The chapter presents an updated overview of translanguaging studies in Chinese university classrooms. It starts with a briefing of development of translanguaging research in China. Followed are systematic reviews of translanguaging studies on Chinese foreign language classrooms, English medium instruction classrooms and international students classrooms respectively. Based on review of these studies, the chapter ends by outlining the future directions of translanguaging research in Chinaand beyond.

Originally conceptualised as a pedagogical practice of language alternation in the Welsh/English bilingual classroom, translanguaging has acquired new meanings over the past decades. In this chapter, I highlight the transformations of the term and show how translanguaging research in Canada has pushed it outside bilingual boundaries. Increasing multilingualism in the Canadian context, coupled with calls to decolonise education and empower speakers of minoritised languages, including in Indigenous and immigrant communities, make translanguaging within a bilingual framework no longer viable, nor inclusive. In Canada, translanguaging pedagogy is implemented within an overarching social justice plurilingual framework and has developed new tenets which must be considered in translaguaging research moving forward: disaffiliation of translanguaging from its bilingual origins, embracing multilingualism, and viewing language users as dynamic plurilinguals rather than emergent bilinguals.

Within the timespan of one decade, there have been numerous publications on the viability and educational benefits of translanguaging. In this chapter, I will focus on two publications (Block, 2018 and Jaspers, 2018) that appear to offer conflicting arguments about the shortcomings and perils of pursuing the agenda proposed by translanguaging. That is, whereas Jaspers argues that its ‘transformative’ claim ‘is becoming a dominating rather than a liberating force’, Block argues that the ‘transformative’ agenda advanced by researchers and practitioners of translanguaging does not go far enough to address the systematic and damaging effects of social injustice.

This chapter advocates the translanguaging approach to language education where all languages are valued, and all knowledge that has been acquired through different languages and in different cultural conditions is valued. Translanguaging sees language learning as cultural translation. Learning a new language is about learning a different way of making meaning as well as achieving an understanding of the world around us with people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This requires co-learners’ willingness to to adapt and unlearn, to trust and respect each other, and to support each other on a journey of transpositioning.

This chapter focuses on the development of trilingual education in the Basque Country where Basque, a minority language, is used along with other languages. Nowadays, Basque is the main language of instruction in pre-primary, primary, and secondary school. Education through the medium of Basque has had an enormous effect on increasing the number of Basque speakers among young people. The increasing importance of English and the diversity of home languages in a multilingual society create the need for changes in language policy and teaching approaches. In this chapter, recent trends to integrate language subjects in the curriculum, the integration of language and content and pedagogical translanguaging are alsodiscussed.

Grammatical theories about bilingual codeswitching aim to define cognitively represented mechanisms which regulate language mixing for bilingual speakers, illuminating grammatical theory as it relates specifically to bilinguals. A related term, translanguaging, similarly denotes language mixing, or dynamic language use, but is often understood to include the deconstructivist supposition that bilingualism itself is a fiction. This chapter reviews the contributions of codeswitching research to the theory of bilingual grammar, supporting the Integrated Multilingual Model (IMM) of bilingualism. The IMM is consistent with a multilingual approach to translanguaging, which rejects deconstructivism and affirms individual multilingualism as socially significant and psychologically real.

This chapter reviews the different approaches to multilingual education that are prevalent today and the ideologies about people and nations upon which they rest. We first review the ideologies surrounding language as monoglossic or heteroglossic and the resulting manifestations in language education. We then review each of what are usually seen as separate fields – foreign language, heritage language, second language, and bilingual education. We discuss their histories and approaches, and describe how their monoglossic conception has worked against their aims of developing multilingual people. We end by discussing two newer paradigms, plurilingualism and translanguaging, focusing more directly on translanguaging approaches in multilingual education.

In many different educational contexts, learners learn effectively in a second/additional language in terms both of subject knowledge and language ability. In other contexts, however, disadvantaged learners, including language minorities in the Global North and majorities in the Global South, fail to learn effectively in a second/additional language. The experience can damage their education and, in the case of low-income countries, the national economy. This article outlines a series of detriments to education which arise from learning in an unfamiliar language, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. It proposes multilingual education as a way of reducing these detriments and outlines what are considered to be its benefits especially in this region, as well as the views of ministries and communities which often oppose it. By way of illustration, it shows how the processes of multilingual education have been introduced in textbooks for Rwanda and Tanzania.

This chapter describes policies for the use of languages in education in South Africa, particularly the use of English. From a multilingual perspective, we discuss the language policy in South Africa and its effect on the education system in South Africa. A variety of translanguaging strategies is discussed, including technological support like the Mobilex mobile phone application. We also discuss the possibilities for multilingual education by considering the degree to which the funds-of-knowledge concept could be used to determine and encourage the use of African languages among off-campus students, specifically when students studied remotely (in response to the Covid-19 pandemic).

This chapter contributes to the emerging literature on translanguaging as a resource for second language (L2) teaching and learning. Situated in Japanese higher education, it focuses on the translanguaging practices of Japanese L2 students or emergent bilinguals, who are ‘actively in the process of acquiring knowledge of a second language and developing bilingual languaging skills for use’ (B. Turnbull, 2018a: 1043), by addressing how they deploy translanguaging in L2 written practices as an indicator of the interplay of their complex linguistic repertoire.

