The following passage is taken from a journal article written by Li Wei. Please (1) read the article, (2) summarize the article in 350 words (40%), and (3) write an essay in response to what you have read. You can criticize the article in general or in part, further develop the author' ideas, or apply the ideas to language teaching and language policies in Taiwan (e.g. the recent Bilingual 2030 policy) (60%).
Translanguaging as a political stance: Implications for English language education
The political naming and labelling of languages and their users
Translanguaging as a political stance begins with an emphasis on language as a political construct. In my class on bilingualism and multilingualism, I normally start by asking the students what languages they know and then ask them to define those languages. They immediately realize that one cannot define a named language entirely in structural terms without making reference to its users. And the users of the same named language may belong to different nation-states, come from a variety of backgrounds, and be in very different social positions. The idea that human languages are abstractable codes that can be discovered, documented, saved, or revived is part of the linguistic orthodoxy with its own inherent logical muddle (García and Li 2014: 6–7). Human languages as we know them do not simply exist as neutral, abstractable objects, but rather are brought into being through sociopolitical forces that are part of the broader social processes such as nation-state-building and geopolitical (re)configuration of the world that serves dominant interests. The naming of languages is a political act, as ample examples across the world show—the naming of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian in the former republics of Yugoslavia, Farsi in Iran, Dari in Afghanistan, and Tajiki in Tajikistan, and the mutually unintelligible ‘dialects’ of Chinese in China.
Similarly, the labelling of a language as ‘native’, ‘foreign’, ‘immigrant’, or ‘heritage’ language is also a political act and one that is more about the sociopolitical categorization of its users than about the language itself. English speakers from England, the United States, and Australia are often regarded as ‘native’ speakers of the language. But English originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects and was brought to the British Isles and Ireland in the mid fifth to seventh centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark, and the Netherlands, gradually displacing the previously dominating Celtic languages. The exporting of English to other parts of the world, including North America and Australia, has been closely associated with British colonization, and in the twentieth century, globalization. Yet, how often do we hear anyone calling English as an ‘immigrant language’ in Britain, Ireland, the United States, or Australia, and the younger generations of English speakers in these countries ‘heritage language speakers’? These labels—immigrant and heritage languages and speakers—are typically associated with minoritized, racialized, and/or socially stigmatized languages and speakers.
The consequences of the political naming and labelling of languages
What are the consequences of the political naming and labelling of languages? First of all, language becomes nationalized and racialized. As mentioned above, the ideology and policy of monolingualism has been part and parcel of nation-state building across the world over history, where one language becomes the symbol of a nation-state and dominating the societal structures and institutions as well as people’s everyday life in a specific country. In multilingual countries where several languages are accorded national language status, the differently named languages become highly racialized, e.g. Canada, India, Singapore, Switzerland, and many countries in Africa and Latin America. As a result, raciolinguistic ideologies emerge, not just about the different languages but also, and more, about the users of the racialized languages.
Another consequence of the political naming and labelling of languages is that different languages are assigned different sociopolitical status, and by extension, the users of the different languages are put into different social categories with status specific to their category. Languages that have been designated as 'immigrant language' have little chance of being used as the language of instruction in formal education contexts in any country. The social consequences of the labelling are serious. Whilst national, majority languages enjoy a great deal of privilege and prestige as they are the languages of law, business, health, and education, the designation of minority or immigrant language can bring disadvantage, even discrimination, to their users.
The translanguaging stance
As Garcia has argued, translanguaging as a political stance has 'the potential to decolonize our conception of language' (Garcia 2019: 162). This is not simply about respecting the existence of different named languages or paying more attention to the fluid and dynamic multilingual practices that characterize all aspects of our life in the twenty-first century; it is about challenging the nationalistic assumptions of named languages and raciolinguistic ideologies that contribute to the institutionalization of linguistic and social inequalities. Translanguaging seeks, in addition, to interrogate and critique the normative framing of language and language practices of minoritized and racialized bilingual and multilingual language users, especially in the education systems, and promote policies and practices that bring forth the experiences,subjectivities, and agencies of these language users. Translanguaging therefore is not additive; it is not about allowing different named languages to be used in contexts where the norm is monolingual as in many ELT cases.
