Theories of Trans/languaging and Trans-semiotizing: Implications for Content-based

Education Classrooms

Angel M. Y. Lin, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University

Email: angellin_2018@sfu.ca

(Manuscript Version)

To cite this article:

Angel M. Y. Lin (2018) Theories of trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing: implications for

content-based education classrooms, International Journal of Bilingual Education and

Bilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2018.1515175

Abstract

Translanguaging theories emphasize a fluid, dynamic view of language and differ from code-

switching/mixing theories by de-centring the analytic focus from the language(s) being used in

the interaction to the speakers who are making meaning and constructing original and complex

discursive practices. Trans-semiotizing theories further broaden the focus to analyse language as

entangled with many other semiotics (e.g. visuals, gestures, bodily movement) in meaning

making. In this paper recent developments in trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing theories are

discussed in conjunction with fine-grained classroom analyses to illustrate the key role played by

trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing practices in the dialogic construal of content meaning in

content-based education.

Keywords:

Translanguaging, trans-semiotizing, content-based instruction, content and language integrated

learning, English medium instruction, dialogic pedagogy

Introduction: divergent contexts, convergent issues

Content-based education (CBE) goes under diverse names such as content-based instruction

(CBI), immersion, English medium instruction (EMI), and content and language integrated

learning (CLIL). One common principle underlying these models is the use of students’

additional language to teach content with the dual aim of achieving both content learning and

additional language learning. CBE has historically arisen as a response to the perceived

inadequacy and inauthenticity of existing approaches to second (L2)/ foreign/ additional

language teaching. The main rationale behind CBE is the expectation that using the target

language to teach and learn content creates authentic communicative contexts for the use of the

target language and leads to a higher target language proficiency while simultaneously achieving

content learning. However, there are increasing concerns that policy makers respond to public

demand for immersion, CLIL or EMI education by rushing to offer CBE without adequate

teacher preparation and curriculum planning (Barnard and Zuwati 2018; Huttner, Dalton-Puffer,

and Smit 2013). A key question relates to the use of students’ more familiar language(s) (e.g. L1,

local languages) in CBE classrooms. There is an urgent need for research to inform both policy

makers and teachers to make decisions on how to best capitalize on the use of non-target

languages in CBE. However, instruction design and curriculum policy alone will not solve all

the issues. Teachers’ intimate understanding of the meaning-making dynamics of emergent

bilinguals is key to serving their students’ educational needs and affirming their sociocultural

identities. In the following sections, I shall discuss the converging influence of sociocultural

perspectives and the dynamic, distributed language view (Lemke 2016; Thibault 201l) on

translanguaging and trans-semiotizing theories and illustrate with fine-grained analysis of

classroom meaning-making dynamics how these theories can help us understand the importance

of dialogic construction of meaning in CBE classrooms. This linking of theories to fine-grained

classroom analysis would contribute to enriching teachers’ understanding on this topic and their

empathy with emerging bilinguals.

The sociocultural turn in education

Vygotskyan theories of learning have impacted language education for some decades (Lantolf

and Appel 1994; Swain and Lapkin 2013; van Lier 2004). Sociocultural theories give a pivotal

role to social interaction in the construction of knowledge and one’s own understanding of self,

others and the world. Unlike cognitive theories of learning, sociocultural theories see the

construction of one’s knowledge and understanding of the world first on the social plane. A child

is born into the sociocultural milieu of its communities and becomes socialized into the ways of

speaking, thinking, acting, feeling and relating through its social interactions with its caretakers

(Vygotsky 1978). Increasingly researchers begin to focus not so much on language as input, but

as a resource for participation, as Zuengler and Miller (2006: 37-38) put it, ‘These researchers

focus not on language as input, but as a resource for participation in the kinds of activities our

everyday lives comprise’. The sociocultural influence goes back in education at least to the

1970s with language socialization research such as the work of Shirley Brice Heath (1983). This

speaks to a disconnect between educational perspectives and Second Language Acquisition

(SLA). However, sociocultural constructivism has impacted content areas education (Bruner

1990). Education researchers are actively researching issues around language and dialogue in the

social construction of knowledge in content classrooms (Mercer and Littleton 2007). Under the

sociocultural view, knowledge can only be constructed in a dialogic space where students bring

into relevance all of their sociocultural, emotional histories and communicative repertoires

(Wong 2005). Sociocultural theories are not alone in highlighting dialogue in education. The

importance of dialogue was proposed in the literacy work of Paulo Freire in the 1960s (Shor and

Freire 1987). It might be the domination of cognitive models in SLA and immersion education

that has deterred CBE research from cross-fertilizing with these perspectives.

