Translanguaging and Transmodalities: A Dialogue on Languaging and Semiotics Toward Educational Equity

• In Event: Multimodality and Translanguaging: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

Translanguaging and transmodalities theorize semiotics and meaning-making in era of communication that has, as its hallmark, increasing communicative rapidity, complexity and reach, across greater diversities of peoples and places, and through more expansive modes and means than those which have preceded it, within contexts of ever-increasing misunderstandings and bias. Here, two scholars who have, respectively, been advancing translanguaging and transmodalities engage in a dialog, developing them together. Drawing on digital video and chat data in an exchange between (multilingual) Indian youth and their global peers, we identify and define translanguaging and transmodalities as enmeshments of signs, modes and resources that shape relationalities in this ‘trans-‘ era, exploring their conceptual, analytic, methodological and transformative potentials for equity-oriented educational theory and practice.

Authors

• Margaret R. Hawkins, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Li Wei, UCL Institute of Education