Translanguaging as pedagogy?

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• Translanguaging as pedagogy?
• Adrian Blackledge
• University of Birmingham
• a.j.blackledge_at_bham.ac.uk
• ESRC Seminar Series Complementary Schools
  Research, Policy and Practice
• Goldsmiths and Kings College London

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Project Details

• Four interlinking case studies
• Gujarati schools in Leicester,
• Turkish schools in London,
• Cantonese and Mandarin schools in Manchester
• Bengali schools in Birmingham
• Complementary Schools
• Community-run
• Voluntary
• Weekends and after school
• Serving specific linguistic, religious and
  cultural groups through community language
  classes

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• Research aims
• To explore the social, cultural and linguistic
  significance of complementary schools both within
  their communities and in wider society
• To investigate the range of linguistic practices
  used in the different contexts in the
  complementary schools
• To investigate how the linguistic practices of
  students and teachers in complementary schools
  are used to negotiate young peoples multilingual
  and multicultural identities.

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Design

• Ethnographically informed observation in schools
• Team field notes 133 sets of fieldnotes
  representing 399 hours of fieldwork
• Digital audio recording of pupils and teachers
  192 hours of audio-recorded interactional data
• Digital video recording of pupils and teachers
  16 hours of video-recorded interactional data
• Interviews with 66 key stakeholders
• Border crossings
• Documentary evidence

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Superdiversity

• Many parts of the world are now characterised by
  superdiversity, distinguished by a dynamic
  interplay of variables among multiple-origin,
  transnationally connected migrants
• (Vertovec 2006, 2009)
• New forms of multilingualism emerge that defy
  dominant understandings of multilingualism as the
  ordered deployment of different languages

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Language separation

• Bilingual educators have usually insisted on the
  separation of the two languages, one of which is
  English and the other, the childs vernacular.
  By strictly separating the languages, the teacher
  avoids, it is argued, cross contamination, thus
  making it easier for the child to acquire a new
  linguistic system as he/she internalizes a given
  lesson. . . . it was felt that the
  inappropriateness of the concurrent use was so
  self-evident that no research had to be conducted
  to prove this fact.
• (Jacobson and Faltis, 19904)

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Bilingualism as double monolingualism

• Parallel monolingualism (Heller, 1999)
• Bilingualism with diglossia (Baker, 2003
  Fishman, 1967)
• Bilingualism through monolingualism (Swain,
  19834)
• Two solitudes (Cummins, 2005)
• Two monolinguals in one body (Gravelle,
  199611).

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Attitudes to codeswitching

• Feeling embarrassed about codeswitching and
  attributing it to careless language habits
  (Shin 2005)
• Codeswitching is often lambasted as bad
  practice, blamed on teachers lack of
  English-language competence, or put to one side
  and/or swept under the carpet (Martin, 200588)

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Separate bilingualism

• Turçe Konus ltspeak Turkishgt
• Bangla-e maato ltspeak Banglagt
• ??? (Gong Chong man) ltspeak Chinese (Cantonese) gt
• ???? /??? (Shuo Putonghua/ Shuo Huayu) ltspeak
  Chinese (Mandarin)gt
• Gujaratima lt in Gujarati!gt

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Language(s) and boundaries

• Flexible bilingualism (Creese and Blackledge,
  2010)
• Translanguaging (García, 2009)
• Heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981 Bailey, 2007)
• Truncated multilingualism (Blommaert 2009)
• Polylingualism (Jørgensen 2008)
• Plurilingualism (Canagarajah, 2009)
• Codemeshing (Canagarajah, 2005 Young 2004)
• Heterolingualism (Pratt 2010)
• Metrolingualism (Pennycook 2010)

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• Everyday linguistic practices
• Rumana singing along to music rock your body,
  rock your body, rock your body, rock your body,
  tumhare bina ltwithout yougt chaenna aaye
  lttheres no peacegt rock your body
• (home audio-recording, Bengali case study)
• Aleha Rumana, come on. Im going amma, salam
  alaikum ltmother, salam alaikum gt
  salam alaikum abba, zaairam aami
• ltsalam alaikum father. Im goinggt

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The Bengali classroom

• S1 miss why cant we just go home
• T Bangla-e maato etaa Bangla class
• ltspeak Bangla this is Bangla classgt
• khaali English maato to etaa Bangla class khene
  
• ltif you speak in English only then why is this
  the Bangla class?gt
• S2 miss you can choose
• S1 I know English
• S2 why?
• T because tumi Bangali ltbecause you are
  Bengaligt
• S2 my aunty chose it she speaks English all the
  time
• S1 yeah miss Im not gonna come back, not for
  any more, watch miss
• (classroom recording Bengali school)