Valdes (2001) documented how CBE practised as English-only immersion in American schools

had not benefited English learners, especially immigrant students who had travelled long

physical, emotional and psychological distances to their host country. In Asia, Lo and Macaro

(2012) observed sixty lessons in Grade 9 and 10 in three schools in Hong Kong that had

switched its medium of instruction from students’ first language (L1) to L2, and found that the

lessons tended to become more teacher-centred and there were fewer opportunities for

negotiation of meaning and scaffolding. In Europe, there are also concerns that many CLIL

classrooms are characterized by mostly factual questions asked by teachers and minimal answers

given by students (Nikula, Dalton-Puffer, and Llinares 2013). Working from sociocultural

perspectives, Swain and Lapkin (2013, 105) argue that languaging in collaborative dialogue is

essential for content and language learning, ‘When one languages, one uses language, among

other purposes, to focus attention, solve problems and create affect. … language serves to

construct the very idea that one is hoping to convey’. In many CBE classrooms, if the target-

language-only policy is strictly followed, it means that a large part of the languaging resources in

the plurilingual and sociocultural repertoires of the students are not allowed for use to construct

knowledge, as can be seen in the example below.

An example: dynamic dialoguing and languaging in knowledge co-constructing

The following lesson excerpt taken from a Grade 7 EMI science lesson (Lin and Wu 2015, 16)

illustrates this point well when a student (Alex) mobilizes all of his communicative resources

(both English and Cantonese words) to participate in an animated discussion of how one can

prove that air has mass and takes up space:

5* Teacher: How can you prove to me that air takes up space?(.)Prove it. You can’t see it. You can’t feel it. How do you know it takes up space?[T smiles to challenge Ss]

6 Ray: Because Mr. Lee [their science T at the school] tell us. 7 Teacher: I want(.) an evidence that I can see↑. 8 Alice: Because there is (.) air particle. 9 Teacher: Can you see air particles? 10 Alice: No, but(.) the motion[Alice moves hands]. 11 Teacher: How can I observe air? 12 Alex: Use the針筒 ((trans: syringe)). To have some air.

13 Teacher: Ha ham 14 Alex: Use to(.) Try to (.)=

15 Ray: =°Compress° [seems not heard by Alex at the front]

16 Teacher: =Compress [gesturing the action of compress]

17 Alex: =compress it. And then if you can’t compress it out, because you use your finger to cover the mouth. And then(.) it takes up space.

18 Teacher: Right. One very good evidence, say if I use a syringe= [T draws on the blackboard as she speaks]

19 Teacher: =and I block it with my finger[Ss laugh]. And then I compress the syringe. You will find that finally you can’t compress it anymore. In other words, you can see the space cannot be further compressed because of the air inside. Or another example. When you blow a balloon= [T draws on the blackboard as she speaks]

*The numbers on the left refer to the turns in the dialogue.

We can see in the lesson excerpt that the students are actively engaged in an interesting scientific

discussion with the teacher: how to prove that air takes up space even though you cannot see it.

The teacher is successful in arousing students’ interest and eliciting a lot of responses from the

students. In Turn 12, we can see that Alex is so eager to express his idea about how to observe

air that he fills his gap of English lexical knowledge (not knowing the word ‘syringe’) by

speaking out the Cantonese word for syringe (針筒) so as to maintain his flow of ideas. We see

that other students get entrained into this flow of ideas (Lemke 2016): they readily join in to co-

construct/elaborate the idea started off by Alex (e.g., Ray providing the word, ‘compress’, which

is later picked up by the teacher). If Alex is not allowed to language and translanguage

(constructing ideas using all of his plurilingual resources), the students’ active co-construction of

knowledge cannot take place in the science classroom. It would be reduced to teacher monologic

lecturing like that observed in many EMI lessons in Hong Kong (Lo and Macaro 2012).

