Translanguaging and Linguistic Social Justice

• In Event: Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

Abstract

While early translanguaging theory (García, 2009) rooted itself in sociolinguistic research on multilingualism, subsequent postmodernist/poststructuralist proposals rejected any construct predicated on the concept of multilingualism (García, Flores & Spotti, 2017; García & Li, 2014; García & Otheguy, 2014; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015, 2018). This proposed presentation begins with a delineation of these two historical currents in translanguaging theory, identifying them as “early” and “late” approaches. Early translanguaging theory is also known as the multilingual perspective on translanguaging (MacSwan, 2017).

Late translanguaging’s “new epistemologies” (García & Li, 2014), said to have resulted from “the rise of post-structuralism in the post-modern era” (ibid., p. 9), are in fact very old ideas originally introduced in the 1980s. This approach to critical pedagogy soon wore out its welcome. As McLaren and Farahmandpur (1999) noted, despite its rhetorical success, “postmodernism has failed to develop alternative democratic social models … due to its failure to mount a sophisticated and coherent opposition politics against economic exploitation, political oppression, and cultural hegemony” (p. 89). A more productive critical approach, for McLaren and many others, is Freirean critical consciousness (Freire, 1970; Freire & Macedo, 1987). As Freire (1986) noted, “for those who undertake cultural action for freedom, science is the indispensable instrument for denouncing the mythos created by the right …” (1986, p. 86). Freire’s commitment to the role of research as a tool for undermining injustice reflects the alignment of early translanguaging theory with empirical research on multilingualism, contrasting with the postmodernist “sustained intellectual contempt … towards what it regards as the Eurocentric Enlightenment project of human progress, equality, justice, rationality, and truth …” (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 1999, p. 89).

The presentation illustrates this epistemological contrast with concrete illustrations. For example, Purnell, Idsardi and Baugh (1999) conducted showed empirically that housing discrimination based on telephone conversations alone occurred as landlords identified a speaker’s dialect as African American English (AAE) or Chicano English; this work led to enforcement of housing justice by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Without a concept of AAE and Chicano English as discrete language varieties with distinguishable phonologies, it would be impossible to argue cases of discrimination in housing or other matters. As another example, consider the role of ‘second language’ in the protection of children’s civil rights as established in Lau v Nichols (1974). Lau found that children who do not know English are excluded from any meaningful participation in instruction, and schools must therefore meet their needs as non-English speakers. If there is no concept of multilingualism or second language at the individual level, then the civil rights of these children cannot be protected. As Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (2017) observed, the postmodernist critique of “the basic concept ‘language’” undermines language rights because “rights cannot be attached to non-existing entities” (pp. 10-11).

The presentation concludes with a call to return to early translanguaging theory, or a multilingual perspective, which affirms the psychological realty and social significance of multilingualism.

Author

• Jeff MacSwan, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author