Translanguaging and Multimodalities as Entanglements: Vignettes From the Global South

• In Event: New Pathways in Multimodal and Multilingual Learning: Moving Beyond Normative Practices

Abstract

Purpose
This paper uses critical posthumanism to elucidate particular conditions and tensions that English language teachers face when implementing translanguaging and multimodalities in Colombia.

Theoretical Framework
We draw upon entanglements, translanguaging, and multimodalities.

Entanglements
Barad (2007) argues that “individuals do not pre-exist their interactions; rather individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating” (p. xi). In classrooms, instructors, students, pedagogies, and their materiality are implicated in entanglements.Thus, entanglements emerge from how people, places, and semiotic and other material resources are interrelated and change together.

Translanguaging
We are informed by translanguaging as a theory and pedagogy on language and meaning-making in multilingual communities (Garcia, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017). We recognize translanguaging as “the dynamic, fluid, and the unfolding nature of meaning making of speakers’ complex and active use of a repertoire of linguistic features” (Garcia et al., 2017, p. 5). Nevertheless, we acknowledge that fluidity is in tension with fixed notions of language (Harrissi et al, 2012). Within translanguaging, both linguistic fluidity and fixity constitute bilingual practices.

Translanguaging and Multimodalities as Entanglements
Multiple theories have attempted to explain the interconnectedness between translanguaging and multimodalities (Jonsson, & Blåsjö, 2020; Bengochea et al., 2018; Wei, 2018; Author 4, 2019).With an entangled translanguaging and multimodal view, we account for integrating semiotic and cultural flows dialogically within power relations that are responsive to contextualized needs.

Methods and Data Sources
We used dialogic reflexivity (Attia & Edge, 2017) as we observed in action; we stepped back to reflect; and we step up again to action (p. 36) as we inquired: What entanglements emerge when we revisit teachers’ discussions on translanguaging and multimodal resources to enrich their practice in a context with inequitable access?

Our data include multilingual transcripts of semi-structured interviews with teachers; notes from teacher workshops; and, planning artifacts. We use vignettes, brief snapshots of workshop interactions and interviews to invite new questions and other conceptualizations. Vignettes capture a sense of disruption and are useful in examining unexpected emergences (Masny, 2013).

Results
We found three emerging entanglements at the nexus of teachers' practices, translanguaging, multimodalities, and context. 1)Entangling translanguaging and multimodalities with unequal access. Teachers experience socio-economic forces that push them to provide access to dominant linguistic resources, so their students acquire socio-economic power. 2) Entangling translanguaging and multimodalities with equitable access para abarcar a todos los estudiantes. Although teachers’ pedagogical interpretation of translanguaging is not completely fluid, it opens a possibility to include students’ resources to increase equitable access. 3) Entangling translanguaging and multimodality for advocacy.Teachers transcend design and mobilize resources for students.Lack of access to multimodal tools demonstrates the digital divide in Global South contexts. We see how teachers can intervene on this divide with their leadership and advocacy.

Scholarly significance
This paper applies critical posthumanism (entanglements and vignettes) to explain how translanguaging and multimodality work entrelazados con semiotic, and social conditions of teachers and learners in the Global South. It encourages contextualized and critical research on translanguaging and multimodalities.

Authors

• Rosa Medina Riveros, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Theresa Y. Austin, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Maria José Botelho, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Diana Angelica Parra, Universidad de La Sabana
  Presenting Author