Introduction

Translanguaging describes the way that multilinguals move across their linguistic repertoires to enhance their communication. Beginning with investigations showing how those that engaged with this practice often did so creatively and for humorous intent, more recent studies of translanguaging have shown ways in which it can address disparity, including in the educational domain. Translanguaging has been purported to empower the speaker, particularly those who have one or more languages different from, or in addition to, those languages which are dominant in their society.

Translanguaging can be particularly valuable in situations where speakers of minority languages can become active agents who are able to construct meanings and identities through their ability to employ more than one language in their communication (Reference AlvarezAlvarez, 2014). Thus, translanguaging positions multilinguals as effective language users and, we argue, as such they should be considered to be proactive rather than defective language learners. This stands in considerable contrast to the way Australian Aboriginal students attending schools in the more remote areas of the country tend to be viewed, particularly if they are speakers of an Aboriginal dialect of English, Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) or one of the many creole languages spoken around the country, and known in Australia as Kriols. They may be expected to leave their languages at the school gate.

Language Background of Aboriginal Students

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of Australia constitute approximately 3 per cent of the total population of the country with the greatest numbers living in New South Wales and Queensland. However, the proportion of these First Nations people living in the remote areas of Australia are greatest in the Northern Territory (77 per cent) and Western Australia (25 per cent) areas of this vast land (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016). Thus, in these remote areas with which we are concerned in this chapter, Aboriginal peoples constitute the major proportion of the population in most of the communities.

The language ecology of remote First Nations communities is complex (Reference Simpson and WigglesworthSimpson & Wigglesworth, 2018). Standard Australian English (SAE) is not widely spoken in most of the communities although services (e.g. health, government, education) are almost exclusively communicated in SAE, often requiring interpreters. At home and in the community the languages spoken may be one of, or combinations of, the Traditional Aboriginal Language(s) (TIL) of the area, one of the new mixed language such as Light Warlpiri (Reference O’ShannessyO’Shannessy 2013; Reference O’Shannessy2015) or Gurindji Kriol (Reference Meakins, Michaelis, Maurer, Haspelmath and HuberMeakins, 2013; Reference Meakins, Hua, Algy and BromhamMeakins, Xia, Algy, & Bromham, 2019), or one of the local creoles of which there are multiple varieties, in which pronunciation, word meaning and pragmatics, as well as syntax, differ significantly from both SAE and Aboriginal English (AE). Aboriginal English is a non-standard dialect of English with differences in phonology, pragmatics and some word meanings. There are also some syntactic differences.

For many of the children who grow up in these remote communities, their first real contact with SAE is when they attend school or preschool where their teachers, for the most part, will speak only SAE, and may have very limited knowledge of the language/s the children are bringing to school. However, because the children are Aboriginal Australians, and thus born in Australia, it tends to be assumed that they speak English as their first language and often little attention is paid to the actual teaching of English. However, not only do they not speak English at home, but they are also learning English in a context where the language spoken in the community is also not English, but either a traditional language, a Kriol, or an Aboriginal English dialect. Thus, they are attending school in a context more akin to an English as a Foreign Language environment where the SAE input they receive is largely only available from their teachers (Reference Wigglesworth, Simpson, Wigglesworth, Simpson and VaughanWigglesworth & Simpson, 2018), although media is in English (such as television) and may be spoken in a few contexts, such as the local shop or the health centre if there is one.

Aboriginal Students and Translanguaging Practices

Before colonisation, Australian First Nations peoples were probably one of the most multilingual people in the world (Reference Laycock and WurmLaycock, 1979). Although many of the Traditional Aboriginal languages have been lost since that time, considerable multilingual ability has been retained in some of the more remote areas of the country. In those areas where fluent language speakers remain, many will speak more than one language, while others may speak a traditional language as well as the more recent creoles and Aboriginal Englishes which have emerged. This has resulted from the fact that boundaries between tribal groups in Australia have never been communicative boundaries, with people instead tending to speak their neighbouring languages as well as their own (Reference Rumsey, Walsh and YallopRumsey, 1993). In this way speaking multiple languages was the norm rather than the exception, with exogamous marriage customs contributing to multilingual families.

While such linguistic activity is known as multilingualism, it is closely related to translanguaging. As Reference Simpson and WigglesworthSimpson and Wigglesworth (2018) argue, speakers of traditional languages had, and many still have, knowledge of a range of different languages. In particular, multilingualism was encouraged by the expectation that politeness required that an individual at least attempt to speak the language of the person with whom they were conversing when located on their interlocutor’s land (Reference Simpson and WigglesworthSimpson & Wigglesworth, 2018).

Reference Singer and HarrisSinger and Harris (2016) report on multilingual language use at Warruwi on Goulburn Island where multiple languages are still spoken today, and children often grow up learning at least two languages. As a result, patterns of language use in the community are very diverse and variable. In such communities, translanguaging can be viewed as a natural component of multilingualism. It results in situations where speakers with access to multiple languages converse. Gaby, reporting on Kuuk Thaayore data recorded in Pormpuraaw on the west coast of Cape York, found that community monolingual conversations were ‘vanishingly rare, with most conversations involving between two and four languages’ (Reference GabyGaby 2006, p. 14). Simpson (pers. comm.) reports observing a conversation in Tennant Creek where both speakers were using the language of the country until one changed to the language in which they were most comfortable, while the other continued speaking the language of the country. Further to this, Reference Vaughan and MazzaferroVaughan (2018) makes a strong case for a role for translanguaging in decolonising languages and understanding local practices. Based on her analysis of language practices in the multilingual community of Maningrida she reports on two community contexts – a football match and an event at a public school, where she argues that speakers using both English and Burarra (the local language she focuses on in her chapter) is neither marked nor remarkable in such multilingual communities.

To date only a few studies have examined the role of translanguaging in the remote schools that Aboriginal students attend and where translanguaging can potentially provide a useful resource for these multilingual learners. Reference Oliver, Angelo, Steele and WigglesworthOliver, Wigglesworth, Angelo & Steele (2021) argue that the incorporation of translanguaging into classroom practice can improve student engagement in the classroom and enhance performance and achievement where English is not the first language or dialect of the students. An added benefit is that it can alert teachers to the range of linguistic ability of their students and encourage them to recognise the varied repertoires of their students. This may also contribute to teachers reflecting on the value of the languages the children bring to school.

In this chapter, we explore how these same learners – Australian Aboriginal children for whom SAE is an additional language or dialect – engage in translanguaging practices and illustrate how they can use the language playfully. At the same time, we show how precarious the school context is in terms of providing space for their languages.

Method

The data presented in the current chapter constitute a subset of a data set collected for a larger study exploring the language use of Aboriginal students in schools, both inside their classrooms and outside in the school playgrounds. To collect the data, and to make it as naturalistic as possible, at each school between five and ten children in three different grades (1, 3 and 5) were asked to wear a small recording device and a lapel microphone for one to one and a half hours during their school day at times in which they were participating both in the classroom and the playground. The children at the school we focus on in this chapter spoke a range of languages, from Aboriginal English, which most spoke fluently, to a mix of Aboriginal English and a local Kriol; some children also included insertions from the local traditional language of the area. In this chapter this language was Martu Wangka, a Western Desert language still spoken fluently in the Pilbara region, at least by older community members, although more minimally by younger people. All the students were acquiring Standard Australian English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD) in the school context. Their teachers, all of whom were speakers of SAE, were also recorded, although these recordings were used solely for clarification purposes where necessary during the transcription process.

We draw on language data collected at the focus school in both the classroom and the playground contexts, and we also include a bushwalk which occurred as part of the class’s activities. This spontaneous walk involved all the students in junior and middle primary classes (years 1 to 4, aged 5 to 9 years), the two researchers and two teachers going to a nature reserve across the road from the school and involved an additional hour of data collection. In particular, we focus on this experience because of the interesting and varied language which emerged as a result of the bush setting.

At all the schools participating in the larger study, including this one, ethics permission was sought and gained both from the relevant universities of the research team (University of Melbourne Ethics ID: 1646205) and from the Western Australian Education Department. Written permission was also gained from participating teachers, students and their parents as part of a pre-visit activity, prior to the recordings. At the time of recording, each child was asked orally to provide their permission to participate in the recordings.

On arrival at each school, we identified those students who had permission to participate but recorded only those children who consented orally at that time. In the classroom, each participating child was provided with a small pocket belt which was placed around their waist, with a small lapel microphone which attached to their collar or T shirt. The focus of this chapter is taken from approximately one and a half hours of audio interactional data recorded from each participating student. In many of the recordings, other children can also be heard or engaging with the talk. These were children who were not recorded and who are not identified, but whose contributions constitute part of interaction and are, therefore, included.

