From Fractured to Whole: The Power and Advocacy of Translanguaging for a Multilingual, Multicultural Immigrant

• In Event: Perpetual Seekers of Understanding: Stories of Immigrant Professors of Education in the United States

Abstract

Purpose: As a theory and a pedagogy, translanguaging (García & Li Wei, 2014) distinguishes itself from other language orientations through its “explicit concern with social justice and linguistic inequality” (Poza, 2017, p.108). In this auto-ethnographic study, I discuss how my immigrant experience and discovery of translanguaging has afforded me with a dynamic and heteroglossic understanding of language and culture. I then argue in favor of the merits of translanguaging, representing a paradigm shift away from prioritizing English as a second or foreign language towards recognition of emergent bilinguals’ multilingual repertoires and their fluid language practices.
Theory: Translanguaging has been theorized as a practice and a process – a practice to describe how bi/multilinguals naturally engage in everyday language performances to make sense of their bilingual worlds (García, 2009) and a process of multilingual speakers/writers making meaning with their single semio-linguistic repertoire (rather than separate linguistic systems), from which they dynamically, strategically, and functionally select and inhibit (or not) language and semiotic features to suit the sociolinguistic purposes of the context (García, 2009; García & Li Wei, 2014).
Method: Data was collected from personal reflective journaling spanning personal experiences on the intersections of languages, cultures, social contexts, and geographic locations. The journal contains written accounts of ideas, emotions, thoughts, and constitute and can be explored as data supporting the auto-ethnographic account (Chang, 2008). These data were analyzed qualitatively, through a constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), in order to elicit patterns and themes in support of the study’s purpose.
Findings: As an Italian, South African immigrant to the U.S., I struggled to reconcile my lived experiences with societal expectations and constraints, or to fit the entirety of my diverse linguistic and cultural repertoires into a pure, discrete, socially-imposed categorization. My cultural and linguistic identity felt fractured: not concise or synthesized enough to amount to something whole, hardly legitimate enough to claim membership without limitation, highly insecure and defensive at others’ assessment of my linguistic or cultural entitlement. The discovery of translanguaging has helped to allay many of my personal conflicts around language, culture, and identity. A symbolic anchor to which I have tied myself, translanguaging authentically captures the fluidity and hybridity of who I am and has provided me with the agency to reframe, revoice, and reauthor my cultural and linguistic identity. In turn, I provide insight into how this theory and practice can help transform limiting structures and conceptions of language for bi/multilingual individuals and the organizations that represent them (e.g., TESOL, NABE, etc.)
Implications: The powerful affordances of Translanguaging presents a pathway of advocacy for other bi/multilingual, multicultural individuals and immigrants. Translanguaging can be used to reframe the research of language learning in order to empower language-minoritized individuals, to protect their language rights, and to affirm their complex discursive practices (García, 2009). In addition, a translanguaging lens affords an examination of students’ fluid language practices in service of their purposes, identities, and meaning-making (Otheguy, García, & Reid, 2015), instead of at their expense.

Author

• Sabrina Francesca Sembiante, Florida Atlantic University