Named language

​A language tends to be named socially and politically to have material, social, and prescriptive reality. It refers to entities in the societies that give a language a name (Otheguy et al., 2015). For example, standard Korean refers to the linguistic variety that educated and middle class people use in national capital area of South Korea. Once it was constructed that way at a certain time of modern history, all the other Korean varieties automatically became sub-standardized and became dialects of one standard Korean language. Seoulites who speak standard Korean have better chances to be employed in a company where standard Korean is expected to be used such as (a) broadcasting company, etc. thus it has material reality. Dialect speakers are required to learn and speak standard Korean to compete with Seoulites, hence it has prescriptive reality. When I was reading an English text in a university in Seoul, all of my classmates and the lecturer laughed at my English accent that was influenced by my dialectal Korean accent, hence it has social reality. One day before the partition between India and Pakistan, Indians slept speaking "Hindustani" and woke up the next morning speaking "Hindi" while Pakistanis spoke "Urdu". Hence, languages are also constructed politically.

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However, bilingual students are usually schooled to think that only one language, usually the standard variety of the language, can be used at a time. They develop monolingual language ideologies that are imposed and regulated by schools. But their actual language practices depart from what they say they do. Named languages are far from the speakers and the linguistic repertoire they use. They are likely to use most of their language resources as far as it is appropriate to the contingency of the given communication. Translanguaging transcends the concept of named languages, but at the same time translanguagers voluntarily suppress significant parts of their language resources to communicate properly with the interlocutors whose linguistic repertoire is composed of mainly one language.

"Trans-"

First of all "trans-" in translanguaging is taken in the sense of transcending between and beyond socially constructed or named language boundaries (García & Wei, 2014; García & Kleyn, 2016). It also transcends educational systems and practices that impose only one language at a time. It engages students’ multiple meaning-making systems together, believing bilingual students as having a single linguistic system that society calls two or more named languages. "Trans-" also means transdisciplinary (García & Wei, 2014). Translanguaging strategies are utilized not only in language subjects but also in other academic subjects such as Math, Science, and Social Studies, etc. Lastly "trans-" in translanguaging also means transformative (García & Wei, 2014). Translanguaging helps students transform their subjectivities -- sense of who they are. Students' home language and bilingual linguistic practices are seen not as a problem but as a resource for learning. Hence students are understood as those who bring resources from home. Translanguaging sees what they have -- their home language and bilingualism, not what they lack -- low performance level in school languages.

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-languaging

As "-languaging" (García, 2009; 2012) shows "-ing" in it, it is a verb, not a noun. That is, it is performance, practice, and an ongoing process using languages rather than a fixed product. It breaks out of static ideas of language that keep power in the hands of the few and emphasizes the agency of speakers in an ongoing process of interactive meaning-making. Students are not to learn a new code, but to learn a new way of being in the world while performing with new linguistic features. Translanguaging both shapes and is shaped by context.

Bilingualism, Multilingualism, and Plurilingualism

García and Wei (2014) argue that it was the Saussurean perspective of language as "a self-contained system of structures that permeated the vision of language"that influenced early bilingualism research. So bilingualism means knowing and using two separate and autonomous languages. According to the Council of Europe, the term plurilingualism is meant for the individual's ability to use more than 2 languages to different degrees and for specific purposes, while multilingualism is defined in relationship to more than 2 languages of communities rather than of individuals. García and Wei (2014) conclude that the three terms, bilingualism, multilingualism and plurilingualism have one thing in common -- "plurality of autonomous languages" whether two (bilingualism) or more than two (multilingualism and plurilingualism) languages are used and whether languages are used by an individual (bilingualism and plurilingualism) or a community (multilingualism). For translanguaging pedagogy, we do continue to use this kind of conceptualization of languages (static top aspect) but want to balance this with spinning top aspect leveraging all of students' linguistic repertoire without much concern about the boundaries of named languages.