The recordings were transcribed in detail for analysis. The first step of the analysis involved identifying and coding the variety of language/s the children used (SAE, AAE, Kriol or Traditional language tokens), to whom they spoke, for what purpose, and whether these occurrences were in the playground or the classroom or on the bushwalk. The next step was to identify occasions where more than one language was used in the interaction. These were extracted for further examination which was undertaken qualitatively with a focus on the precarious nature of the children’s languages. These were then used as examples in this chapter. No quantitative analysis was attempted due to the nature and volume of the data involved.

Findings

The data show these Aboriginal children did indeed draw on their full linguistic repertoire utilising translanguaging as part of their school interactions – moving between AAE, Kriol and their traditional language to a limited extent, but also using SAE. It was clear that they adjusted their language choice according to audience and to the content of their discussions. Their SAE use exemplified this, given that it tended to be used only when their teachers were present. This reflects the precarity of use of the student’s first language at the school context where it tends to be restricted to a limited audience. The language most used by all the students was AAE. This occurred most often when talking with other students both in and out of the classroom, and particularly when sharing cultural knowledge and understandings, presumably in part as a way to establish their Aboriginal identity.

There were also occurrences of playfulness with language, not only with their peers, but at times with their teachers. In what follows we examine the children’s language usage in three different contexts: a bushwalk which took place during school hours, the classroom data and the playground data. In exploring their language practices, we consider whether the children were conversing amongst themselves, with their teachers or, particularly in the bushwalk context, with the researchers who were also present during that event. We draw on all three contexts in discussing the children’s language use.

Discussion

The children who participated in this study come to school with considerable linguistic competence and a great deal of cultural knowledge. While a number of teachers may have lived for some period of time in the communities, this is not the case for the majority, many of whom tend to be recent graduates of initial teacher education, and most of whom have little awareness of the children’s languages. This puts the children in the precarious position of having to be the ones to negotiate and manage language use in the school context. While the teachers may have some understanding of AAE, it is unusual for them to comprehend Kriol, and extremely unlikely that they are familiar with the traditional language, in this case, Martu Wangka. Often with minimal linguistic training in their education degrees, they may not recognise Aboriginal English as a different dialect, as discussed above.

The ability to move between languages does not come easily, especially in classroom contexts, but it can be developed as a skill with practice. Using multiple languages involves being flexible, and it is a cognitively demanding skill which needs active development. Schools ideally should be able help children do this by providing the pedagogical support necessary and through encouraging the children in the use of all their languages and not just to focus on one.

In classroom contexts such as the one discussed in this chapter, there is a pedagogical imperative to help the children develop their content understanding and this needs to be recognised. Equally, it is important that children are able to develop the strategic and communicative competence which is so important in the multilingual contexts in which they live. Embracing translanguaging can demonstrate to the children the value of their languages, their cultures and those of their community. Teachers, even without extensive knowledge of the languages, can negotiate discussions which identify the differences between different languages, and the extent to which they can vary at all levels of language from phonology to discourse. These topics are likely to be of great interest to the children and to engender extensive discussion (e.g. as found in the bushwalk in this study). We might expect that such activities will be highly engaging to children and will help them with their school curriculum activities. Given the rapid decrease we have observed in the strength and vitality of Indigenous language both in Australia and across the world, such discussion could also include the importance of maintaining the languages for the next generation so that they continue to be spoken. Children are, after all, the custodians of these languages.

In recognition of the children’s facility with language, we suggest that the use of translanguaging in the classroom (and the playground) will contribute to learning by enabling Aboriginal students both to take advantage of, and have recognised, all their range of linguistic resources. This will have several advantages for the students including allowing them to better understand the task that has been set, placing them in a better position to manage this, and allowing them to discuss it with others, including the teachers. However, we recognise that learning to translanguage is not trivial, and point out that using translanguaging practices can be precarious for the students who are very much dependent on how the teacher reacts to their language use. For instance, a negative reaction from a teacher (such as the senior teacher in this study) may be seen as tantamount to rejecting the students’ language background at a time when they are not yet confident in the acquisition of their second language or dialect.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we believe that students should be encouraged to use all their language resources (i.e. translanguaging), according to audience, context and need, rather than basing education on the binary system codeswitching with ‘home language’ and ‘school language’ being artificially separated at the school gate. Whilst acknowledging the challenges this presents both for the learners and their teachers, we believe translanguaging can serve to overcome the precarious learning situation of Aboriginal students – one in which they are seen as having ‘no’ language, or a language or dialect inappropriate to school.

Introduction: Recalling the Precarity of the Hegemonic

This collection puts into question three intertwined features of scholarship attending to translinguality: first, the relation of the translingual to “playfulness” in language; second, the relation of both translinguality and playfulness to “precarity”; and third, the relation of either of these to “criticality,” sometimes treated as cipher for political resistance. The driving force behind much of this scholarship is to recuperate and celebrate the language practices of the recognizably marginalized and, hence, by definition, recognizably socio-politically precarious who are, therefore, it is assumed, inclined toward political resistance: to be marginalized is to be socially precarious and hence to be honored for one’s political resistance to that marginalization. As Reference LiLi Wei (2018, p. 23) argues when describing the translanguaging of multilinguals, such practices underscore

By this argument, insofar as multilinguals are by definition outside the cultural norm prescribed by the language ideology of monolingualism, they are more inclined to and more adept at creativity and critical resistance.

The concern that prompts this chapter is that such attention to the creativity and criticality of multilinguals risks (however inadvertently) reinforcing the invisibility, and unquestioned stability, uniformity, and hegemony of all that the language ideology of monolingualism leads us to identify as not “translingual,” “translanguaging,” “playful,” or “precarious”: the norm against which all these are set and in terms of which they are defined as somehow “different.” Thus, the very attempts to undo prevailing notions of “named” languages associated with the language ideology of monolingualism as simply “languages” that are stable, internally uniform, transhistorical entities – their purported status as lacking precarity altogether – reinforce those notions.Footnote ¹

Further, criticality is identified strictly with what the language ideology of monolingualism leads us to recognize as different language practices, such as Reference LiLi Wei’s (2018, p. 12) examples of “shitizens” and “democrazy.” That is to say, it identifies criticality with the practices themselves, such as what is called “translanguaging,” rather than with a particular ideology. This has two deleterious consequences: First, it restricts recognition of the potential of language use for the production of knowledge to what stands in recognizable contrast and opposition to the hegemonic: at best, to critique alone, excluding the ongoing reproduction of already accepted knowledge. Knowledge articulated in forms seen as conventional is dismissed, as is the labor involved in and necessary to its ongoing reproduction and, thus, at least by implication, the vulnerability of that knowledge to change – its unacknowledged precarity. Secondly, and relatedly, the identification of knowledge with specific kinds of linguistic formulations – for example, what is recognized as instances of translanguaging – precludes the potential use value to which formulations not identified in such ways might be put. Effectively, the potential use value of specific formulations is conflated with the exchange value hegemonic culture attributes to them. The role of criticality in renewing, reinforcing, and thereby (however minimally) changing knowledge articulated in conventional forms (by rendering it renewed and reinforced) is overlooked.

Labor and the Translingual: Relocating Knowledge and Language in Practice

An alternative I’ll advance here is the “practice” model for knowledge-making that aligns with a translingual orientation to language as located temporally as well as spatially, in practice (Reference PennycookPennycook, 2010). Reference OrlikowskiOrlikowski (2006, p. 460) explains this view of knowledge as holding that:

I use this chapter to sketch what this alternative formulation might entail for translingual scholarsFootnote ² and teachers of language and literacy. This alternative, it bears emphasizing, shares at least some of what I take to be the broader aims and impetus for scholarship on both translanguaging and translinguality: specifically, to challenge discrimination on the basis of attributed language practices, commonly manifesting in rejections of the acceptability and even intelligibility of language practices identified with some groups as a means of marginalizing and maintaining the marginalized position of members of those groups – for example, African Americans castigated ostensibly for their failure to conform in their utterances to what is purported to be “Standard English.” Scholars have commonly pushed back against such discrimination by claiming for those groups’ language practices the status of themselves constituting languages, by insisting, for instance, on the logic and rule-governed character of what are designated to be “nonstandard” languages and language varieties (see, for example, Conference, 1974), and groups’ right to use these. Translanguaging scholars have pushed back against such discrimination by claiming for individuals the right, need, and value of mixing such named languages as, essentially, idiolects (see, e.g., Reference Otheguy, García and ReidOtheguy et al., 2015, pp. 288–91). Translingual scholars, meanwhile, have demurred from this strategy insofar as it appears to reinforce the reification of language practices and, however inadvertently, the legitimacy of some practices as “standard” – i.e., as internally uniform, stable, and discrete from other languages – and hence to simply multiply the number of possible languages so conceived (Reference Makoni and PennycookMakoni & Pennycook, 2005, p. 147)), and, further, to ascribe to those practices themselves, rather than to practitioners, agency in knowledge production (Reference Horner and AlvarezHorner and Alvarez, 2019, pp. 17–19).