Translanguaging therefore is not additive; it is not about allowing different named languages to be used in contexts where the norm is monolingual as in many ELT cases. Translanguaging is fundamentally reconstitutive in at least three senses: (1) reconstitutive of language structures, through dynamic mixing of features and styles that linguists have classified as different named languages, language varieties, or genres; (2) reconstitutive of language status imposed by the nation-state and by raciolinguistic ideologies; and (3) reconstitutive of power relations between groups of language users with differentiated access to symbolic capital through entitlement/non-entitlement to claims of native-speakership of colonizing languages. These senses apply to language-in-education policies and practices whose implementation needs the teachers and the learners working together.
The racialization of (academic) English
The following exchange occurred during a focus group discussion about university choices between two seventeen-year-old British-born Chinese young men T and M, with me as the researcher, L, in 2011 as part of a linguistic ethnography of Chinese complementary schools in London, where the young men were studying Chinese. T is responding to a question about what subjects he was doing at school—in England, students are expected to pass Advanced level (A-level) or equivalent examinations in three subjects in order to get a place to study at university:
T: 我學 maths, further maths, physics, 和Latin. (I study maths, further maths, physics and Latin.)
M: Latin?
L: 拉丁文啊? (Latin.)
T: 對.(Correct.)
M: 為什麼拉丁文?(Why Latin?)
L: 很好呀.(Very good.)
T: I’ve always been interested in it.
M: Are you good at it?
T: Yeah?
M: Do you do essays?
T: A bit. Lots of translation.
L: (To M) 你呢?(How about you?)
M: 和他一样, but no Latin.(Same as him, but no Latin.)
L: 數學和物理.(Maths and physics.)
M: Mm. Typical Chinese isn’t it?
L: Why do you say that?
M: Well, even when I was a kid, the teachers at school say ‘Oh Chinese kids are good at maths and science’, so always encouraged me to do maths and science subjects.
T: Yeah. And they think we are not good at writing essays. So they don’t want us to do English or history.
L: Really? They said no you can’t do English, English literature, right, and history?
T: Yeah, because maths doesn’t need a lot of language.
L: So did they think you are no good at languages, or just English?
T: I don’t know. I think I’m pretty good at languages. But they never encouraged me.
L: You are doing Latin though.
T: Yes, but it’s a little different. It’s not so like English literature.
L: But Latin is literature.
T: Yes, but it’s different.
M: It’s true though, teachers think we are good at science and not good at English stuff.
L: 你們學校也一樣?(Your school is the same?)
T: We are EAL, aren’t we?
L: So what do you think of the term, EAL?
T: Don’t know. Makes you feel secondary I suppose.
M: I hate it. English is my main language. I’m actually struggling with Chinese. That’s why I’m here, doing weekend Chinese class. I’ve no problem with English.
T: But you only do maths and science at school.
M: I was always afraid that they don’t think my English is good enough to do an essay-based subject.
L: 如果你自己選擇你會選擇學什麼? (If you can choose yourself, what subject do you want to study?)
M: 上大學?歷史啦or law. (At university? History or law).
The two young men have clearly experienced the well-documented stereotypical assumptions of Chinese students that they are good at maths and science (Archer and Francis 2006). They are British-born and 'have no problem with English'. Yet because of their race, they are categorized as EAL (English as an additional language) leamers by the school, whose English is not expected to be *good enough to do an essay-based subject' at school or university. The language that they have 'problems' with is in fact Chinese, the language that they have been ascribed to as their first language by virtue of their race, and that is why they were attending the weekend Chinese complementary school in order to improve their Chinese reading and writing abilies (Li and Wu 2009). Yet society does not seem to recognize the efforts young people like T and M have to make in learning and maintaining their so-called home language in the face of English dominance in British society[...] The raciolinguistic ideologies are all too obvious to tell here: one's claim of proficiency in, and therefore ownership of, a language depends on one's racial identity; a British-born Chinese cannot claim to be a native-speaker of English because English is owned by a different race. And Chinese must be their native language irrespective of their proficiency or use.