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Translanguaging as Dynamic Bilingualism

​Bilingualism is not simple addition of one language to another language. It is complex and interrelated. Bilingualism neither emerges in a linear and expected way nor function separately. Bilinguals have only one linguistic system. It goes beyond Cummins' idea of two languages that are interdependent. Dynamic bilingualism means one linguistic system with features from different languages such as Thai, Korean, English, etc. If one plus one becomes two makes sense for additive bilingualism, the calculation for dynamic bilingualism one plus one becomes one - one unitary linguistic repertoire with various linguistic features from two leveled languages.​ “Even when speaking or reading in one language, bi/multilinguals subconsciously use their whole language resources in their brain.” Dynamic bilingualism is well visualized by the metaphors of the two hands drummer and hurdler.

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Code-switching vs Translanguaging

If translanguaging (TL) is seen from the viewpoint of code-switching (CS), translanguaging may include the concept of CS but is not limited by it. People also translanguage even when they do not switch codes but use the linguistic repertoire of a single language. In this sense TL has both “monolingual” and “bilingual” modes (Grosjean 1994, 1998, 1999). To truly differentiate TL from CS, however, an epistemological shift is necessary as the two are understood from different paradigms. CS presupposes the existence of different languages as discrete, separate, and autonomous entities and looks at language as static and fixed structures, while TL transcends the socially named language labels and looks not at fixed structures of languages but rather at speakers and their linguistic performance. TL starts from the language practices of multilingual people while CS from each language of them (García, 2012). TL is not the random practice of a speaker’s whole linguistic repertoire, but rather adjustment by using different linguistic features according to the contingency of the situation. Translanguagers know when to voluntarily utilize or suppress which part of their linguistic repertoires depending upon the social context. But they should not be forced to limit their use of linguistic features by others. If I take the definition of CS which includes not only switching between languages but also between different varieties of the same language, all the people in this world translanguage whether they are “monolingual” or “multilingual”. TL, from this perspective, also transcends the difference between the monolingual and multilingual. Both monolinguals and multilinguals are translanguagers.

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Translanguagers as Emergent Bilinguals

A monolingual speaker never owns a language but always learns how to use it as life experiences change. He or she is an ever emergent monolingual speaker. The same is true for bilinguals. All bilinguals are emergent bilinguals. Just as no monolingual can fully master his or her one language, bilinguals are ever emerging in their bilingual performance. New language practices are emerging as students become bilinguals. Students incorporate new features from a new language into existing linguistic repertoires and thus become bilinguals. In this regard, leveling them as school language learners hides their already existing linguistic resources in its name. They are bilinguals and ever emergent bilinguals. 

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Mother Tongue vs. Translanguaging

If grassroots multilinguals freely use different languages and use code-switching as a norm, one may question what their mother tongue is among the several languages they know. Following the criteria developed by Skutnabb-Kangas (2007; 2008) to define mother tongue (MT), the conception of mother tongue is not as simple as the language that one first learns from his or her first care givers. The first language one learns (MT by origin) from his or her first care givers is not always the same as the ones people know the best (MT by competence), use the most (MT by function), or identify with (MT by identification).

The complexity of defining one's mother tongue is exemplified by an empirical study (Son, 2016). Most students from non-Hindi Indian language (NHIL) backgrounds in India have been analyzed as having several mother tongues depending upon different definition criteria. The majority of students in the Municipal Cooperation of Delhi School were found to have learned more than one language at home since childhood (MT by origin). While all the students themselves from NHIL background in Central School identify with Hindi as their mother tongue (MT by internal identification), their teachers believe that their mother tongues are not Hindi but their respective NHIL (MT by external identification).

So which language is the MT of these children? Can we say that the NHIL they learned first is still their MT, even if most students in this group prefer to speak Hindi to their family members while their family members speak NHIL to them? Which language is the MT of the students who have learned Hindi and NHIL together from their childhood? What is their MT if there is a discrepancy between what the students themselves identify with as their MT and what their teachers perceive as the MT of the students? If we see language as separate and autonomous entities with clear boundaries between languages, it may be impossible to figure out which language is the MT of these children. Language as a bounded entity fails to depict the complex linguistic practices of the grassroots multilingual (Creese & Blackledge, 2015). Language is argued not to be a static and fixed structure but to be performance, practice, and action whose boundary is fluid (Fasold, 1984) and porous. Language is performed and flows. When they translanguage using all of their language resources, they can perform best and find who they really are.

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