The translanguaging position is illustrated in Reference YoungYoung’s (2009) argument against treating African American English and “Standard” English as two distinct varieties of English and, instead, for the legitimacy of code-meshing, which he distinguishes from code-mixing (i.e., code-shifting) and, importantly, from pedagogies that require the latter and that reject the legitimacy of the former. Unfortunately, such efforts to herald the value of code “meshing” have themselves inadvertently reinforced the notion that languages are sets of stable, discrete, internally uniform “codes” to be meshed (see Reference LuLu, 2009; Reference VanceVance, 2009) and to the exoticization of utterances that the language ideology of monolingualism leads us to perceive as the meshing of such codes (see Reference MatsudaMatsuda, 2014). Hence, celebrations of code-meshing, so defined, tend toward the same errors as those defending and celebrating translanguaging.

I am distinguishing, then, between three forms of pushback to the language ideology of monolingualism: The discourse of language rights, about which I will have little to say hereFootnote ³; the celebration of translanguaging, in reaction to and hence defining itself in terms of named languages; and translingual theory, which is directed not at forms of glossodiversity per se but at acknowledging and honoring the labor, and the value of the labor, entailed in all utterances.Footnote ⁴ As noted by Reference Horner and AlvarezHorner and Alvarez (2019, p. 10), while

Thus, both the strategy of granting conventional (monolinguistic) language status to marginalized language practices and the strategy of advocating for the legitimacy of meshings of languages granted that status omit what I argue are, or should be, three key insistences of translingual theory: First, an insistence on the labor that any and every utterance requires, whether that utterance is ascribed status as conventional or deviant, in producing and reproducing language; second, an insistence on the value of that labor in carrying out this task; and, third, and concomitantly, an insistence on the precarity of what is purported to be hegemonic, as well as what may be broadly termed the social. While the labor required in the production of what the language ideology of monolingualism disposes us to recognize as “deviant” (e.g., translanguaging, code-meshing) is commonly recognized – albeit sometimes identified as instancing “playfulness” (when not dismissed as error) – the labor required for the production of utterances deemed “conventional” (as well as the playfulness it manifests) is commonly occluded.

But occlusion of the labor requisite to the maintenance – reproduction and inevitable revision – of any form of utterance contributes to the sense that, ordinarily, humans are mere “users” of languages that somehow self-maintain as standard, “the norm.” That is, the dependence of languages on the concrete labor of language users for their continuation (reproduction and revision) contributes to the treatment of languages as themselves commodities – standard or exotic, ordinary or niche – that is foundational to the language ideology of monolingualism and, hence, antithetical to a language ideology of translingualism.

Admittedly, it might well seem perverse to focus on utterances, or those producing them, that seem simply representative of the “normal,” “standard,” conventional, or hegemonic. And commonly, members of recognizably marginalized populations engaging in the production of such kinds of utterances are seen as, at best, bending to the will of hegemony: conforming to or accommodating its demands rather than attempting to resist them – hence as evincing an absence of criticality, let alone “playfulness” (Reference Lu and HornerLu & Horner, 2013, p. 584). But then the only apparent alternative available – to resist by engaging in what is recognizably “translingual” – would seem to doom speakers and writers to continued marginalization as outside the norm – as in fact marginal or, at best, exotic. Further, it would seem to doom speakers and writers attempting criticality and/or playfulness to pursuing utterances that the dominant has already defined for them as deviant: to be at best reactive to, and thereby inevitably to reinforce the normative power of, what monolingualism prescribes as “the standard.”

The Precarity of the Hegemonic, the Creativity of Reproduction

To resolve this dilemma, it is worth emphasizing the labor that language “maintenance” requires – that is, the continuation of language as the ever emerging outcome of language practice.Footnote ⁵ And to do that requires identifying conventional language, as well as the hegemonic power of the populations identified as those to whom that language is somehow deemed “proper,” as also precarious. After all, as Reference WilliamsRaymond Williams (1977, p. 112) has reminded us, hegemony “does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified.” What translingual theory needs to attend to, in concert with its attention to what the hegemonic identifies as marginal language practices, is the precarity of the hegemonic: Its vulnerability to and reliance on labor for its maintenance, renewal, recreation, defense, as well as modification. In keeping with this, we need to recognize the creativity – i.e., the labor and “playfulness” – operating in re-creation (i.e. reproduction: see Reference PopePope, 2005, p. 88). Translingual theory’s insistence on the inevitability of difference even in the repetition of utterances (Reference PennycookPennycook, 2010), given their unique spatiotemporal location, and the emergent character of language (Reference CalvetCalvet, 2006, p. 7), make possible this identification of the different in the seemingly same (conventional, normal) as well as the same in the seemingly different.

This perspective on labor brings out the agency, criticality, and creativity of the work of sustaining, or reinforcing, common language practices and the social, as well as the work of deviating from them. This perspective thereby brings to the fore the actual precarity of the social and, for my purposes here, the hegemonic – its dependence on labor for its continued life. To keep to my own scholarly focus on writing and its teaching, writers are responsible, though not alone responsible as individuals, for reinforcing or challenging various elements of the social through their writing.

Our difficulty in recognizing the labor required to maintain the existing social order as labor is itself an accomplishment of the hegemonic, a way by which it discourages counter-hegemonic efforts. Conversely, the hegemonic’s susceptibility to challenge, and hence its own precarity, is revealed by bringing to the fore its dependence on continued labor to sustain itself. Consequently, the hegemonic encourages those wishing to resist it not to exploit its vulnerability – its dependence on ongoing labor for its reproduction – but, instead, to seek out and honor only those practices that hegemonic culture itself has designated as resistant, different, laborious. We thus can end up doing the hegemonic’s work for it, even in our efforts to undermine it (see Reference Gibson-GrahamGibson-Graham, 2006). Alternatively, by acknowledging the operation of labor in all languaging, we can come to recognize the creative in the re-creative, the productive in the reproductive, and the hegemonic as social historical and hence precarious rather than invulnerable.Footnote ⁶ From this perspective, language, like the social, is relocated in time and space as the ever-emerging outcome of our labors, to be both honored and questioned as such: precarious rather than stable, temporal rather than timeless, situated rather than universal.

Further, while my discussion to this point draws on the agonistic framework of the hegemonic and the resistant, here I’ll add that it is also crucial to not only acknowledge but also honor the labor of re-producing the social. Social reproduction is commonly viewed as antithetical to change necessary for more just social relations, given the injustice of existing social relations. But that view, in its focus on unjust social relations, overlooks the full range of relations making up the social, conflating the hegemonic with the totality of the social (and thereby contributing to its claims to constitute the totality of the social). In this way, any and all practices deemed conventional become targets for change, overlooking the necessity, for human continuation, of renewing as well as revising many social practices. For, as Reference WilliamsWilliams (1980, p. 35) has also reminded us, many such practices, deemed “un-productive” insofar as they operate beneath the radar or notice of commodity exchange in not contributing to the realization of surplus value, are in fact “vital productive social forces, which are in the broad sense, from the beginning, basic” (emphases added).

I am arguing, then, for recognition that the ostensibly “conventional” and “standard” are precarious and unstable, the ever-emerging outcome of labor: both labor in the production of forms recognized as “standard” and labor in the recognition of them as such. Hence, we need to attend as much to the ordinary in language practices for the labor involved in their production as to what we are disposed to recognize as extraordinary – even, dare I say, “translingual” – and to honor that labor. For, from the perspective on translinguality I am arguing for here, it is not so much the specific forms taken in utterances that marks utterances as translingual or not but, rather, the relation speakers adopt to language through their utterances. Speakers’ (and writers’) recognition of themselves as agents contributing through their labor to the ongoing production and revision of language, knowledge, and the social is what distinguishes them as translingual, whether or not the specific forms identified in any of their utterances are deemed (by some) to be conventional. We do speakers and writers a disservice in refusing to acknowledge the contributions of their labor to the (re)production of language in those of their utterances that appear conventional. As Blommaert (echoing Williams) has reminded us, language

What is needed, then, to put into question common identifications of the translingual with instances of recognizable glossodiversity is to attend to the labor and, hence by definition, fundamental creativity and value of all utterances. Translinguality, from this perspective, refers not to a particular set of forms nor to those writers and speakers who produce such forms but, rather, to an orientation of speakers and writers to language and knowledge and to themselves as participants in the ongoing (re)production and revision of all three. It is not an exotic or marginal species of language practice but, instead, an inescapable characteristic of language use, just as difference in language, from this perspective, is not a choice but an unavoidable inevitability, once we relocate language in time as well as space as ever emergent (Reference PennycookPennycook, 2010).

From this perspective, the forms writers deploy, conventional or not, are not per se significant. Instead, what matters is whether or not the writers are seeing themselves as meaning makers, and hence are deploying whatever forms they write as a means of creating particular meanings. After all, even those forms identified as paradigmatically translingual or translanguaging, such as “shitizens” or “democrazy,” are deemed such only by attributing a particular intention to those writing them, whereas it is at least possible that they might well represent simple misspellings. It depends on the kind of agency readers are willing to grant or attribute to the writers (see Reference HornerHorner, 1992; Reference Lees and EnosLees, 1987, Reference Lees, Donahue and Quandhal1989; Reference LuLu, 1994; Reference WilliamsWilliams, 1981).

