TRANSLINGUAL ORIENTATION or TRANSLANGUAGING

Although “Mother Tongue” (Tan, 1990) does not elucidate Tan’s mother’s fluid relation to languages, it highlights the nature of her English.  Tan delineates that the mother’s English is “her internal language” (p. 3) and also a reflection of “her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts'' (p. 4).  The mother’s thoughts are at the same time constituted by her other language, Chinese.  Challenging the monolingual writing instruction, McCall (2016) pinpoints the nature of ELLs’ writing by describing it as an “apple pie.”  ELLs produce writing with both linguistic skills or knowledge that they are learning and their linguistic resources that they have already gained.  Tan’s mother’s linguistic product in English is neither the English recognizable for native English speakers nor Chinese, but her own language. 

ELLs’ language products, such as Tan’s mother’s, are products of translingual orientation (Canagarajah 2014; Pennycook, 2008) or translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014).  “Translingual orientation” here is different from “translingual writing.”  “Translingual writing” is a pedagogical approach that invites language learners to employ their linguistic resources, including rhetorical styles (Horner et al. 2011; Canagarajah, 2013a, 2013b)[1].  In this article, I focus on ELLs’ Englishes as a product of translingual orientation and a form of translanguaging.   Garcia and Wei’s (2014) concept of “translanguaging” helps us understand the natures of ELLs’ Englishes.  Her concept of “languaging” as a process of social interaction changes language’s ontological stability.  In the same token, Canagarajah (2016), one of the prominent figures in the scholarship on translingual(ism) within applied linguistics and beyond, conceptualizes languages “as always in contact and generating new grammars and meanings out of their synergy” (p. 266).  ELLs generate meanings through contact with English and meandering through English and their other dominant languages.  Alastair Pennycook (2010), one of the leading sociolinguists, adds another layer to this perspective on languages.  He contends that we do not use language as a “pre-given entity” (p. 2) but rather produce language in our “repeated local activities” (p. 46).   Pennycook argues that we do languaging: we do not use language as a “pre-given entity.”   This concept of languaging allows Garcia to propound “translanguaging” as “the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages” (Garcia, 2009, p 141).   When language users orient themselves in multiple languages, they do “translanguaging.”  

These concepts of language as always in contact and languaging as social interaction defy the idea of literacy that has been so deeply taken for granted and naturalized, which Canagarajah (2019) calls “autonomous literacy” (p. 7) since it conceptualizes literacy as existing autonomously from time and location.  The products through translanguaging of ELLs cannot and should not be decoded by the monolingual gaze and ear.  We as teachers need to acquire a different literacy from this “autonomous literacy” to read translingually oriented written products (Canagarajah 2013a; Sohan 2009). As I have argued so far, and let me repeat here, it is not the ELLs who need to acquire the “dominant orientation to literacy” (Canagarajah, 2013a, p. 128) in order to orient themselves to the monolingual ideology.  Canagarajah (2013a) points out that translingual literacy as opposed to “autonomous literacy” requires the willingness to “move out of self-centeredness in assuming only their norms as relevant” (p. 131) and instead to take linguistic and cultural differences as the norm.  Further, Canagarajah (2013a) argues that translingual literacy involves the ability for “translingual negotiating strategies'' that multilinguals employ in a certain form of translingual writing (p. 145).   It seems that these “translingual negotiating strategies” (Canagarajah, 2013b) will give us a key to acquire translingual literacy. 

However, these “translingual negotiating strategies” that Canagarajah (2013b) explicate are mostly employed in the specific form of “translingual writing,” where the multilingual uses the visible linguistic and rhetorical resources available to them, as I demonstrate by starting this article with the open-letter to Amy Tan and inserting a couple of Japanese words.  The translingual writing that Canagarajah (2013b) analyzes contains, for instance, Arabic letters or some emojis.  However, as Matsuda (2014) and Lee (2016) warn, thus-narrowly defined “translingual writing” would end up with “linguistic tourism” (Matsuda,  p. 483) and can be reduced to “a ‘consumable collage’ of linguistic plurality” (Lee, 2016, p. 10; also see Schreiber & Watson).  Yes, glossdiversity (diversity of languages) is one of the ways that teachers can indicate that they value multilinguals’ linguistic wealth.  Nonetheless, this mere inclusion might jeopardize the equity when we demand ELLs employ visible linguistic differences in their writing especially when they do want to learn the English, which gives them tickets to the social ladder in U.S. society.  For sure, it is an inclusive gesture to have ELLs use their linguistic resources, but it is not necessarily equitable for them unless the inclusion leads to access to the capital they want.  As Schreiber and Watson (2018) state, “the choice to code-mesh[2] is a matter of agency” (p. 95).   The translingual writing that Canagarajah promulgates should not be demanded of students, especially when that leads to loss of their agency over the language that they learn.