Turnbull, Cormier, and Bourque (2011), drawing on Swain and Lapkin (2000)’s sociocultural

languaging principles, examine if, how, and when L1 is used when students in the first years of

their L2 learning talk about complex science concepts. Differences in two groups following a 2-

month intervention are compared. The treatment group receive a literacy-based approach where

L1 is systematically allowed as a languaging resource in particular stages of the instruction (e.g.

when students discuss in groups to come up with answers to the questions assigned to them on

the content topic, they can discuss in whichever language they want) while the control group

receive the typical, L2-only, district-prescribed approach. Turnbull, Cormier, and Bourque

(2011, 195) conclude that ‘the study contributes to the literature grounded in sociocultural theory

which investigates the use of L1 as a tool that L2 learners use to construct new meaning and

understanding and that allows the learners to improve, not only in their French language skills

but also in their thinking and problem-solving abilities in an immersion context’.

In this section I have discussed how sociocultural, constructivist theories of languaging and

dialogic construction of knowledge have provided some of the theoretical principles for use of

students’ familiar but non-target language in CBE classrooms. In the next section, I shall outline

the dynamic view of language, translanguaging/ trans-semiotizing and flows, and discuss their

implications for CBE classrooms.

Dynamic, distributed view of language, translanguaging/trans-semiotizing and flows

The Welsh term trawsieithu (translanguaging) was first coined in 1994 by Cen Williams to refer

to a pedagogical practice where students in bilingual Welsh/English classrooms alternate

languages for receptive or productive use (e.g. reading both Welsh and English texts on a topic

and later writing in English on the topic). Later, García (2009, 45) uses translanguaging to refer

to the ‘multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their

bilingual worlds’. García and Li (2014, 42) argue for a holistic view of semiotic repertoire which

‘signals a trans-semiotic system with many meaning-making signs, primarily linguistic ones that

combine to make up a person’s semiotic repertoire’. This echoes with Halliday’s (2013) ‘trans-

semiotic’ view, which I developed into the notion of ‘trans-semiotizing’ to conceptualize

plurilingualism (Lin 2015a). During translanguaging and trans-semiotizing (e.g. co-ordinating

gestures, facial expressions, sounds, visual images) our communication resources in partially

shared semiotic repertoires keep expanding with the co-contributions of other participants in the

dynamic flow of the meaning making (He, Lai, and Lin 2016).

Recent theories in applied linguistics are also converging on a dynamic, distributed view of

language, seeing language as embodied, emplaced and ensembled in its physical and social

environs. In the keynote speech of Suresh Canagarajah in the 2017 Conference of American

Association for Applied Linguistics, Canagarajah talks about the need to shift from a static,

structuralist view of language to a dynamic, spatial and performative view of language. Instead

of talking about separate pre-existing semiotic systems (e.g. different languages, grammars, and

codes), it would be more fruitful to talk about ensembles and spatial repertoires. Canagarajah’s

views converge with Lemke’s (2016) views on translanguaging and flows. Instead of focusing

on individual speakers and listeners speaking to one another using discrete languages or codes

(or semiotic systems), it would be more productive to view them as co-ordinated parts of an

assemblage of agents and resources all entrained (i.e. drawn or pulled along) into the fluid,

dynamic flow of meaning making. In particular, Lemke (2016, 1) writes, ‘The traditional view of

these matters is insufficient in part because it presumes separate and isolated language systems as

pre-existing realities and in part because it overemphasizes conscious choice within such systems

by speakers. The primary error in these views is that they are insufficiently grounded in the

observable material processes, mediums, and flows of the events.’ García, Johnson, and Seltzer

(2017) refers to this flow as la corriente, which is students’ dynamic plurilingualism that runs

through our classrooms and schools. The metaphor of flow or la corriente is a current in a body

of water that is not static. Likewise, the translanguaging corriente refers to the dynamic and

continuous shifting and moving of language features that change the static linguistic landscape of

the classroom that is traditionally described and defined from a monolingual perspective.