Thinking to Know, Knowing to Not Know

I’ll use a sample of writing by a college student conventionally identified as French/English bilingual to illustrate and elaborate on what it might mean to take an approach recognizing the fundamentally creative character of all languaging, including what might seem “ordinary” as well as what might seem to be somehow “creative,” and the criticality such languaging evinces. The writing was produced for a section I taught several years ago of a course – “Introduction to College Writing” – required of all first-year undergraduate students at my institution and similar to first-year composition courses ubiquitous in postsecondary institutions in the USA. In the student essay from which the excerpt below is taken, the student was writing about Western historians of Hawaii and the importance of language for knowledge in light of what native Hawaiian activist Haunani-Kay Trask has written about these matters in her essay “Notes from a native daughter” (Reference Trask and Martin1987). This issue was raised in the assignment to which the student’s essay was responding. The excerpt is from a section of the student’s essay titled “Thinking to Know”Footnote ⁷:

I anticipate that at least some scholars of translingual writing would be inclined to focus on features of this student’s writing that suggest breaks with at least some forms of what I recognize to be contemporary conventional English practice. For example, as I’ve observed before (Horner, 2022), the student uses prepositions in ways I myself would not expect, as in the phrase “blind of their ignorance,” and the phrases “by consequence” or “in consequence” in place of what I take to be the more idiomatic “as a consequence” or “consequently.” She uses verb phrases like “make difference between” where I would expect “distinguish between” or “differentiate between,” and the phrase “committing a mistake” instead of “making a mistake” or “committing an error.” There’s also some evidence that the student is unfamiliar with some conventions of Edited American English notation, as in her consistent capitalization of the word “Historians,” something she may have picked up from her fellow students’ writing.

But the student is also manipulating language to advance a subtle conceptual distinction. I refer here to her phrases “thinking to know” and “knowing to not know,” on which I will primarily focus for the remainder of this chapter, for reasons I hope will become clear. As I’ve observed before (Horner, 2022), these phrases might well seem awkward to some readers, especially in comparison to more conventional terms like “ignorance,” “blind arrogance,” or “humility.” And it’s possible that the writer may have produced these phrases through a kind of translation from the French “penser savoir” and “savoir pas savoir,” or a play on “savoir penser” or even Victor Hugo’s “savoir, penser, rêver” (see Reference AnhouryAnhoury, 2018), just as her phrase “make difference between” might be a translation from “faire la distinction entre.” However, in saying this, I want to be clear that I’m simply speculating, based on my knowledge of the student’s own acknowledged fluency with French.

More to the point, as I have attempted to suggest by my own characterizations of my responses to the student’s phrases, it’s not at all clear to me that these phrases constitute instances of translanguaging or translingual writing, at least as these are commonly understood: The student may, or may not, have drawn on her knowledge of common French as well as English language practices in producing the phrases, but the phrases themselves do not stand out as instances of translanguaging or translinguality in the way that, I expect, Reference LiLi Wei’s (2018, p. 12) examples of “democrazy” or “shitizen” stand out for many people. There is nothing of the brazen play with spelling, for example, to mark her phrases as instances of what we are disposed to recognize as creative resistance to norms (of spelling and beliefs about democracy and citizenship).

Nonetheless, while not toying with linguistic forms in ways that readers might be disposed by the language ideology of monolingualism to recognize as instances of such toying, they do, like all utterances, represent instances of reworking common practice. As the term “common practice” itself suggests, that reworking might well appear to be either a reiteration or a revision of that practice. The student’s phrases may currently be uncommon in some settings and common in others, common to some readers (and writers) and not others.

Realizing the Use Value of the Common through Labor

Even more to the point, for me and the students in the course in which this essay was discussed (with author identification removed), the phrases did not raise the question of whether they constituted legitimate expressions of a particular language. Instead, they raised a question more useful for the work of those producing and encountering them (namely my students and me) – specifically, our exploration of the role of prior knowledge, or assumptions about knowledge, in learning. There was a use value, in other words, that the writer’s (and readers’) labor produced, a value that by definition does not reside in the linguistic outcome of that labor – the phrases in isolation – which, I submit, are far less likely to be susceptible to either exoticization or demonization.

That these phrases were written by a student conventionally identified as bilingual is, from this standpoint, immaterial. And yet we can say that they evince, and have produced, criticality and even playfulness – not about monolingualist language ideology, but about knowledge and learning by putting into conversation two competing definitions for knowing and thinking and the relation between these. And in so doing, they also evince criticality and playfulness toward the ordinary role assigned students like this one in courses like the one in which the student produced this text: a role in which, institutionally at least, she was expected not to contribute to knowledge and language, and knowledge about language, nor to be able to, but, instead, at best, to passively and gravely receive reifications of these in order to acquire skills necessary to college writing (as suggested by the course title “Introduction to College Writing”). In short, the writer, through her labor, has contributed to semiodiversity, regardless of whether we designate the form of her labor to also instance glossodiversity. The writer has positioned herself in a way critically and playfully at odds with how postsecondary institutions position students like her and her colleagues in courses like the one for which she produced her essay.

That she has positioned herself in this way in producing the other phrases I’ve identified above – “make difference between,” “blind of their ignorance,” “in consequence” – as well as her deployment of phrases that appear to be more conventional (e.g., “if I believe that I know what molecules are, I will not take the time to find the meaning of the word even if I have the wrong conception”) is more difficult to assess, or at least recognize. But this points not to the insignificance of her use of these phrases but, rather, to the limitations of the assumption that criticality and playfulness are present only in recognizable breaks with convention in form and meaning. It’s hard, at least for me, to see a break with conventional meaning in the phrase “blind of their ignorance,” but this is not evidence of the student’s failure to exercise criticality in formulating the phrase. To suggest otherwise is to reduce criticality to being defined only in terms of and relation to what passes for hegemony, and thus to reinforce hegemonic notions of what counts as criticality (or playfulness), and thus to do the bidding of the hegemonic. Alternatively, we can ask ourselves and our students, in class discussions of student writing as well as in work with individual students, to question the potential use of such phrasings, without reference to the possible relation of the forms used to conventional phrasings – a question that, given the fluid and diverse character of what counts as conventional phrasings, we would be wise to know to not know, rather than think to know. In doing so, we can then recuperate a sense of the critical position and, more importantly, critical work the student is doing in addressing the question of the relation of knowledge and language.

Small Potatoes? Fetishizing the “Different,” Neglecting the Common(s)

It might well be suggested that, if we were to identify the student’s work strictly with the phrases “thinking to know” and “knowing to not know” in isolation, that work might seem like a small achievement, and one hardly worth our attention, unlike more brazen examples of translingual writing – that is, examples that we are conditioned by monolingualist ideology to recognize as translingual – or, better, translanguaging – vs. “normal” forms of utterance. But as with the failure to see criticality in deployments of quasi-conventional phrasings, I think the view of this as “small” is the result of readers’ learned habit of fetishizing particular language forms, which are then attributed agency to produce effects by themselves: commodity fetishism, recall, treats the emergent consequences of concrete labor as, instead, the consequences of the commodity itself (Reference MarxMarx, 1976, p. 165). Hence the tendency to treat specific instances of what the language ideology of monolingualism disposes readers to recognize as “translingual” or “translanguaging” as in themselves meriting attention and having effects. That tendency can lead us to ask questions like “what can translingual writing do?” to the neglect of the concrete labor of speakers and listeners, writers and readers and the role of that labor in producing meaningful outcomes of meanings made. It can thus lead us to misattribute the effects of that labor to the forms themselves. Conversely, the phrases “thinking to know” and “knowing to not know” come to carry any value at all, and then strictly a use rather than exchange value, only in the context of the course, the writer, and her readers – that is to say, in the context of the concrete labor of writing and reading.

Further, it’s worth acknowledging, and perhaps emphasizing, that while I have characterized the work the student has accomplished as advancing a particular perspective on the role of prior knowledge in shaping subsequent knowledge – “thinking to know” serving as a barrier, and “knowing to not know” serving as a condition for knowledge – that perception is, of course, not new, at least as newness is commonly understood regarding knowledge. Indeed, it can be dismissed as itself “common,” and even a version of a “commonplace” about preconceptions interfering with true understanding, the need for intellectual humility, and so on. But the knowledge is, nonetheless, new once the spatiotemporal location of the students’ phrases are recognized: Specifically, this student, in that course, at that institution, in that essay. The phrases introduced effectively re-new, and reinforce, the “commonplace,” thereby contributing to the commons of knowledge by giving a specific place in those commons greater reinforcement and renewal, the student’s labor rendering it reinforced and renewed.