This chapter outlines relevant aspects of theory and practice in the field of second language research for multilingual approaches to (language) education. We argue that what has been gleaned from the general field of second language acquisition research should not be ignored in any discussion of multilingualism or multilingual education. We contend that second language research – theoretical, empirical and applied – should continue to be part of the language education toolkit available to teachers, course designers, administrators and researchers; indeed, anyone involved in multilingual education.

This chapter looks at the interplay between Latinx literature written in Spanish or English, and discusses translanguaging and the complexities of translating an accented or bilingual text into either Spanish or English. The chapter also discusses the vicissitudes of self-translation and the global dimension of Latinx literatures as well as the translation of Latinx literature into languages other than English or Spanish, specifically into German. These aspects of translation promote a reading of Latinx literature beyond the merely representational, highlighting the critical roles of cultural production, distribution, and the literary marketplace instead.

In this chapter explore language usage and interaction in general and discuss the overlap of sociolinguistics with the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis. We will investigate the conventional patterns used by speakers when they construct, participate in and evaluate discourse at large. The concept of face is an important one here, namely the self-image of speakers that they wish to maintain and protect via the sociolinguistic resources available to them: speech events in the form of narratives, telephone conversations, weblogs, university lectures, etc. Context effects on sociolinguistic interaction are discussed with examples of turn-taking, power, solidarity and cross-cultural communication, and also with a focus on social hierarchies and language practices in the workplace. We conclude with a discussion of crossing and translanguaging in multilingual contexts.

Critical stances towards English Medium Instruction (EMI), and to a lesser extent the similar use of French, Portuguese and Spanish Medium Instruction in former colonies of European states, have been growing since ‘independence’ in the 1960s. This discussion contextualises ‘Southern’ critiques of EMI within early decolonial debates, ‘southern multilingualisms’ and ‘transknowledging’ (reciprocal translation and exchange of knowledge), which are often invisibilised in EMI. This is illustrated through critiques in two former British territories: the first, with critiques that circulated in Southern Africa from the 1960s; the second, with critiques that surfaced four decades later in Australia. Whereas EMI is readily recognised in South Africa (with 8 per cent L1 English speakers), Australia (with 250 Aboriginal linguistic communities at colonisation and 250 years of in-migration from all continents) is an EMI context for 23–30 per cent of citizens. Aggressive marketing of Australia as an educational destination for students from the Asia-Pacific amplifies its multilingual and EMI reality in higher education. The critique of EMI includes a history of cognitive capture, debt-trap diplomacy and educational failure. Included are key agents that advance EMI, invisibilise multilingualisms and perpetuate coloniality despite the claims of social justice and access that accompany EMI rationales.

Recent work in sociolinguistics criticizes labeling sets of linguistic practices as languages and varieties. A focal concept is translanguaging – while opening productive perspectives on linguistic behavior, this approach often claims that, linguistically speaking, there is no such thing as a language. In this chapter we argue that this ontological claim is too strong, and that bottom-up approach to activism that follows in its trail, is insufficient as a response to linguistically embedded social hierarchies and power inequalities. Linguistics has a checkered history; labeling of varieties and construction of language standards has served dubious ends. However, using Norway as a case in point and alluding to other cases of standardization and norm regulation, we argue that effective linguistic activism aimed at social justice sometimes requires the identification of varieties as linguistic objects. We reject a generalized language suspicion, because the anti-language approach to activism pushes out of theoretical reach a level of organization where social and political hierarchies are instituted and maintained – but where such hierarchies may also be challenged and altered. We conclude that socially engaged language scholars must struggle with the concrete contextual assessments that languages and varieties confront us with, and face the normative dilemmas that top-down political intervention on languages allegedly faces. Otherwise, important means of social justice are lost.

This chapter engages with the question of what language policy does by considering what the scope of language policy as a field of inquiry is beyond the traditional focus on the management of ‘named languages’. I look at how language policies in educational context involve privileging particular ‘ways of being’ and managing hierarchies of knowledge and expertise, moving far beyond the mere regulation of ‘language’ use. In other cases, such as in the regulation of interaction on the flight decks of commercial airliners, language policies are part of a broader process of managing relationships, where they help establish an overall set of values. Language policies are also involved in managing visibility by controlling what voices are heard in public discourse, not only with regard to what ‘languages’ may be used, but also more broadly with regard to what topics may be discussed, what behaviours are to be engaged in and which are to be avoided. Finally, language policies manage access by helping create boundaries in discourse, associated with beliefs about what it means to be a member of a community.

The focus of this chapter is on how language policies are resisted. The chapter begins by articulating in a theoretical and practical way what resistance to language policy looks like, particularly from a discursive point of view. It concludes with a case study of resistance to language policy in an online forum for non-local teachers of English in Thailand, highlighting the entanglements between resistance to limits on what ‘named languages’ could be used and a broader struggle to overcome a hegemonic racial ideology around the concept of ‘native speaker’.