Similarly, Barwell (2016, 106) drawing on Bakhtinian perspectives argues that meaning should

be understood in terms of response in dialogue, ‘rather than a choice made within a semiotic

system’. Translanguaging might superficially look like what has been called code-mixing and

code-switching in the literature. However, translanguaging is underpinned by a dynamic,

dialogic and distributed view of language. In Lemke’s (2016) recent theoretical contribution to

the conceptualization of translanguaging, he draws on Thibault’s (2011) distributed language

view (DLV) that differentiates between first-order languaging dynamics (i.e. whole-body sense

making) and second-order language. Lemke (2016) was the first to draw on this distributed

language view in his theorization of translanguaging as flows. First-order languaging is dialogic

and not belonging to any single individual—a critical point to highlight if we are to understand

the fluid, dynamic, distributed nature of languaging. From the view of first-order languaging

dynamics, language is social and dialogic rather than a pre-existing code (or grammar). Thibault

(2011) uses the notion of second-order language to refer to what many people ordinarily would

call (often as a result of historical, political and institutional forces) different named languages.

Second-order language is formed of lexicogrammatical patterns that act as ‘attractors – future

causes – that guide and constrain first-order languaging. They are stabilized cultural patterns on

longer, slower cultural timescales’ (Thibault 2011, 216). In a sense, all of us are translanguaging

when we are engaged in real-time meaning-making; that is, we are being guided and constrained

by previous stabilized cultural patterns (which come under the diverse names of styles, registers,

social languages, language varieties, etc.). In this sense, even the so-called ‘monolingual’

speakers are readily translanguaging (i.e. drawing on different styles, registers, social languages,

etc.) in real-time meaning making (Turner and Lin 2017). However, emergent bilinguals differ

from monolinguals in that they have a wider range of linguistic patterns/features that they can

draw from and thus a much more expanded linguistic repertoire than monolinguals, even though

emergent bilinguals’ linguistic repertoire might be negatively viewed in contexts where purist

ideological norms are dominant.

To illustrate first-order translanguaging/trans-semiotizing dynamics, a lesson excerpt is taken

from a Grade 9 EMI science lesson from a secondary school in Hong Kong. The teacher is a

Cantonese-English bilingual and her students are South Asian minoritized students who speak

Urdu as their first language while learning content subjects through the English medium at

school. The teacher does not understand the students’ first language (but over the semester she

has learnt some expressions from the students to be closer to her students). In this lesson

excerpt, the teacher is explaining the function of blood platelets. On the screen she has projected

a power-point slide of a test-tube showing different constituents of blood inside the tube with

arrows and English labels (rbc, wbc + platelets, plasma) (See Fig. 1 below).

[Insert Figure 1]

Lesson Excerpt 2

1 Teacher: How about platelets? If we don’t have platelets, is it okay?

2 Ss: NO:::!

3 S1: Blood keep going.

4 Teacher: Yeah. You know, not even for the cuts {Teacher touching her left hand with her right

small finger to simulate pointing to a cut on her hand}, you know when you brush

your teeth {Teacher gesturing teeth brushing action}, sometimes you bleed. Without

platelets, you will continue…. {Teacher pauses for students to answer}

bleeding… losing blood...

5 Ss: bleeding {Ss’ answer coincides with the teacher’s word “bleeding”}

6 S1: So this means everything is important.

7 Teacher: We will die. Yeah, so, everything is important.

8 S2: What is the use of, uh, platelets?

9 Teacher: Platelets for blood clotting. {Teacher doing a similar hand gesture as the earlier one

for ‘cuts’}

{S1 turns around to talk to S2 in their first language and using a similar hand

gesture to the teacher’s earlier gesture for ‘cuts’ and ‘blood clotting’}

10 S2: Then how can...

11 S3: How can it ...if we have cuts…

12 S4: Yeah.

13 Teacher: Sorry again?

14 S4: How it... hehe…

15 S1: She said how can it have... If we don’t have the platelet.

{S1 talks to the other Ss again in their first language and with gestures}

16 S3: When he doesn’t have enough... like it doesn’t place the...

17 S2: How can the platelet...

18 S1: Yeah, how does it become like this?

19 Teacher: How?

{Several students speaking at the same time trying to say to the teacher what they

want to ask, with some English utterances, not clearly discernible/transcribable}

20 S2: The cause of...

21 S1: What is the cause?

{All other students have become quiet now upon hearing this—S1 seems to have

asked what they have been trying to ask}

22 Teacher: The cause. Some people, they may get, uh, some problem in producing this kind of

cells. Remember, this is also kind of cells. If their body can’t produce it, then they

will need to have kind of blood transfusion just with platelets in our bone marrow.

Yeah.