Recognizing Language as Labor: Seeing Students as Writers

From the standpoint of pedagogy, a focus on this labor would reinforce in students the contributions they themselves can and do make, wittingly or not, for better and worse, to language and knowledge through their labor as writers and readers and, thus, their position as agents bearing responsibility through their writing for maintaining, reinforcing, and revising language, knowledge, and the social that language and knowledge contribute to constituting as an “ongoing … accomplishment” (Reference OrlikowskiOrlikowski 2006, p. 460). Whether student writing appears to follow exactly what students have learned to be common language practice or to deviate from that practice, the students are engaged in the labor of rewriting the language, and hence in creativity. What matters, perhaps for applied linguistics, and certainly for teachers of languages, written or otherwise, is not so much the relation of students’ utterances to what passes for common practice with a language, or languages; not whether they are engaging in something we recognize as translanguaging. What matters is the relation the students adopt toward what they do.

Williams has observed that “the most important thing a worker ever produces is himself [sic], himself in the fact of that kind of labour” (Reference Williams1980, p. 35). If we accept that all languaging is work (albeit of a kind we are disposed not to recognize as work, or as “productive”), then language users perennially produce a sense of themselves in the fact of that work. However, as Reference Kramsch, Zarate, Lévy and KramschKramsch (2008, p. 322) has observed of non-native speakers of language, “Peu d’apprenants ont conscience du role qu’ils jouent … sur la vie ou la mort d’une langue, son développement, son usage, son potentiel sémiotique.”Footnote ⁸ This is a consequence of monolingualist ideology’s representation of language users as mere “users” of something given to them, with the responsibility of then having to use it “correctly” or “properly” or “appropriately.” Language work, in this representation, thus becomes a matter of following orders, and language workers are those who try to follow such orders. Those who engage in translanguaging, say, might well see themselves as enjoying the “freedom” of being able to break the rules and choose from an expanded range of options and combinations. This freedom of choice, however, risks maintaining their position as no more than consumers – savvier and more fortunate consumers, no doubt, of a greater variety of choices, but consumers nonetheless, whose avowed freedom remains restricted by the same terms of work as those attempting dutifully to just follow the rules.

By contrast, the translingual perspective I am arguing for insists on shifting the sense of language use from consumption to production – even when the acts of production appear merely to exactly re-produce conventional forms. There is far less emphasis, or concern, with doing what is recognizably “new” or “different,” since from this perspective, phenomenologically, every utterance is inevitably new and different, whatever forms are (re)iterated (Reference CalvetCalvet, 2006; Reference PennycookPennycook, 2010). Instead, there is an insistence on the role played by the concrete labor of every instance of writing and speaking, reading and listening in sustaining and revising any and all language, the social relations advanced through such usages, and the responsibility for contributing to such relations through ways of writing and speaking, reading and listening. To attend to these basic social forces, we need to shift our attention from the outcomes of that labor we have learned to designate as instancing translinguality, and toward the labor itself.

Introduction: Precarity and Translingual Practice

The concept of precarity, which encompasses ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’ (Reference BeckBeck, 1986), is particularly relevant to today’s world. Precarity is most often discussed in relation to employment regimes where social protections are minimized (Reference WalshWalsh, 2019). For example, the October 2019 ELT Journal ‘Key Concept’ article focuses on the precarious employment of many English language teachers and adjunct academics known as ‘taxi professors’ (Reference Simbürger and NearySimbürger & Neary, 2016). However, especially with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of precarity has taken on broader dimensions. Applications of precarity in research have proliferated in the social sciences to encompass a wide range of domains (Reference MillarMillar, 2017), including language use in English-medium education (EME).

Precarity in EME contexts relates to intersecting inequalities, sociolinguistic challenges, monolingual biases, and neoliberal ideologies. As Reference WalshWalsh (2019) recognizes, ‘the precarity of today is linked to neoliberalism’ (p. 460), also known as neoliberalized modernity (Reference Sunyol, Codó, Rojo and PercioSunyol & Codó, 2020). Neoliberalism is reflected in higher education through the dominance of commercial interests and processes of marketization (in the form of league tables and metrics), enabling students to exercise ‘marketized choices’ (Reference Ding and BruceDing & Bruce, 2017). Internationalization and accompanying English-medium instruction (EMI) policies are interwoven with neoliberal ideologies, where English symbolizes linguistic and cultural capital (Reference FoucaultFoucault, 2008) leading to economic success and prosperity (Reference Sharma and PhyakSharma & Phyak, 2017). In many global contexts, there is pressure on students to become ideal ‘neoliberal subjects’ (Reference De Costa, Park and WeeDe Costa et al., 2020) by dutifully and enthusiastically mastering English and/or other symbolically powerful languages as a form of ‘linguistic entrepreneurship’ (Reference Pujolar, Martin Rojo and Del PercioPujolar, 2019, p.113). However, such a view of positive self-directed upward trajectories via EME is rose-tinted in many cases. The experiences of EME plurilingual university students is typically more complex and conflicting especially in relation to language use and levels of belonging.

Linguistic ecologies at English-medium universities are most often plurilingual or translingual in character. Translingualism ‘allows for the interaction and mutual influence of … languages in a more dynamic way’ than multilingualism, which ‘keeps languages distinct’ (Reference Canagarajah, Liyange, Martin-Jones, Blackledge and CreeseCanagarajah & Liyanage, 2012, p. 50). Translingualism incorporates a plethora of ‘trans-concepts’ (Reference Sun and LanSun & Lan, 2021) such as translingual practice (Reference CanagarajahCanagarajah, 2013), translanguaging (Reference García and LiGarcía & Li, 2014; Reference WilliamsWilliams, 1994), translinguistics (Reference Dovchin and LeeDovchin & Lee, 2019), transglossia (Reference Sultana, Dovchin and PennycookSultana et al., 2015), translingual literacy (Reference Lu and HornerLu & Horner, 2013) and translingual dispositions (Reference Lee and JenksLee & Jenks, 2016). The prefix ‘trans’ signifies transcending autonomous languages in a move away from the structuralist paradigm (Reference CanagarajahCanagarajah, 2013). Thus, translingual practice involves plurilingual speakers using their full linguistic repertoires and semiotic resources in a fluid and borderless way to aid communication and reflect authentic linguistic identities.

Although translingual practice amongst plurilingual speakers is acknowledged as ‘regular’ (Reference Bolander and SultanaBolander & Sultana, 2019), ‘second nature’ (Reference Hopkyns, Zoghbor and HassallHopkyns et al., 2021), ‘ordinary’ (Reference Dovchin and LeeDovchin & Lee, 2019), and ‘unremarkable’ (Reference Pennycook and OtsujiPennycook & Otsiji, 2015), its reception and acceptance vary according to space, power dynamics, and social context. While translingual practice in popular culture and on social media is often viewed positively as playful, charming, clever, or quirky amongst ‘21st century international class citizens’ (Reference MendozaMendoza, 2021), such language use tends to be devalued amongst less privileged classes as well as being ‘frowned upon’ (Reference Creese and BlackledgeCreese & Blackledge, 2010, p. 105) in formal educational settings, such as in EMI classrooms (Reference Hopkyns, Elyas, Hopkyns and ZoghborHopkyns & Elyas, 2022). A rift between translingual practice and standardized English expectations in language programs, EMI courses, and gatekeeper assessments can create tension, discomfort, low self-esteem, depression, discrimination, and a general sense of precarity amongst students. On the other hand, students and teachers may use translingual practice in EMI universities as a way of problematizing monolingual ideologies and expectations and as a form of resistance to neoliberal ideologies promoting the linguistic capital of English in neoliberal modernity. Since the 2010s, with the emergence of the ‘translingual turn’ (Reference Horner, Lu, Royster and TrimburHorner et al., 2011), research on translingual practice in education has predominately taken place in bilingual Spanish-English primary school contexts in the USA and, to a lesser extent, Asian and European contexts. Fewer studies have looked at the politics of translingual practice in higher education in peripheral contexts, especially in the Muslim world, where region-specific intersecting factors such as culture, religion, and geopolitics affect the dynamics of language use. As Reference KarmaniKarmani (2005a) states, English in the Muslim world presents a unique set of socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-religious complexities. While the concept of precarity in higher education is usually connected with faculty working conditions and job security, linguistic practice and level of belonging of students in English-medium universities is an under-researched area. This chapter aims to bridge current gaps in the literature by providing insights into the political underbelly of translingual practice in the English-medium higher education contexts of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bangladesh.