As Flores and Rosa (2015) point out, raciolinguistic ideologies perpetuate stigmatization of the language practices of racialized bilinguals and multinguals. Racialized bilingual or EAL learners are portrayed as incapable of mastering academic English, leading to education achievement gaps. What the above example shows, however, is that even amongst the seemingly successful pupils of Chinese and Indian descent in British schools, a higher proportion of whom are more likely to go on to higher education, academic English remains a barrier for them to get into certain subjects and disciplines, restricting their future employment opportunities. The problem with the notion of academic English is that it is not a set of empically and objectively verifiable linguistic features, but, as Flores and Rosa (2015) point out, a category and a categorizing device that emerges as part of broader raciolinguistic ideologies that position racialized and minoritized learners as illegitimate language users, linguistically deficient and unacademic.
Following the argument that named languages are political and ideological constructs, the translanguaging stance considers the concept of academic English a political construct too, framed by a raciolinguistic ideology that grants an elite group of English speakers the authority and ownership of this peculiar variety of the language. This elite group is typically people of the dominant racial group and with institutional power through which they can determine the ways in which language is used by people of minoritized social groups and in positions of no social influence. What is more, this elite group feels a natural entitlement to setting the standard of academic English because of its members own racial background and social position. Translanguaging challenges the raciolingusitc framing of language and the socially constructed educational systems, structures, and practices by engaging diverse students’ existing, multiple, and dynamic meaning-making systems, knowledge, and subjectivities, thus destabilizing the hegemonic power relation between the so-called monolingual native speakers and the othered users of othered languages.
Translanguaging English medium education
The translanguaging stance on language as a sociopolitic construct has seriou implications for English medium education, which is increasingly popular in certain parts of the world, especially Asia. Education is a value-forming process, i.e. a conditioned experience where knowledge is produced and reproduced in specific ways that have a lasting impact on the learners' worldview, including value judgement, as well as their social behaviour. If it is accepted that languages are political constructs, then the choice of the medium cannot be value neutral. In fact, the institutions that promote English medium education do not claim that their choice of language of instruction is value neutral because they typically promote the benefits of English medium education in terms of better employment prospect, financial gains,and social and global mobility. In this context, the translanguaging stance urges all of us to resist neocolonialism through the soft power of English. Specifically, it wants us to reject the raciolinguistic framing of language norms and standards.
The choice of language as medium of education is a political act. English in English medium education, to paraphrase Hall (1992: 277), is 'a structure of knowledge', 'a framework used to categorize' people and societies, and 'a series of images that form a system of representation that connects with other concepts', e.g.English speakers--metropolitan, educated, knowledgeable, desirable, and progressive,versus the non- or poor-English-speakers---uneducated and underdeveloped whose existing knowledge acquired through other languages is backward and disposable.The translanguaging stance advocates that the linguistic and cultural knowledge learners of English as a second, foreign, or additional language already have is legitimate on its own terms, and therefore must be taken seriously as a necessary component in ensuring these learners' success in education (Flores 2020). The rich and diverse and social experiences and practices of the English language leamers should be mobilized to provide alternative points of reference, horizons, and perspective for knowledge production and at the same time to transform the subjectivities of the learners. The transformation of the learners' subjectivity is about an appreciation of the value and power of their existing knowledge and an ability to articulate one's thoughts in one's own ways without worrying about transfers,digressions, deviations, and errors. Again, translanguaging is not simply about allowing languages other than English into the classroom context; it is not additive,but fundamentally reconstitutive of the power structures between named languages,knowledge systems, and pedagogic practices.
ELT and English medium education are now a multibillion-dollar global industry involving millions of institutions and people with competing interests. The concept of translanguaging was not explicitly intended to address any issues in ELT or English medium education. It does nevertheless act as a timely reminder that these policies and practices are not value-neutral because the English language itself, like all named languages, is a political construct. To promote English as the language of science, knowledge, and internationalization is an ideological act. It should be recognized that plurilingualism is increasingly celebrated in the European CLIL context and in the British primary and secondary school context for EAL pupils, where attempts are also made to present academic, or a more formal form of, English in more culturally appropriate ways. However, real progress in decolonizing ELT and English medium education cannot be made simply by allowing different named languages to be used in teaching and learning; we need to raise critical awareness of the raciolinguistic ideologies underlying the framing of the medium of instruction and the norms of language use, bring forth the learners’ own experiences and subjectivities, and promote equity between different cultural traditions and knowledge systems,....
(References deleted for space considerations)
Passage taken from:
Li, W.(2022). Translanguaging as a political stance: Implications for English
language education. ELT Journal, 76(2), 172-182.
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