23 S2: Ah?

24 Teacher: In our bone marrow. Just like when you have chicken, the chicken bone in between

there are white stuff, uh red stuff {T used her left hand to simulate the shape of a

chicken bone and use her right hand finger to point to the hole in the bone}. Those

are bone marrows. In your bone you also got it.

{S1 nods her head, showing agreement with what the teacher has just said}

In this excerpt we see that the teacher and students are mobilizing all of their semiotic resources

to co-construct meaning and understanding. S1 readily translanguages and trans-semiotizes to

explain the blood clotting function of the platelets to her peers. In the snapshot in Fig. 1, we can

see that S1 uses a similar hand gesture as the teacher, who has earlier used a hand gesture to

simulate pointing to a cut on her hand when speaking the words ‘not even for the cuts’ (Turn 4).

Her hand gesture (associated with the words, ‘the cuts’) is immediately picked up by S1 (Turn 9)

who does a similar hand gesture when she seems to be explaining to her peers in their first

language (L1) what the teacher has just said (i.e. the part on bleeding when there are cuts). After

Turn 9, there are a few students who speak almost at the same time, seemingly asking the teacher

something that they are eager to learn about. But they can only manage some sentence starters

like, ‘How can…’, ‘How can it…’. In Turn 15, S1 rephrases her peer’s question as, ‘She said

how can it have... If we don’t have the platelet. This seems still not very clear to the teacher (as

shown by her facial expression) and S1 turns around to talk to her peers again in L1 and with

hand gestures.

In Turns 16 and 17, S3 and S2 make another (seemingly more successful) attempt to rephrase

their question to the teacher (S3, ‘When he doesn’t have enough... like it doesn’t place the...’; S2,

‘How can the platelet...’). This is swiftly followed by S1’s utterance, ‘Yeah, how does it become

like this?’ (Turn 18). Upon hearing this, the teacher asks, ‘How?’ (Turn 19) showing that she’s

still not clear what the students are asking. This is followed by some very quick, simultaneous,

overlapping utterances spoken by several students, but none of it seems to be clearly discernible

to the teacher (and to the researcher). This is however swiftly followed by S2 who seems to have

hit upon the ‘magic’ word, ‘cause’. S2 asked, ‘The cause of… even though she is not able to

complete the question in English. S1 quickly picks up from her and asks, ‘What is the cause?’.

All the students at this point have quieted down, seemingly agreeing with S1’s rephrasing of

their question. This is the climax of their co-construction of meaning, with S1 finally coming up

with a construal of a question that they all resonate with, and a construal the teacher can fully

comprehend and respond to (Turn 22). We notice the shift of the wordings of the students from

‘How…’, ‘How can the platelet…’, ‘How does it become like this?’ to ‘The cause of…’, ‘What

is the cause?’. We can see that collectively the students mobilize and co-ordinate their semiotic

resources: English words and phrases, facial expressions, hand and body gestures, their shared

L1 resources, and in the end collectively they succeed in coming up with the L2 academic word

and wordings (‘cause’, ‘The cause of’, ‘What’s the cause’) that are recognizable and recognized

by the teacher. Notice that this collective meaning co-construal and wording co-construction is

highly emotionally charged and happening in a dynamic, continuous, fluid, but well-coordinated

flow or corriente. The students’ facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements and

intonations show that they are animatedly engaged in meaning making, and in eagerly engaging

the teacher in a dialogue the direction of which they can shape (e.g. initiating a topic shift, from

the teacher’s initial focus on the function of platelets to the cause of lack of platelets); i.e. they

are actively engaging the teacher in a dialogue of their collective making, even though they

might not fully command all the necessary linguistic resources. They might be emergent

plurilinguals with a repertoire of linguistic resources that might not encompass a wide range of

both everyday and academic words/registers in English; i.e. the target language patterns—the

stabilized cultural patterns on longer, slower cultural timescales—the second-order entities (e.g.