Sociolinguistic Background: United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh

In 1971, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came into existence as a young nation and Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan. The UAE and Bangladesh share a complex history with Britain through colonialism in the case of Bangladesh and ‘informal colonialism’ (Reference OnleyOnley, 2005) in the case of the UAE. Britain’s colonial legacy in Bangladesh ended in 1947. At this time, Bangladesh separated from India and merged with Pakistan due to shared dominant Muslim identities (Reference Bolander and SultanaBolander & Sultana, 2019). To maintain its distinct Bengali nationalism and culture, Bangladesh won its independence twenty-four years later. In the UAE, shortly after oil was discovered in the region in the mid-twentieth century, British presence there dissipated. The area then known as the Trucial States transformed dramatically from mainly desert land, populated by Bedouin tribes and traders, to the international hub it is today. English in both contexts has become distanced from British colonialism and now tends to be viewed as the language of development, globalization, education, and commerce with significant socio-cultural influence (Reference Hopkyns, Siemund and LeimgruberHopkyns, 2020a, Reference Hopkyns2020b; Reference SultanaSultana, 2014a, Reference Sultana2014b). In both the UAE and Bangladesh, a vast majority of citizens are Muslim, and Islam is visibly intertwined with everyday life from early morning calls to prayer to scenes of worship in Mosques and public spaces such as malls and universities. Linguistically, both countries have an official language (Arabic in the UAE and Bengali in Bangladesh) and use English as a lingua franca and a medium of instruction. Although the UAE is traditionally thought of as an ‘expanding circle’ country (Reference Kachru, Quirk and WiddowsonKachru, 1985) where English is taught as a subject rather than used as a second language, the rapid expansion of EMI and the omnipresence of English in wider society renders this categorization questionable. As Reference Siemund, Al-Issa, Rahbari, Leimgruber and OnyskoSiemund et al., (2021) argue, the UAE shows signs of moving from the expanding circle toward the outer circle. Higher education in the UAE is dominated by EMI. Private international schools, which are becoming increasingly popular with Emiratis, are mainly EMI (Reference Gobert and GallagherGobert, 2019) and EMI is used for core subjects in government schools. Bangladesh has a long history of English as a second language in society and EMI has long been common in higher education and to a lesser extent in schools. The amount of EMI in schools tends to be connected to socioeconomic levels and whether schools are state or private, with the former having less EMI. Both the UAE and Bangladesh are linguistically diverse with over 100 languages and dialects spoken in the former (UAE Fact sheet, 2021) and approximately 40 in the latter (Bangladesh.com, 2021).

Although the UAE and Bangladesh share commonalities, key differences include demographics and socio-economic conditions, amongst other factors. In the UAE, citizens comprise only 11.5 per cent of the population due to a large and diverse transnational population employed in mainly private sector jobs, including construction and service industries (The World Bank, 2021). In Bangladesh, citizens outnumber transnational residents, as is the case in most countries. In socioeconomic terms, the UAE is classified as ‘high income’ whereas Bangladesh is classified as ‘lower middle income’ (The World Bank, 2021). Such dynamics intersect with language use and influence levels of precarity.

Despite financial and social privileges for Emiratis in the UAE, there is a ‘paradoxical shift in power in relation to language use’ (Reference Hopkyns, Siemund and LeimgruberHopkyns, 2020a, p. 253). Although Arabic was made the official language of the UAE in 2008, the most visible language in public spaces is English, especially in the UAE’s largest cities Abu Dhabi and Dubai. English is needed in multiple aspects of everyday life to the point where a lack of proficiency in English equates to a ‘linguistic disability’ (Reference Hopkyns, Siemund and LeimgruberHopkyns, 2020a). In Bangladesh, English also plays a major role outside classrooms, such as in entertainment and leisure activities (Reference SultanaSultana, 2014a), making it an enabling language in society. In both UAE and Bangladesh English-medium universities, there are disparities between students who have attended EMI private or international schools and those who attend government schools. In EMI higher education, the latter group are linguistically disadvantaged due to reduced length of exposure to English as well as various intersecting factors such as cultural capital at home and socio-economic circumstances. As the UAE is a recently formed nation, the current generation of university students is often the first in their families to attend university, meaning that they may lack cultural capital or support with English in their homes. In Bangladesh, economic hardship is a reality for many families which influences learning environments and emotions around language use (Reference Khan, Sultana, Sultana, Roshid, Haider, Kabir and HasanKhan & Sultana, 2021). In this sense, for some students in UAE and Bangladesh EMI universities, linguistic challenges create precarity, in varying degrees, in the form of attrition, hardships, and negative emotions.

Translingual Practice in English-medium Higher Education

A gap between neoliberal-evoked high expectations for EMI and linguistic precarity in the classroom has been found in multiple global contexts such as Nepal (Reference Sah and LiSah & Li, 2018), Korea (Reference ChoCho, 2021), China (Reference Ou and GuOu & Gu, 2018), Turkey (Reference SelviSelvi, 2014) and Saudi Arabia (Reference BarnawiBarnawi, 2018). In such situations, translingual practice is often used as a coping strategy amongst bilingual / multilingual students. However, societal biases and neoliberal pressure to excel in standardized English can cause students and teachers to experience negative emotions around translingual practice in EMI classrooms. Pejorative terms around mixing languages exist in many societies, such as basasa gado-gado (mixed-up language) in Indonesia, bahasa rojak (salad language) in Malaysia (Reference RasmanRasman, 2021) and banglicized English symbolizing ‘hick’ identities in Bangladesh (Reference SultanaSultana, 2014b). In previous studies, students have expressed emotions of guilt, shame, and transgression when using full linguistic repertoires in formal educational contexts (Reference Al-Bataineh and GallagherAl-Bataineh & Gallagher, 2021; Reference Hillman, Hopkyns and ZoghborHillman, 2022; Reference HopkynsHopkyns, 2020b).

In Muslim-majority contexts, religion is closely entwined with language use through the regular use of ‘Allah lexicon’ (Reference Morrow, Castleton, Al-Issa and DahanMorrow & Castleton, 2011). Allah lexicon includes expressions such as Inshallah (if God wills), Wallah (I swear to God), Mashallah (with God’s blessing), and many others. Using such expressions in otherwise English sentences is second nature for Muslim students and for foreign teachers who have lived in a Muslim-majority context for some time (Reference Hopkyns, Zoghbor and HassallHopkyns, et al., 2021). Although, some students translate Allah lexicon into English to avoid mixing languages in compliance with language purity beliefs, others purposely, or subconsciously, include Allah lexicon in otherwise English sentences (both oral and written) as these expressions are part of their linguistic and religious identities. Although the expression of Muslim identity and English tend to be positioned as opposites, (Reference FindlowFindlow, 2008; Reference KarmaniKarmani, 2005b) scholars have argued that it is unnatural to separate the two considering that religion does not disappear from Muslim identities when speaking English (Reference HopkynsHopkyns, 2020b; Reference MahboobMahboob, 2009).

In this chapter, we aim to move the focus away from translingual practice as automatically being considered ‘playful’ (Reference JaworskaJaworska, 2014) or a form of ‘pleasure, fun, mockery, teasing, banter, and humour’ (Reference DovchinDovchin, 2021, p. 841) to explore the darker more complex political underbelly of translingual practice in the Muslim-majority higher education contexts of Abu Dhabi and Dhaka.

Methodology

The study presented in this chapter is based on a larger study investigating translingual identities in English-medium higher education across multiple global contexts. The larger study began in 2019 and is ongoing. For this chapter, we focus on translingual practice in higher education in Abu Dhabi and Dhaka. The study addresses two main research questions:

• RQ1) In which ways do university students and faculty engage in translingual practice?

• RQ2) How is the concept of precarity reflected in translingual practice in English-medium universities in Abu Dhabi and Dhaka?

We use an ethnographic case study approach, which allows for the complexity of real-life events to be captured and described (Reference YinYin, 1994) via in-depth analysis of two cases and also by emphasizing ‘episodes of nuance, the sequentiality of happenings in context’ (Reference StakeStake, 1995, p. xii). A key characteristic of the case study approach is the inclusion of multiple data sources. Thus, in our larger ethnographic multiple case study, we collected data via ethnographic observations of online and offline language use, interviews, surveys, documents, researcher notes, and email correspondence. In this chapter, we focus on ethnographic observations of both online and offline language use in university spaces together with metapragmatic reflections on language use from university students.

Ethnographic observations of offline language use involved exploring university linguistic ecologies. We did this via observations and taking photographs of the universities’ educational linguistic landscapes or ‘schoolscapes’ (Reference Brown, Marten, Gorter and van MenselBrown, 2012), such as signage and notices. In addition, we observed how students and faculty interacted with schoolscapes by ‘talking back to the linguistic landscape’ (Reference Shohamy, Pütz and MundtShohamy, 2019, p. 31) through writing their own messages. For online ethnographic observations, university emails from faculty and students as well as online interaction via social media (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) were screen captured. As Reference Blommaert and JieBlommaert and Jie (2020) point out, ‘we live our lives largely in an online–offline nexus’ (p. 87), making both dimensions equally relevant to the research questions. Due to recognized complexities surrounding translingual practice, we identified ethnographic observations as a suitable means in which to approach our data collection. A further data collection mode we employed was the use of surveys and interviews to gather university students’ metapragmatic reflections on their language use at their EMI universities. Metapragmatic reflections involve participants analysing how the effects and conditions of language use themselves become objects of discourse. In this sense, students reflect on their language use and its purpose, thus revealing awareness of how different forms of language mark different aspects of social context.

