Decolonizing Language Hierarchies and Identities: Legitimizing the Hidden Translanguaging Practices of Malawian Teachers

• In Event: 43.067 - (Re)Theorizing Translanguaging From Non-Anglo Contexts/Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation focuses on a participatory action research (PAR) (Park, 2006) study with a group of school teachers in a rural Malawian community to explore critical and culturally-responsive approaches to teaching ESL.
Perspectives
Malawi’s education system, despite its independence in 1964, continues to be heavily influenced by neocolonial and neoliberal ideologies of the English language (Kamwendo, 2010) through intersecting beliefs and practices: monolingualism, language standards and hierarchies, native-speakerism, and the racialization of English language speakers (Motha, 2014). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language (Li, 2018) highlights dynamic bilingualism where shuttling between languages and semiotic modes is seen as normal communicative practices among bilinguals. A translanguaging approach to pedagogy leverages students’ full semiolinguistic repertoires to mediate and maximize language and content learning (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017). Translanguaging articulates a sociopolitical stance in disrupting the hegemony of dominant named languages and academic monolingualism (García, Bartlett, & Kleifgen, 2009), as part of a “larger political struggle of linguistic self-determination for language-minoritized populations” (Flores, 2014). It aims to empower the marginalized linguistic groups to revitalize and reinvest in their languages/varieties while accessing content knowledge and the prestigious language forms (García & Kleyn, 2016).
Methods and Data Sources
In this month-long PAR project, six local Malawian teachers participated in a professional learning community with Canadian researchers and undergraduate and postgraduate education students. They were all engaged in readings and discussions on theories related to dynamic bilingualism and translanguaging, writing and sharing of language portraits and biographies (Busch, Jardine, & Tjoutuku, 2006), experimenting with new translanguaging pedagogies, and other learning activities that promoted critical reflections on teaching practices and beliefs.
Results
Analysis of qualitative data (e.g., interviews, class observations, language portraits and biographies, etc.) revealed that local teachers continued to wrestle with the lingering effects of the (neo)colonial discourse of English as a symbol of modernization, prosperity and quality education (Kamwendo, 2010). Their internalized shame of indigenous languages and cultures continued to shape their belief that strict English-only policy would ensure student success, even though their daily interactions with their students told them otherwise. Some of them, however, had been using creative but covert translanguaging practices to advance students’ understanding and identity investment in learning, though much to their chagrin. The PAR study allowed them to begin to make open and name their intuitive, hybrid but hidden language teaching practices and to start advocating for their rightful legitimacy and recognition.
Scholarly significance
The research points to the importance of un/re-covering teachers’ make-shift and creative “tactics” (de Certeau, 1984) in flaunting hegemonic language policies as a way to amass greater concerted efforts in decolonizing ideological boundaries and hierarchies set among languages and cultural identities. The research implications are pertinent to not only postcolonial contexts like Malawi, but also immigrant /migrant contexts where neocolonial, racialized discourses of English monolingualism and named languages still prevail and continue to have significant impact on people’s material lives.

Author

• Sunny Man Chu Lau, Bishop's University