Thus, we teachers/readers do not need to familiarize ourselves with “translingual negotiation strategies” that Canagarajah finds in his students’ “translingual writing” with code-meshing that contains visible linguistic differences, although some of them might be useful.   What we need, instead, is to look for ways in which we as teachers read and respond to ELLs’ written products generated through languages that are “always in contact” and “shamelessly hybridized” (Minh-Ha, 2010, p. 33), where English(es) used by multilinguals looks the same but are not quite the same as the English that we teachers have oriented ourselves in. 

[1]  The open letter in this article and the Japanese alphabet I used on page 10 is an example of “translingual writing”  (Horner) or “translingual practice” (Canagarajah).  That is a calculated form of writing which purports to give multilinguals an agency by allowing them to employ their linguistic wealth.  I do not have ample space to examine these terms such as translingual practice, translingual approach, translanguaging, etc. That said, I want to note that it is theoretically and practically irresponsible and misleading to use these terms interchangeably. 

[2] Translingual pedagogy and translingual orientation seem to be narrowly defined as “code-meshing,” which is also narrowly defined as either inclusion of nonstandard spoken language or inclusion of other languages into standardized English (Schreiber & Watson, 2018).   However, although “code-meshing” can be considered part of translingual orientation, translingual orientation does not just refer to the “code-meshing,” but to meshing of other codes.  For Pennycook, all languages are products of translanguaging. 

“RELOCALIZED LISTENING”

In order to familiarize ourselves with/in translingually oriented texts, it is essential to undo the fixed binaries that are prevalent not just in the field of composition and rhetoric studies but also in education in the U.S. Translingual texts are produced through constant contact with other languages and other ways of using a language and therefore “generat[ing] new grammars and meanings out of their synergy” (Canagarajah, 2016, p. 266 ).  The concept of “’deviations’ from the standard'” (Sohan, 2009, p. 270 ) or “error'” as opposed to ”correctness” has to be let go of at some points in the reader’s process of reading and in the language users’ processes of writing as well.  This “let-go” logically leads to another undoing of another polarization of the teacher and the student in writing courses.  When the norm is not the sameness but differences in meanings and forms, the binarized positions[1] of teachers as “receivers” or “encoders” and students as “producers” become blurry (Sohan, 2009, p. 271).   The “systems of hearing” that Royster (1996) called attention to in “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own” (as cited in Sohan, 2009, p. 274) decades ago has to be destabilized since the systems dictate our reading, writing, and thinking. As Sohan (2009) points out, “habituated 'systems of hearing',” or “the labyrinth of the ear”  with “the edges, the inner walls, the passages” in Derrida’s words, are “designed to undercut 'minority' voices" (p. 274).  These “systems of hearing” can be complicit in the prevalence of the monolingual ideology since the systems, devised to pick up the standardized English, can only catch what falls on their radars.  So that which does not fall on the radar cannot be heard or, what’s worse, even be recognized.   

It would be unimaginable to turn off the “systems of hearing” because the ears programmed for the systems are a part of the body.  However, what could be imaginable is to attempt to listen to what “the labyrinth of the ear” can’t capture easily, or what makes the ears uncomfortable. Canagarajah (2013a) states that “it [translingual literacy] compels us to treat variation, unpredictability, and deviation as the norm” (p. 79).  But then what would happen next?  As Amy Tan describes in “Mother Tongue,”  her mother’s English is not comprehensible for the staff at the hospital or the person at the bank, both of whom did not respond to her mother’s requests.  They recognized the mother’s English as “‘deviations’ from the standard” but did not know how to listen to them.  As Sohan (2014) points out, while Canagarajah emphasizes the importance of treating differences as norm, which I do not contest, his theorization of translingual literacy lacks practical instructions about what to do with some features that can be easily recognized as irregularities or errors. 