In the Abu Dhabi context, 100 Emirati university students (93 females, 7 males – aged 19–24) at a large government university completed metapragmatic reflections as part of an open-response survey. The number of female students participating in the study vastly outnumbered males. This is reflective of a gender imbalance at the university, and UAE universities in general (Reference SimSim, 2020), in part due to male students often opting to study abroad or complete military service before getting a government job. All student participants were Muslim. They were all bilingual in Arabic and English with 28 per cent speaking additional languages (Lx) (Lx = Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Persian/Farsi, French, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, Tagalog, and Swahili) at mixed proficiencies. Despite a the vast majority of the students being Emirati, the university is a transnational space due to its 709 faculty members originating from 60 countries, with 66 per cent having first languages (L1s) other than Arabic (ZU Fact Book, 2021). The 100 students in the study were taking English composition courses, majoring in a range of subjects including Education, Business, Psychology, International Relations, and Health Sciences. A minority of the students had attended private EMI schools or international schools with the majority having attended state schools with EMI only for core subjects. Although all students are required to have at least Band 5.0 in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to study at the university, there is a wide range of English proficiency levels amongst students. As the participants were in pre-existing groups (four classes), cluster sampling was used. The open-response surveys contained five parts. In this chapter, Part 3 of the survey relating to ‘translingual practice and emotions’ is analysed.

In the Bangladesh context, 43 university students took part in the larger study (30 male and 13 female). Participation in the research was voluntary and the equal participation of both male and female students could not be ensured. Perhaps fewer female students came forward due to reservations about opening up a personal space via sharing social media content. In addition, the percentage of male students enrolled in tertiary education is higher than females (Bangladesh Education Statistics, 2021). Random sampling for collecting participants from different types of institutions across Bangladesh was employed. Among the participants, 10 were from Dhaka University, and the remaining 33 were from other universities, with one or two participants from each. With consent, research participants’ social media pages, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were accessed from 2019 until 2021. In addition, 30 participants completed metalinguistic reflections as part of an interview exploring attitudes towards language, religion, culture, gender, and nationalism. In this chapter, for the Dhaka context, one university student’s Facebook posts and metalinguistic reflections are examined in depth. To summarize, the data analysed in this chapter can be seen in Figure 11.1.

Figure 11.1 Summary of data analysed

The data from ethnographic observations (both offline and online) were analysed through multimodal critical discourse analysis (CDA). Multimodal analysis recognizes that written and spoken language often intertwines with other modes of meaning-making (Reference Bezemer, Kress, Sherris and AdamiBezemer & Kress, 2019), such as the use of symbols, visuals, and gestures. Multimodal CDA involves ‘analysing language or semiosis within broader analyses of the social process’ (Reference Fairclough, Wodak and MeyerFairclough, 2001, p. 121). As Reference Fairclough, Wodak and MeyerFairclough (2001) argues, ‘all practices are practices of production – they are the arenas within which social life is produced, be it economic, political, cultural, or everyday life’ (p. 122). In our analysis of online and offline data gained through ethnographic observations, we seek to understand communication as a whole and recognize ‘specific affordances for meaning making’ within multimodal communication (Reference Adami, Sherris and AdamiAdami, 2019, p. 36). The students’ metapragmatic reflections were analysed thematically through the lens of ‘critical social inquiry’ (CSI) (Reference PennycookPennycook, 2010). Thematic analysis of the metapragmatic reflections involved familiarization, coding, and generating key themes. Through CSI, assumptions are problematized with the aim of investigating how language perpetuates inequitable social relations (Reference PennycookPennycook, 2010), especially in precarious contexts.

Findings from Case A: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Ethnographic Observations of Language Use in an Abu Dhabi Offline Schoolscape

Assessing the ‘schoolscape’ (Reference Brown, Marten, Gorter and van MenselBrown, 2012) of the Abu Dhabi EMI university, findings indicated that English-Arabic bilingualism dominates. For example, many permanent signs such as building names appear in both English and Arabic. Bilingual signs often have more English than Arabic and monolingual signs tend to be in English only. There has been a recent effort by the university to offer language courses in Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Italian, and Spanish to students but these courses are not credit bearing and these languages do not have a noticeable presence in the schoolscape. English, in this sense, is placed at the top of the linguistic hierarchy in the university setting, especially within classrooms via EMI and English assessments. Monolingual ‘English-only’ expectations may lead to a sense of precarity related to linguistic struggles and lack of acceptance or belonging for plurilingual identities within the educational domain. In response to such precarity, there is evidence of students and faculty pushing back against English-only expectations through acts of solidarity as plurilingual individuals. For example, plurilingual messages from students and faculty can be seen on a large white sculpture in the shape of the English word ‘Happiness’ (Figure 11.2), located in the university’s main promenade. Although the sculpture or ‘language object’ (Reference JaworskiJaworski, 2015) itself is monolingual (English only), it has been covered with messages written in English, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Urdu and other languages, as well as symbols such as hearts, faces, and flags to add extra meaning to the text. As marker pens were left on a side table next to the language object, stakeholders were encouraged to write on the sign rather than it being a form of ‘illegal’ graffiti. Despite English being the medium of instruction at the university and the sculpture itself being monolingual (English only), students and faculty took ownership of the space through translingual practice. The plurilingual messages in Figure 11.2 could be interpreted as a way in which stakeholders were ‘talking back to the linguistic landscape’ (Reference Shohamy, Pütz and MundtShohamy, 2019, p. 31) as a form of resistance to precarious monolingual pressures within neoliberal-evoked EME spaces.

Figure 11.2 Plurilingual ‘talking back’ to an English ‘language object’ in an Abu Dhabi English-medium university

Ethnographic Observations of Online Language Use in an Abu Dhabi EMI University

Ethnographic observations of online university communication echo off-line environments. While university announcements tend to be bilingual (English and Arabic), English is the most common language used between faculty (when addressing groups) and between students and their teachers. However, there are some cases where faculty members break from English-only expectations by using their full linguistic repertoires together with semiotic resources to communicate with colleagues via email (Table 11.1). Such translingual communication stands in contrast to English-only expectations and symbolizes a push toward the visibility of plurilingual identities of faculty. The fact that translingual emails (Table 11.1) are relatively rare, highlights precarity and lack of legitimacy surrounding translingual practice.

Table 11.1 Translingual emails between faculty members

Example	Sender (pseudonym)	Translingual email	Recipients
1	Aleyna (Lebanese)	Sabah Elward (Good morning) Dear All, A kind reminder to fill the below form by this afternoon please. Mahabbati (My love), Aleyna	Whole department
2	Sara (Muslim American)	Outstanding! Alf Mabrook (A thousand congratulations) to you both MashaAllah (God bless you). All the best, Sara	Two faculty members (who won an award) with whole department carbon copied
3	Omar (Jordan)	1000 congratulations to you Dr. Maryam (pseudonym) . You deserve it wallah (I swear to God / truly). Best wishes and more success.	One faculty member (who was promoted) with whole department carbon copied

*Language guide: Arabic in italics and English translation in brackets

In Table 11.1, Aleyna uses Arabic greetings and salutations (Sabah Elward, Mahabbati) in an otherwise formal English email to the department. Similarly, Sara, whose L1 is English, uses the Arabic expression Alf Mabrook (1000 congratulations) together with Allah lexicon (MashaAllah) and a rose symbol, with the remaining message being in English. In Omar’s email, although his first language is Arabic, he translates the Arabic expression Alf Mabrook into English but uses the Allah lexicon wallah (I swear to God) as well as ‘thumbs up’ and flower symbols. The emails in Table 11.1 combine linguistic and semiotic resources, representing translingual practice in an EME setting. It is interesting to note that Arabic words are written in Roman script rather in their original form, perhaps in order to communicate effectively across languages. Similarly, in the Bangladesh context, even though Bangla font is available in Unicode, young adults frequently opt for Roman script, due to it being more readable globally (Reference Sultana, Dovchin and PennycookSultana et al., 2013).

The emails in Table 11.1 diverge from English-only expectations and provide the Arabic-speaking faculty with a greater sense of belonging in an environment where English dominates. In the case of Aleyna, who is an Arabic language advocate and researcher on Arabic literacy, every email intentionally combines Arabic and English, which demonstrates a commitment to raising the profile and presence of Arabic and translingual practice in educational settings. It should be noted that languages other than English and Arabic were missing from faculty emails, indicating uneven power dynamics between languages and level of belonging in the space. The use of only dominant languages in translingual practice has also been found in other global contexts such as Sweden (Reference KuteevaKuteeva, 2020) and Nepal (Reference Sah and LiSah & Li, 2020) where speakers of minority languages are comparatively disempowered.