L1, L2). However, when they are allowed to translanguage (e.g. using their familiar linguistic

resources) and trans-semiotize (using trans-semiotics including gestures, body movement, eye

gaze) to make meaning, the dynamic flow or corriente of their meaning co-construal has not been

interrupted. We must highlight the connection of this uninterrupted flow of meaning-making with

their emotional involvement and momentum in extending their understanding of the world (e.g.

desiring to know ‘how come…’). This uninterrupted momentum and involvement leads to the

students’ continuous acts in transforming (but not necessarily totally replacing, more on this

later) their everyday construal of the world (‘How come…’) to an emergent scientific construal

of the phenomenon (‘What’s the cause of…’) that is recognizable and recognized by the teacher

(and members of the communities of practice of the content subject discipline). However, it must

be pointed out that the students might not be explicitly aware of these acts or intentional about

these aims (i.e. learning the target scientific concepts and expressions, etc.). The analysis of

translanguaging/ trans-semiotizing flows shifts our attention from focusing on teaching second-

order cultural patterns/entities (e.g. concepts, registers) to focusing on enabling the deep

experience of first-order dynamic knowledge co-making flows, as the science education scholar

Wolff-Michael Roth (2006, 333) puts it in his book, Learning Science, ‘Chronological time is

very different from the experience of flow, the pulsations of activity, actions, and operations;

each act of knowing … changes the actor. Already the Greek knew that a person cannot step into

the same river twice.’ (italics added). And this is resonated in Lemke’s (2016, 1) theorizing of

translanguaging and flows, ‘Speech alone cannot be the focus without also taking into

consideration non-speech actions, non-speech events, physical responses of non-human

mediums, and in general all processes and flows which contribute to the unfolding of an activity

or event. … an unfolding action event is being constituted and constrained on and across

multiple time scales.’

We can see that the unfolding action event (in Lesson Excerpt 2) is being constituted and

constrained on and across multiple time scales. For example, the teacher’s hand gestures

accompanying her English utterances, later picked up by S1 (and her accompanying L1

utterances), constitute their dynamic meaning-making. The students’ prior knowledge of L1 also

contributes to their dynamic meaning-making; e.g. S1’s spontaneous translanguging and trans-

semiotizing contributes to the collective/ distributed understanding that is continuously in the

making as time/ the dialogue/ the action event unfolds. All of these (including both present and

past events, patterns, mediums, physical and semiotic responses) contribute to the unfolding of

the collective meaning-making flow that is witnessed in the classroom.

While I have used the terms L1, L2, registers, styles, it has to be pointed out that using these

terms does not commit us to the static code view; rather we see these as patterns which are

changeable and ever-changing in the first order dynamic languaging and meaning-making flows;

i.e., differentiating between first-order trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing flows on the one

hand, and second-order patterns—languages, genres, styles, registers—on the other.

Conclusion: implications for CBE Classrooms

The above two sections discuss the sociocultural turn in education as well as recent

developments in translanguaging and trans-semiotizing theories. These theoretical developments

converge on two central tenets: (1) dialogic co-making of knowing which unfolds in the (2)

dynamic flow of action events involving translanguaging and trans-semiotizing. Both theoretical

developments are seen as contributing to our understanding of what it means to learn, to teach,

and our recognition of learning/teaching as co-evolving in a dynamic flow of collective/

distributed/ coordinated meaning making involving a whole spatial repertoire of visuals, human

bodies, gestures, eye-gaze, etc. (in trans-semiotizing) and linguistic resources (in

translanguaging) which encompass all the spoken and written verbal resources distributed among

the classroom participants; e.g. familiar speech styles, genres, grammars, expressions learnt

before; new expressions, utterances recently or immediately picked up from others (Canagarajah

2017; Lemke 2016). These recent views have important implications for a re-accentualizing of

what have recently been described as plurilingual didactics and dynamic views of

bi/multilingualism (Kirsch 2017). As ‘ … content area meaning … emerges as responses in

dialogue’ (Barwell 2016, 117), the role of language in the content-based classroom is not so

much that of providing input for a human cognitive computer (the learner) to process and churn

out a target language grammar as that of providing resources for classroom participants to co-

construct meaning and understanding of the world in dynamic, spatially oriented meaning

making activity (i.e. a participatory, dialogic view).