It is important to remind us here that linguistic features that are considered “deviations” do not necessarily derive from lack of language knowledge: Seen from translingually oriented views, deviations should not be polarized against a standard.  Rather, some unconventional uses of language are manifestations of “the need of language users to relocalize established conventions in light of users’ spatiotemporal contexts” (Sohan, 2014, p. 193).  Drawing heavily on Pennycook’s idea of language as a local practice, Sohan explains that “to relocalize established conventions” means to “employ[s] it [language] in context for which it has not been traditionally used” (p. 194).  Language users relocalize the use of language by relocating their thoughts from its established conventions into other ways of using it and/or into another language.   It is important to note that this employment of a certain usage of language is very different from the employment of a discourse that rhetorical situations determine.  In the traditional idea of rhetorical ecology, the rhetorical situations dictate the ways of writing/speaking and even responding to texts.  On the contrary, in order to understand texts at their hands, language users reshape their spatiotemporal contexts by relocalizing established conventions, which is also one form of translingual orientation (or translanguaging).  The reshaping through relocalization, or translanguaging, takes place when their context of writing brings them to “question [their] own positionality and location in relation to” texts that they grapple with (Sohan, 2014, p. 202).  This questioning could quake the linguistic grounding they stand on.  This sense of being linguistically exiled could result in relocalization of language.  

This sense of uprootedness from languages and this shaking positionality to texts and contexts of writing also come to me occasionally, for example, when I talk about my experiences that I had with/in Japanese languages or when I am entangled in complicated thoughts.  What I think I do on those occasions is to drift through both languages, partly exiling myself from both languages.  In this drifting exile, in order to make meaning from texts at hand, I “employ meshing, not just of codes, but of discourse, genre, convention, or style” (Sohan, 2014, p. 199), which is translingual in its broadest sense.  However, this employment can be generated in two distinct ways.  When I started this article with the open letter, I purposefully meshed the established convention of scholarly articles as genre with the localized convention that I was culturally and intellectually most familiar with.  I relocalized established conventions.  On the other hand, when I discussed my wobbly visceral relations to English and Japanese, I did not deliberately employ a meshing of any sort.  However, at the same time, I was aware that I might indeliberately relocalize English, or from the monolingual perspective deviate from their standard, by relocating my thoughts on the relations to the two languages into Japanese when I grappled with this almost impossible task of describing my visceral and bodily relations to the languages only in English. Despite this awareness, I did not know for sure if and how my translingually produced text fell on your “system of hearing.”  I did not purposefully do translanguaging[2].  Deliberate translanguaging can be cued by the language users.  On the other hand, indeliberate translanguaging is unnoticeable and even when recognizable, it is challenging.          

What is needed to engage with this relocalization, or translanguaging, is “relocalized listening” (Sohan, 2014, p. 193).  Discussing the notion of the literary imagination in the preface of her “Playing in the Darkness,” Toni Morrison (1992) wakes us that “writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability” (p. xiii).  When writers take a risk of leaving established convention as a safe space, either deliberately or not, readers accordingly should take a risk of re-tuning the “systems of hearing” in order to be responsible and response-able to the writer’s “sweaty fight” for meaning.  As writers relocalize language, “relocalized listening” asks that teachers-readers be more attentive to not only diversity of form but also diversity of meaning within a text and of a word.  When spatiotemporal contexts of writing and reading are reshaped by language users, language takes on new meanings because language is not a “pre-given entity” autonomous from time and space (Derrida, 2004; Min-ha, 2010 ; Pennycook, 2010; Canagarajah, 2019)

[1] For a record, this positioning as “receiver” has never been passive.  Rather, this position gives teachers the full-fledged power through panopticon that equips them with the “corrective lens.” 

[2] To call attention of those readers whose systems of hearing might not catch translingually produced writing, I needed to insert the brief intermission “Can you hear me?” which is a deliberate translingual practice in the sense that I intended to disrupt the linear seamless flow of writing that is valued in the monolingual ideology.