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Languaging and negotiation

• PB bolwanu ltspeakgt
• Ss shu bolwanu? ltspeak what?gt
• PB je discuss karyu hoi ltwhat you discussedgt
• Ss oh chatetle we discuss it and then
  decide what we gonna saymiss ame ek bijanu
  kaie ke ek ek ltso we discuss it.miss, do we
  speak about each other or one by onegt
• PB tame decide karo ke kone bolwu chhe lt you
  decide who speaksgt
• PB allocates more topics to pairs while Ss chat
  among themselves
• Ss mane doctor banwu chheI dont really want
  to be a doctorsorry I do want to be a doctor,
  actually I dont mind being a doctorI want to
  beyou know for the kiddie ones chat
  paediatrician karanke nana chhokra manda pade
  to sara karwani dawa apwi chhe. ltI want to be a
  doctorwhen little children are ill, I want to
  give them medicines to make them bettergt Your
  turn, what do you want to be?

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• T chalo, tame taiyar chho? talks to other Ss
  ek... diwaschalo.
• lt come on, are you ready?one daycome
  ongt
• S what? were still writingwe have written
  that much shows book to PB. Not much, is it?
• T shena upper banawi chhe? lt what is it
  about?gt
• S kootro ane wandro lt dog and the monkeygt
• T kootro ne wandro? Shu banawi chhe warta?
• lt dog and the monkey? What story have you
  made?gt
• S they make friends and they go out
• T be mitro chhe ane- lt they are two friends
  and -gt
• S they are going out
• T e bai mitro chhe, kootro ne wandro ne bai
  farwa jay chhe
• lt they are both friends and they go out
  (for a walk)gt
• S they are going out
• T kya farwa jay? ltwhere do they go?gt
• S junglema lt in the junglegt
• T junglema, wandrabhai junglema jai shake?
• ltin the jungle, can the monkey go into
  the jungle?gt
• S no, they are going out laugh
• T sssh! Pachhi shu thyu? lt then what
  happened?gt

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• B hello, hello, PC1661 1661 in Cantonese
  ????????? ltwhats your school called?gt
• Ss chatting, very noisily. A boy picks up the
  recorder and speaks into it
• B ???????????????? ?????????
• ?????????????????????,ltsomeone stole a white
  money box, something from Manchester City Chinese
  descendents school. we dont know who stole it.
  now, we have to search search search school
  bagsgt
• ??? ltplease sendgt Spiderman ?ltandgt Batman ????
• ltto rescue usgt thank you bye-bye
• (classroom audio-recording, Cantonese school)

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• Bilingualism is not simply two separate
  monolingual codes, nor are languages bounded
  autonomous systems (García 20095)
• we should put at the centre people as actors who
  signify differently by performing different
  language practices (García 2010532)

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• The question is whether the type of spontaneous
  negotiation of languages that we see in face to
  face conversations can be taught in the somewhat
  constrained context of the classroom
  (Canagarajah Liyanage, forthcoming)

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Translanguaging pedagogy in the Panjabi classroom

• Transliteration a practical strategy in contexts
  where the written form of a language is
  unfamiliar or does not otherwise exist (Al-Azami,
  Kenner, Mahera and Gregory, 2010)
• Translation bilingual label quests repetition
  and translation across languages
• Translanguaging multiple discursive practices in
  interrelationship (Garcia 2009). Drawing on the
  totality of verbal resources available,
  translanguaging goes beyond code-switching but
  incorporates it
• Investigating discourses of inheritance and
  identity in four multilingual European settings

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Developing pedagogies which reflect practice

• What we need is a paradigm shift in language
  teaching. Pedagogy should be refashioned to
  accommodate the modes of communication and
  acquisition seen outside the classroom. . .
  (Canagarajah, 2009210)
• In the twenty-first century we are aware of the
  linguistic complexity of the world, in which
  monolingual schooling seems utterly
  inappropriate. Language differences are a
  resource, and bilingual education in all its
  complexity and forms seems to be the only way to
  educate as the world moves forward (García,
  200916)
• It is essential for language educators to fill
  up implementational spaces with multilingual
  educational practices in the face of restrictive
  policies (Hornberger 2005606)

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Translanguaging as pedagogy?

• Translanguaging as/for identity
• Translanguaging in use
• Translanguaging as medium of instruction
• Translanguaging in teacher education
• Translanguaging as target language