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Translingualism (Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual…

- - - - We call for a new paradigm: a translingual approach. This approach sees difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a
        resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening. When faced with difference in language, this approach asks: What might this difference do? How might it function expressively, rhetorically, communicatively? 303
        
        In calling for a translingual approach, we hope to forward efforts of a growing movement among teacher-scholars of composition and the language arts generally to develop alternatives to conventional treatments of language difference. 304
        
        Most obviously, our approach is aligned with the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) 1974 resolution declaring “Students’ Right to Their Own
        Language.”3 That resolution defended the right of students (and all other writers) to use different varieties of English. It opposed the common, though inaccurate, view that varieties of English other than those recognized as “standard” are defective. It
        also opposed the view, just as inaccurate, that speakers of these varieties are themselves somehow substandard. It recognized the logicality of all varieties of English, the meanings to be gained by speakers and writers in using particular varieties of English, and the right of speakers and writers to produce such meanings. 304
        
        The translingual approach we call for extends the CCCC resolution to differences within and across all languages. And it adds recognition that the formation and definition of languages and language varieties are fluid. Further, this approach
        insists on viewing language differences and fluidities as resources to be preserved, developed, and utilized. Rather than respond to language differences only in terms of rights, it sees them as resources. 304
        
        The translingual approach encourages reading with patience, respect for perceived differences within and across languages, and an attitude of deliberative inquiry.
        Likewise, a translingual approach questions language practices more generally, even those that appear to conform to dominant standards. It asks what produces the appearance
        of conformity, as well as what that appearance might and might not do, for whom, and how. This approach thus calls for more, not less, conscious and critical attention to how writers deploy diction, syntax, and style, as well as form, register, and media. It acknowledges that deviations from dominant expectations need not be errors; that conformity need not be automatically advisable; and that writers’ purposes and readers’ conventional expectations are neither fixed nor unified 304
        
        The translingual approach asks of writing not whether its language is standard, but what the writers are doing with language and why. For in fact, notions of the
        “standard English speaker” and “Standard Written English” are bankrupt concepts. All speakers of English speak many variations of English, every one of them accented, and all of them subject to change as they intermingle with other varieties of English and other languages.305
        
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  - - - Graduate programs in rhetoric and composition need to take more seriously, and be more ambitious in making use of, what is now all too often treated as a token second language requirement of its graduates. The challenge is to incorporate more multi- and cross-language work into graduate curricula. In short, new work,
        in which many faculty cannot yet claim expertise, will be demanded of both faculty and their students. That is the challenge of embracing a translingual approach, and
        its promise: the necessity of working on writing collaboratively with our students, our current colleagues, and those who can become our colleagues amid the realities of a translingual nation and world. 309
        
        We preface this set of resources with several questions we anticipate about
        the challenge we present for U.S. teachers of writing, with our answers, necessarily
        tentative.
        
        Does translingualism mean there’s no such thing as error in writing?
        No. All writers make mistakes, and all writers are usually eager to remove mistakes
        from their writing. Taking a translingual approach, however, means that teachers
        (and students) need to be more humble about what constitutes a mistake (and about
        what constitutes correctness) in writing, rather than assume that whatever fails to
        meet their expectations, even in matters of spelling, punctuation, and syntax, must
        be an error. For example, we can’t assume that a student who writes “spills out” or
        “stepping stool” where some readers might expect to read “spells out” or “stepping
        stone” is making mistakes. However, a student (or any other) writer who following
        the date of this text’s publication writes “2009” to identify the year of a letter
        he or she has just composed is either making a mistake, engaging in subterfuge, or
        needing to cue readers about the dating system he or she is employing. That the
        acceptability of notational practices is negotiable demands more responsibility, not
        less, from both writers and readers. 310
        