The input view traditionally dominating the SLA literature has long provided the main rationale

for the monolingual policy of using only the target language in the content-based classroom (Lin

2013). However, while we accept the need for creating opportunities for target language use

(Turnbull et al. 2011), we equally need to recognize the crucial role of trans/languaging and

trans-semiotizing in the dynamic flow of co-making of knowing and meaning, without which

what is left in the classroom would mainly be parroting without active ownership of learning on

the part of the students. Many content-based classrooms (e.g. EMI, CLIL classrooms) are

exhibiting such monologic didactics (Lo and Macaro 2012). In the following paragraphs, I shall

explore a possible critical pragmatic (Harwood and Hadley 2004) approach to counterbalancing

these two needs, namely, (1) allowing for translanguaging and trans-semiotizing in meaning

making activity to facilitate the dynamic flow of knowledge co-making, and (2) providing

opportunities to get familiar with the culturally and institutionally sedimented target language

conventions (i.e. ‘second order’ named languages, genres, styles, registers, etc. in Thibault’s

sense) in order to use these target language patterns to meet requirements in high-stakes

situations (e.g. examinations that do not allow for translanguaging and trans-semiotizing). My

discussion will hinge on the Bakhtinian view of dialogic tension in heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981;

Barwell 2016; Wegerif 2008), which is complemented with my own model of ‘bridging multiple

resources in an expanding repertoire’ (Lin 2012). I shall organize these ideas under two

subheadings: (1) A model of continuous resources, (2) spontaneous translanguaging and planned

spaces for translanguaging and target language use.

(1) A model of expanding, continuous resources

Discussion on the need to socialize students into the academic genres and registers has been

critiqued by critical sociolinguists (Flores and Rosa 2015), who are not saying that we should not

be socializing students into academic language but rather are asking whether the racial

hierarchies and raciolinguistic ideologies make it possible for racialized communities to be

positioned as legitimate users of privileges styles and registers. The critique lies in asking

whether teaching students the dominant codes/registers will solve the problem. As Luke (1996)

pointed out 2 decades ago, it is problematic to assume that the problem of racism and classism

can be reduced to a pedagogical issue of teaching the dominant genres of power. The dynamic

translanguging and trans-semiotizing theories discussed in this paper, while cannot resolve the

problems of racism and classism, aim at deconstructing the binary, deficit/ replacement model by

seeing different semiotic resources as constituting a continuous (rather than binary, discrete),

expanding, holistic repertoire of students. It is important to see these ‘genres, registers, styles’

(both linguistic and beyond linguistic) as semiotic configurations that are open, dynamic,

changeable and changing patterns, as ‘open envelopes’ in Lemke (2016)’s metaphor rather than

as codes set in stone. This patterning of resources also does not involve only linguistic resources

as in traditional views of additive bilingualism. In this connection, Rymes (2014) offered a

fascinating discussion of communicating beyond language and the multiplicity and flexibility of

communicative means. The aim of education is not to replace students’ multiple and flexible

communicative means (both linguistic and beyond linguistic) with school-valued codes or to

construct a semiotic hierarchy privileging the school-recognized codes. Rather, teachers need to

recognize that these different semiotics and social languages, although in tension, constitute a

continuous holistic repertoire of the learner that is constantly expanding and changing through

one’s dialogic encounters with ‘otherness’. Barwell (2016, 107) delineates this well from a

Bakhtinian, heteroglossic perspective, ‘… for Bakhtin (1981), language always entails an

encounter with otherness, for which he uses the expression ‘the alien word’. This otherness is

derived from the sociohistorical dimension of language. Any utterance is not simply an

expression of an individual’s idea; it expresses a host of ‘other’ ideas that derive from preceding

usage and must be understood in the light of preceding utterances.’ Illustrating this point with

our example in Lesson Excerpt 2 above, the word ‘cause’ is an alien word for many of the

students; the more familiar words they tend to use are ‘How come…’. In our daily life, we tend

to say, ‘How come some people keep on bleeding when they have cuts?’ instead of ‘What’s the

cause of non-stop bleeding’. For these EMI science students, however, they encounter a ‘doubled

otherness’. It is not just an otherness of a science register and thinking logic (e.g., seeing things

in terms of generalized ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ rather than as things happening to some people), but

also an otherness of an ‘other’ language. As Barwell (2016, 108) sums it up, ‘…both the target

language and the language of the content areas are fundamentally forms of ‘alien word’ for the

students. This otherness precedes them. Students must engage in dialogue with this otherness and

find ways to make the words their own.’ In Lesson Excerpt 2, we see how students through

spontaneous trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing collectively reconcile their existing ways of

speaking (‘How come…’) with an ‘other’ way of speaking (‘What’s the cause of it’) in the

science lesson. The ‘other’ way of speaking becomes their additional way of speaking, not

replacing or denigrating their existing ways of speaking, but expanding their repertoire (of ways

of speaking/thinking) as a whole (Lin 2012).