Findings from Case B: Dhaka, Bangladesh

Ethnographic Observations of Online Language Use of Bangladeshi University Students

From ethnographic observations of online language use amongst Bangladeshi university students, as with the Abu Dhabi context, translingual practice was common. It seems that while individuals engaged in translingual practice themselves at the grassroots level, they may have precarious feelings about translingual practice and express unwittingly their monolingual ideologies. Such monolingual biases may have been influenced by language policies which do not support translingual practice (Reference SultanaSultana, 2012; Reference TurnbullTurnbull, 2020). In many cases, the precarity associated with translingual practice takes different forms according to intersecting factors such as socio-economic context and schooling. In this section, data from a Bangladeshi university student demonstrates how precarity is unravelled as it is embedded in social dynamics, such as educational background, geographical locations, or socioeconomic conditions which are further manifested in individual and collective linguistic behaviour and sense of ‘otherness’.

Figure 11.3 shows a Facebook post from a Bangladeshi university student, Nazimul Rakib Rayan (pseudonym), who is studying Law in a private EMI university in Dhaka. He completed his primary, secondary, and higher secondary education in a Bangla-medium school and college, located in a northern district, 255 kilometres away from the capital city, Dhaka. In his Facebook post (Figure 11.3), he expresses his strong reservations and prejudices against the language practices of English-medium students which are translingual in nature. His opinions may be linked to experiences accumulated in his life trajectory in two possible ways: 1) He studied in a Bangla-medium school and college in a rural/ suburban area; 2) He is studying in EME for the first time which may evoke varied conflicted feelings in him (see Reference Sultana and BolanderSultana & Bolander, 2021).

Figure 11.3 Translingual Facebook post by Nazimul Rakib Rayan (pseudonym)

To analyse Nazimul Rakib Rayan’s translingual Facebook post further, Table 11.3 shows the English translation. The title ‘How to be smart 101’ intertextually refers to first year courses, such as Business 101, Calculus 101, or English for Specific Purposes 101 that university students need to take as foundation courses in their first year in the university for basic knowledge of certain subjects. He sarcastically indicates that this sort of translingual practice symbolizes basic attempts of students to present themselves as smart. He mockingly suggests people start a sentence with subject+was/were+ like – if they are interested in displaying their smartness. In other words, he implies EME students are not naturally smart. Rather, they need to show their smartness with the insertion of certain English phrases in sentences.

Table 11.3 Translation of the Facebook post by Nazimul Rakib Rayan

English translation of translingual Facebook post in Figure 11.3
How to be smart 101 Whenever you start a sentence, utter the subject + was/were + like in English. Then complete the entire sentence in Bangla. For example: I was like, what has she/he done? This approach will add a flavor of English-medium personality. According to research, this is very significant for smartness.

*Language guide: Bangla: Roman fonts and English: italics

In Table 11.3, the example ‘I was like’ (line 4) is an observable feature of urban-centric younger generations in Dhaka and presumably, many of them are from EME or students from the Bangla-medium education heavily influenced by students from the EME within the space of the university (cf. Reference SultanaSultana, 2018). The example is completed with a Bangla sentence ‘এটা কি করল সে (what has she/he done). The Bangla syntax is flexible where the subject of the sentence is placed. However, in Standard Bangla, the question sentence also starts with the subject, unlike English. Here, the example presumably spoken by a student from EME seems to follow the English syntactic structure while writing a Bangla question (সে এটা কি করল). This example shows a meshing of Bangla and English syntactical structures.

While critiquing EME students for their speaking patterns, Nazimul Rakib Rayan seems to be using features of translingual practice, too. The English words ‘English-medium’ and ‘smartness’ are transliterated in Bangla and these are placed in the sentence with the appropriation of the words according to the grammatical rules of Bangla. The ত্ব – suffix is added to the transliterated ‘English medium’ and turned into a noun (English + ত্ব= মিডিয়ামত্ব) expressing character and activities of students from the EME. In the following sentence, the English word ‘smartness’ is placed with its infixation with Bangla ‘এর’ (smartness + এর = স্মার্টনেসের). To increase the amount of sarcasm and ludicrousness, he writes that the relationship among individual and collective linguistic behaviour, educational background, and smartness is established by empirical research.

Discussion and Conclusion

While translingual practice is natural for plurilingual speakers, surrounding ideologies and emotions are often complex and precarious. Negative emotions surrounding translingual practice were found in both the UAE and Bangladeshi contexts. Such findings align with other global contexts, such as in India, where intolerance of translingual practice has been observed. For example, Reference Anderson and LightfootAnderson & Lightfoot (2018) explored the attitudes of 169 English language teachers from primary, secondary, tertiary, and adult sectors in India towards translanguaging and L1 use. The majority opined against the use of L1 in English classes. Only a few believed in its efficacy and allowed it in classroom for facilitating language practice activities (Reference KuteevaKuteeva (2020, p. 287), in the case of Swedish higher education, found that translanguaging can be turned into “a mechanism of exclusion and reinforcement of language standards by a group of ‘elite’ translinguals. In this sense, translingual practices may be merchandized by ‘elite’ translinguals.

In our findings, the concept of precarity relates to translingual practice in two main ways. Firstly, in both the UAE and Bangladesh, students commonly used their full linguistic repertoires, but voiced negative emotions around such practice. Secondly, in the UAE context, both faculty and students used translingual practice in offline and online EME spaces partly as a way of resisting ‘English only’ expectations in EME settings. In this sense, translingual practice was not only reserved for playfulness, but rather was surrounded by complexities relating to emotions, levels of belonging, identities, and politics. The findings point toward a gap between complex translingual realities and monolithic language policies. To help close this gap, we suggest the need for greater awareness of multifaceted translingual identities as well as legitimizing translingual practice in EME to counter monolingual biases.

Firstly, sociolinguistic complexities of translingual practice need to be widely recognized. Unlike what popular culture and social media would have us believe, translanguaging interactions are not necessarily filled with laughing, bantering, mocking, and teasing (Reference DovchinDovchin, 2021). As our study highlighted, in many cases, negative emotions surrounding translingual practice lead to ‘guilty multilingualism’ (Reference Manan and Tul-KubraManan & Tul-Kubra, 2022, p. 360) in EME spaces. Unfavourable connotations stemming from societal language purity beliefs and neoliberal ideologies emphasizing English as a form of linguistic capital, impact how students and faculty feel about translingual practice. Although the translingual turn is a much-praised development amongst scholars, translingualism has yet to be embraced in many formal educational contexts. Raising awareness of translingual identities can be achieved through open dialogue in classrooms as well as language awareness projects where students are encouraged to think critically about the political underbelly of language use in society. A critical approach would include exploring power relations, inequalities, and social justice as they relate to language use and identities.

Secondly, greater legitimization of translingual practice in EME contexts would help counter monolingual biases often pushed forward by neoliberal ideologies. Teachers can act as bottom-up policy makers in their classrooms by actively encouraging students to use full linguistic and semiotic repertoires (Reference Hopkyns, Randolph, Selvi and YazanHopkyns, 2020c). When a teacher, as a respected mentor, endorses translingual practice, students harbouring negative emotions around English-only expectations may gradually shift their mindsets toward embracing authentic language use. Although such teacher agency is a step in the right direction, larger challenges are present such as English-only assessments which often act as academic gatekeepers and cement neoliberal notions of English as linguistic and cultural capital. To help counter the inflated power of English in educational spaces, stakeholders can actively increase the presence of translingualism in schoolscapes. In the Abu Dhabi context, the findings revealed students and faculty actively using translingual practice to ‘talk back’ (Reference Shohamy, Pütz and MundtShohamy, 2019) to monolingual signage and sculptures as well as inserting common Arabic words, including Allah lexicon, into otherwise English emails. Here, translingual practice, rather than being a source of embarrassment or shame, can be used as a form of resistance to English-only expectations. Translingual practice, in this sense, can provide a ‘safe space’ for students struggling in EMI classrooms (Reference DovchinDovchin, 2021) and serve to empower identities by ‘emphasizing cultural and political voice and agency’ (Reference Rampton, Cooke, Holmes and RamptonRampton et al., 2021, p. 61). Providing compassion, flexibility, and emotional support for those encountering linguistic precarity would help enhance students’ well-being and sense of belonging in EME (Reference DovchinDovchin, 2021; Reference HopkynsHopkyns, 2022). As Reference DovchinDovchin (2021) points out, understanding students’ socio-emotions can lead to a more cooperative and sensitive approach to emotional needs and difficulties.

To conclude, in this chapter we have explored how translingual practice problematizes dominant monolingual biases in higher education and monolithic approaches to socio-linguistic, socio-political, cultural, and religious realities. Thus, the chapter sheds light on sociolinguistic complexities of translingual practices in two under-investigated countries. The practical recommendations of promoting greater awareness and greater legitimization of translingual practice in educational spaces aim to help counter precarity around language use in EME higher education.