        How do monolingual teachers of writing teach a translingual approach? Wouldn’t teachers
        of this approach have to be multilingual themselves?
        Knowing more than one language can only benefit teachers of writing who aim to
        teach a translingual approach (and others). Yet it’s also the case that teachers of writing
        self-identified as monolingual regularly use a mix of varieties of any one language,
        and that even ostensibly monolingual texts may be found to be more linguistically
        heterogeneous than is ordinarily recognized. Teachers can use the actual heterogeneity
        in genre, register, and language of ostensibly homogeneous texts to explore, with
        their students, the translingual activity that they and other writers are already engaging
        in, even when that is not ordinarily acknowledged. And although we recognize
        the benefit to all of expanding one’s linguistic resources, the issue here is approach
        to language difference. Those identified as “monolingual” might nonetheless take a
        translingual approach to language difference, while some identified as “multilingual”
        might nonetheless take a monolingualist approach to language difference. 310
        
        Does this mean there aren’t any standards?
        If by “standards” is meant a desire for quality writing, then no: readers expect, even
        demand, that writers try to do their best to communicate to their readers, just as
        writers expect, and sometimes demand, that readers work hard to make the best,
        most generous sense they can of writers’ texts. It does mean that we need to recognize
        the historicity and variability of standards, which change over time, vary across
        genres, disciplines, and cultures, and are always subject to negotiation (and hence,
        change). We can and should teach standards, but precisely as historical, variable, and
        negotiable. This will help to demystify (and lessen confusion among students about)
        what these standards are, and will make students feel a greater sense of responsibility,
        as writers, for the writing practices they engage in. 311
        
        My students are all English monolinguals. Why would they need to learn a translingual
        approach to writing?
        First, it’s often difficult to assess students’ actual language abilities—students who
        by some definitions might be English monolinguals might not be by other criteria.
        Second, virtually all students who are monolingual in the sense that they speak only
        English are nonetheless multilingual in the varieties of English they use and in their
        ability to adapt English to their needs and desires. And even if we overlook this
        resource, it’s worth recalling that what we think of as English is itself linguistically
        heterogeneous in its origins and ongoing formations, as demonstrated by neologisms,
        the development of world Englishes, and shifting convention. 312
        
        Don’t students first need to learn the basics of writing in one language before taking on the
        challenges of writing in another language?
        No. The problem here resides in assumptions about the basics and fluency. Scholars
        of basic writing have long since exploded the notion that adult writing students improve
        their writing by first attempting to master the so-called mechanics of writing
        before working on what are deemed to be higher-order features of writing. Instead,
        like all writers, student writers’ command of various features of writing fluctuates:
        they may have more difficulty with issues addressed through copyediting as they
        attempt to write in different genres or about new topics or to unfamiliar audiences.
        Likewise, language users’ spoken fluency with a particular language—even their
        “home” language—will fluctuate in relation to the genre and topic and circumstances
        of the speech situation. 312
        
        How will taking a translingual approach to language differences help my students do well
        academically and in the job market?
        The linguistic heterogeneity we speak of applies to all spheres of life, including the
        academic realm as well as public and private spheres. Except perhaps for professional
        actors, few walks of life require attaining native-like spoken fluency in a particular
        variety of a particular language (and even with professional actors, what is achieved
        is more likely to be simply what it is believed that particular audiences have learned
        to recognize as representative of a specific language variety). Instead, what is increasingly
        needed, and even demanded, is the ability to work across differences, not just of
        language but of disciplines and cultures. This requires changing our predispositions
        from those of monolingualism to translingualism. Monolingualism teaches language
        users to assume and demand that others accept as correct and conform to a single
        set of practices with language and, in multilingual situations, to assume and demand
        that others accept as correct and conform to multiple discrete sets of practices with
        language. By contrast, translingualism teaches language users to assume and expect
        that each new instance of language use brings the need and opportunity to develop
        new ways of using language, and to draw on a range of language resources. The ability
        to negotiate differences and to improvise ways to produce meaning across language
        differences with whatever language resources are available is becoming increasingly
        necessary, not only to careers and commerce, but to the chances for peace and justice. 313
- - - - From such a view, a translingual
        approach is simply another permutation of a catalog of arguments for conventional
        multilingualism and for tolerating diverse language “codes” and “varieties” and the
        mixing of these. Such a view sees arguments for a translingual approach as addressing
        the language practices and needs of only those writers defined and recognized by
        dominant culture as different from the sociolinguistic norm—the bi- or multilingual,
        the ESL student, the second language writer, the NNSE (non-native speaker of
        English). Conversely, those identified as English monolinguals are seen as beyond
        the purview or concern of teachers and scholars taking a translingual approach. 585
        
