologies, and multilingualism. Illustrations of these relations will be presented through discourse activities and an in-depth follow-up discussion.
When: October 24, 2019, 12:15 - 1:50 pm
Where: Rayzor Hall, 204
RSVP to Aisulu Raspayeva at ar109@rice.edu
Multilingualism can be conceptualized very differently when the value of the additional languages is assessed relative to the language speaker (i.e., depending on who demonstrates the ability to speak more than one language). For instance, the use of Spanish as second language may represent a valuable resource among white students (i.e., elite bilingualism), but a liability among heritage language users (i.e., minoritized bilingualism) (e.g., Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017; García, 2009; Otheguy, 2013). In large part to address this unbalanced and socially unfair conceptualization of multilingualism, over the last two decades the theory and practice of translanguaging has had enormous influence on educational practices (e.g., Canagarajah, 2011; García & Li, 2014; García, Flores & Woodley, 2015).
At a conceptual level, translanguaging makes reference to the fluid and full use of all linguistic resources available to language learners / users. As such, it stands in contrast with the sociolinguistic concept of codeswitching given that the latter relies on the traditional compartmentalization of languages as static entities that remain unchanged as speakers use resources from one or the other language unit in discrete ways. As an educational approach, translanguaging eschews the traditional monoglossic definition of language that favors the standard variety (Lippi-Green, 2011) in favor of a heteroglossic view of language (Blackledge & Creese, 2014) that, by definition, values all speech repertoires. As such, García and Kleyn (2016: 15) state that translanguaging “start from a place that leverages all the features of the children’s repertoire, while also showing them when, with whom, where, and why to use some features of their repertoire and not others, enabling them to also perform according to the social norms of named languages as used in schools.”
After providing an introduction to the concept of translanguaging and related concepts such as plurilingualism (in contrast with the traditional notion of multilingualism), we will exemplify how concepts such as ethnicity and race can be embodied and represented in language ideologies about English and Spanish through the examination of personal narratives from a study with Latin American immigrant women (De Fina & King, 2011), We will analyze how positioning in the story world (among the characters) and in the storytelling world (between the interviewees and interviewer) reflect bigger ideologies about how learning English is a personal responsibility and speaking Spanish an obstacle to creating personal relationships. We will then, expand on that analysis of narratives to assess the possible role of translanguaging in educational settings that have not been part of the context of previous research (i.e., college level) and non-educational settings of interaction.
REFERENCES
Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (2014). Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. In Blackledge A., Creese A. (Eds.) Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy (pp. 1-20). Springer, Dordrecht.
Canagarajah, S. (2011). Codemeshing in academic writing: Identifying teachable strategies of translanguaging. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3), 401-417.
De Fina, A., & King, K. A. (2011). Language problem or language conflict? Narratives of immigrant women’s experiences in the US. Discourse Studies, 13(2), 163-188.
Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171.
García, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
García, O., & Li, W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
García, O., Flores, N., & Woodley, H. H. (2015). Constructing in-between spaces to ‘do’ bilingualism: a tale of two high schools in one city. In J. Cenoz, D. Gorter (Eds.), Multilingual education between Language Learning and Translanguaging (pp. 199–224). Cambridge: CUP.
García, O., & Kleyn, T. (Eds.). (2016). Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from classroom moments. New York: Routledge.
Lippi-Green, R. (2011). English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Otheguy, R. (2013). The linguistic competence of second-generation bilinguals: A critique of ‘incomplete acquisition’. Romance linguistics, 301-320.
Rosa, J., & Flores, N. (2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621