(2) spontaneous translanguaging and planned spaces for translanguaging and target language

use

How do we help students to make ‘alien’ words or ways of speaking/thinking their own? Lemke

(1990, 173) proposes, ‘Students will begin to grasp semantic and conceptual relationships in

colloquial language first. Then they will substitute scientific, technical terms for colloquial

words. … Along the way their version of scientific language will be… a sort of hybrid of

colloquial and technical registers. The teacher will need to use these different varieties of

language as well, and keep them straight for the students. In order for this to work, and in order

to increase students’ fluency and flexibility in using the foreign register of science when dealing

with topics that are initially equally unfamiliar, they need practice in translation as well.’

We see in Lesson Excerpts 1 and 2 that students spontaneously translanguage and trans-

semiotize to construct content meaning in dialogue despite the institutional monolingual policy.

While recognizing this spontaneous meaning making process and not interrupting it, teachers can

further facilitate students’ expansion of their repertoire by planning spaces for translanguaging

and spaces for target language use in different stages of a curriculum genre (Rothery 1996). The

Multimodalities/Extextualization Cycle (MEC) (Lin 2015b) is an example of such a curriculum

genre. While Stages 1 and 2 in the MEC allow for the uninterrupted flow of meaning

construction and pedagogical support through translanguaging and trans-semiotizing, the third

stage ensures that students will have a space to practise orienting their meaning making towards

the discourse and cultural patterns required by the school for successful participation in future

assessment tasks and for expanding their repertoires. In this stage, scaffolding needs to be

provided (e.g. useful vocabulary, sentence patterns, writing/speaking templates). The MEC is

proposed as a heuristic tool for teachers to think about how to design systematic scaffolding

(Gibbons 2009) rather than as a prescribed method.

In this paper I have discussed the sociocultural turn in education and also recent explorations in

languaging, translanguaging and trans-semiotizing theories. Their implications for CBE teachers

and policy makers can be summed up in terms of three principles:

(1) Spontaneous translanguaging and trans-semiotizing: Recognize spontaneous translanguaging

and trans-semiotizing as crucial semiotic processes in the dynamic, dialogic flow of co-construal

of content meaning;

(2) Design curriculum genres: Counterbalance (e.g. using heuristic curriculum genres such as the

MEC) the need for dialogic meaning making via translanguaging and trans-semiotizing with the

need for a space for students to entextualize their understanding of content meaning in target

language academic genres;

(3) A continuous, expanding rather than replacement, hierarchical model of learning: Aim at

expanding students’ holistic linguistic and cultural repertoires by helping them to connect their

familiar everyday linguistic and cultural patterns with the target linguistic and cultural patterns

(rather than replacing the former with the latter; also seeing the former and the latter as

continuous with each other rather than as binary poles).

These three principles are interconnected and further curriculum and classroom research is

needed to refine these principles. They will also benefit from interacting with recent educational

research in new materialism theories (Smythe, Hill, MacDonald, Dagenais, Sinclair, and Toohey

2017). These pedagogical/ curriculum principles alone, however, cannot solve the larger issue of

domination of reified standard codes and unequal power relations that stigmatize students’

communicative repertoires (García and Lin 2018). Nonetheless, as a reviewer of this paper

pointed out, changing teachers’ position and understanding on this topic is important and

hopefully this paper could contribute towards this.

Acknowledgements

The author wants to thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their critical, useful

comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Special thanks go to Dr. Peichang He for helping to

transcribe the lesson excerpt and sharing her insights in the lesson episode.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the Quality Education Fund (Project #2012/0483), Hong Kong

Education Bureau.

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Fig. 1. Co-construal of the function of platelets in a Grade 9 EMI science classroom—first-

order translanguaging and trans-semiotizing dynamics (whole-body sense-making)

Author short bio:

Angel M. Y. Lin is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Plurilingual and Intercultural

Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She has published widely in CLIL, academic

literacies, trans/languaging, classroom analysis, and language and identity studies. She serves on

the editorial advisory boards of leading international research journals including Applied

Linguistics, Language and Education, and International Journal of Bilingual Education and

Bilingualism.