        By contrast, we define a translingual approach as one that recognizes difference
        as the norm, to be found not only in utterances that dominant ideology has marked
        as different but also in utterances that dominant definitions of language, language
        relations, and language users would identify as “standard.” 585
        
        As we and our colleagues
        have argued elsewhere, a translingual approach is best understood as a disposition of
        openness and inquiry toward language and language differences, not as a matter of
        the number and variety of languages and language varieties one can claim to know
        (Horner, Lu, Royster, and Trimbur 311). Such an approach recognizes translation
        and the renegotiation of meaning as operating in all language acts, including those
        seemingly working within as well as across language boundaries 585
        
        For, from a translingual perspective, all writing always involves
        rewriting and translation, inevitably engaging the labor of recontextualizing (and
        renewing) language, language practices, users, conventions, and contexts. 586
        
        A translingual approach to language and language users shifts attention to the constitutive
        work and politics accomplished through everyday language practice (Pennycook
        23–24, 28). Scholars taking the “practice turn” treat practice as neither reducible
        to individual activity nor to socially, culturally, historically determined behavior
        (see Schatzki). Instead, practice is seen as giving meaning to what we do because it
        connects us socially to others, as we respond to social relations and conditions demanding
        meaningful responses. 588
- - - - In this sense, translingual communication involves all of us, and multilinguals, and finds representation in textual products and degrees of language mixing. I stress the prefix in my to focus on communication a) beyond separate languages and as a medium to accommodate other semiotic resources, such symbols. While the term multilingual perceives the relationship in an additive manner (i.e., combination of separate languages), dresses the synergy, treating languages as always in contacting each other, with emergent meanings and grammars. Translingual an understanding of the production, circulation, and reception always mobile; that draw from diverse languages, symbol of communication; and that involve inter-community negotiations. 42
- - - - Recently, however, there seems to be a tendency to conflate L2 writing and
        translingual writing, and view the latter as a replacement for or improved version of
        L2 writing. This is not consistent with our understanding of the field of L2 writing. 383
        
        L2 writing is an international and transdisciplinary field of study that is concerned
        with any issues related to the phenomenon of writing in a language that is
        acquired later in life. Second language or L2 is a technical term that refers to any language
        other than the first language. Although the term, if taken literally, may seem
        to exclude people with multiple first languages, L2 writing scholars are often the first
        to critique those assumptions in their own publications and presentations. Within
        the field, there are various theoretical, methodological, and ideological perspectives,
        and they do not presuppose any particular ideological orientation. In fact, much of
        what has been discussed under the term translingual writing has long been part of
        the conversation in the field of L2 writing 384
        
        Translingual writing is a particular orientation to how language is conceptualized
        and implicated in the study and teaching of writing. It emphasizes the fluidity,
        malleability, and discriminatory potential of languages. It challenges the static view of
        language and writing, privileges the view of multiple languages as resources, and calls
        for a more agentive use of various language resources in constructing and negotiating
        meaning, identity, and even larger ideological conditions. Translingual writing
        is valuable in that it highlights issues that fall between traditional conceptions of
        L1 and L2 writing—issues that have traditionally been addressed by writing studies
        scholars informed by insights from sociolinguistics. Although translingual writing
        and L2 writing overlap in their critique of the historically monolingual, English Only
        focus of composition studies, translingual writing has not widely taken up the task
        of helping L2 writers increase their proficiency in what might still be emerging L2s
        and develop and use their multiple language resources to serve their own purposes.
        As a field, L2 writing has also been addressing the ideological concerns highlighted
        in translingual writing as well as the task of helping L2 writers develop and use their
        multiple language resources to serve their own purposes. 384