Ofelia García

Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics

Abstract The concept of translanguaging is clarified, establishing it as a particular conception of the mental grammars and linguistic practices of bilinguals. Translanguaging is different from code switching. Under translanguaging, the mental grammars of bilinguals are structured but unitary collections of features, and the practices of bilinguals are acts of feature selection, not of grammar switch. A proper understanding of translanguaging requires a return to the well known but often forgotten idea that named languages are social, not linguistic, objects. Whereas the idiolect of a particular individual is a linguistic object defined in terms of lexical and structural features, the named language of a nation or social group is not; its boundaries and membership cannot be established on the basis of lexical and structural features. The two named languages of the bilingual exist only in the outsider’s view. From the insider’s perspective of the speaker, there is only his or her full idiolect or repertoire, which belongs only to the speaker, not to any named language. Translanguaging is the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages. In schools, the translanguaging of bilinguals tends to be severely restricted. In addition, schools confuse the assessment of general linguistic proficiency, which is best manifested in bilinguals while translanguaging, with the testing of proficiency in a named language, which insists on inhibiting translanguaging. The concept of translanguaging is of special relevance to schools interested in the linguistic and intellectual growth of bilingual students as well as to minoritized communities involved in language maintenance and revitalization efforts.

Translanguaging and the Writing of Bilingual Learners

This article makes the case for using translanguaging in developing the academic writing of bilinguals. It reviews the emerging literature on learning and teaching theories of translanguaging and presents theoretical understandings of biliteracy development and specifically on the teaching of writing to bilingual learners. The article analyzes five written texts produced by young bilingual writers in which translanguaging is used in the planning, drafting, and production stages of writing. It analyzes how and why translanguaging is used, as well as the effect it has in the development of writing and of voice. Translanguaging in writing is here proposed more as a self-regulating mechanism in which bilingual students can engage, rather than a pedagogy to be used in the teaching of writing itself. That is, the objective of this writing is not translanguaging itself, but the writing in one or the other constructed academic language that is the object of learning in school. Yet, the article makes it clear that even to develop the monolingual voice in writing that schools—and even bilingual schools—expect, a translanguaging approach has the most potential.

Theorizing and Enacting Translanguaging for Social Justice

This chapter theorizes translanguaging, while describing how it is carried out in one “English” classroom in a school for Latino adolescents who have arrived recently in the USA. The theories of transculturacion, autopoeisis, and coloniality and border thinking are brought to bear on the concept of translanguaging, which is defined as an act of bilingual performance, as well as a bilingual pedagogy of bilingual teaching and bilingual learning. The theoretical discussion is then followed by a description of how the flexible use of linguistic resources in classrooms for immigrants can resist the historical and cultural positionings of English monolingualism in the USA. Translanguaging as pedagogy holds the promise of developing US Latinos who use their dynamic bilingualism in ways that would enable them to fully participate in US society, and meet the global, national, and social needs of a multilingual future.

The multilingual Apple : languages in New York City

Part 1 Introduction to the multilingual apple: New Yorks multilingualism - world languages and their role in a U.S. city, Ofelia Garcia. Part 2 The language of early arrivals - still encountered: Irish in 19th-century New York, Kenneth E, Nilsen German in New York, John R. Costello Yiddish in New York, Hannah Kliger, Rakhmiel Peltz. Part 3 The languages with vitality in the past and the present: Italian in New York, Hermann W. Haller Greek in New York, Chrysie M. Costantakos, John N. Spiridakis Spanish in New York, Ana Celia Zentella Hebrew in New York, Alvin I. Schiff. Part 4 The languages with the newest sounds and of newest faces: Chinese in New York, Shiwen Pan The languages of India in New York, Kamal K. Sridhar Haitian Creole in new York, Carole M. Berotte Joseph English Caribbean language in New York, Lise winer, Lona Jack. Part 5 Concluding observations to the multilingual apple: do ethnics have culture? and whats so special about New York anyway? Joshua A. Fishman.

Educating New York's bilingual children: constructing a future from the past

Abstract This paper describes the ways in which New York City schools have responded to the multilingualism of its children in the last 40 years, and suggests changes needed in order to accommodate the greater linguistic heterogeneity of the city. In the predominantly Puerto Rican community of the 1960s and 1970s, traditional bilingual education programs were the best way to educate language minority children. But in the twenty-first century, with the demographic shifts and the technological advances of a globalized world, other understandings of bilingualism in education are needed. The paper ends by suggesting ways in which traditional bilingual education may exist alongside other more dynamic approaches of bilingualism in education that consider the citys growing linguistic heterogeneity, thus constructing a future from the past.

U.S. Spanish and Education Global and Local Intersections

S as we know it today, made its debut as “a world language” at the very end of the 15th century in a highly heterogeneous languagescape—the newly constructed nation-state of Spain and the newly found Americas.1 Spanish grappled with bringing together the many forms of Romance spoken in Castile and Aragon at the same time when it was brought to new shores where people spoke in other ways. Thus, what we know as Spanish today emerged from contact with people who languaged very differently, both within the Iberian Peninsula and in the overseas colonies. Interestingly, the spread of “Spanish” was not simply imposed by the Crown on its subjects by coercion but was rather a product of hegemony. It was the authority gained by the wealth in the colonies, its coloniality (Mignolo, 2000), that gave Spanish its power and prestige and the impetus to spread in the Peninsula itself. From its very beginning, Spanish became the language of Empire as a result of its colonial condition. In much the same way, Spanish today has achieved global status2 precisely because of its coloniality. It is the colonial relationship that Latin America has maintained with the United States that has resulted in the presence of 50.6 million Latinos in the United States, representing 16% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). And it is the buying power of subaltern subjects, now in one of the most powerful countries in the world, that is giving Spanish its authority as it positions itself globally. However, as in the 16th century, it is not the languaging of colonial subjects— that is, their language practices—that are favored. As we will see, the language planning agencies of Spain, and those operating in Latin America, continue to attempt to impose certain language regimes on those they still consider colonial subjects. As the Spanish state exploits the great number of Spanish speakers in the United States to bolster the sociolinguistic situation of Spanish within its own national borders and

Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: an intergenerational study

This paper provides a description of English contact features in the Spanish of Cuban Americans in West New York, placing special emphasis on the phenomenon known as modeling (Weinreich 1974 [1953]: 30-31), and offering a comparison between modeling and other types of contact phenomena, both within and across different generations of speakers. In addition, particular attention is paid to whether the innovations found in the speech of these Cuban Americans can be interpreted as providing internal evidence of stable bilingualism or of language shift.

Latino Emergent Bilingual Youth in High Schools: Transcaring Strategies for Academic Success

This article explores the results of a study of Latino youth in New York City public high schools. We propose that the common element among the schools is what we call here transcaring, an overarching culture of care that allows for the creation of third spaces within school, transcending traditional dichotomies around language, culture, place, and measurement found in many U.S. schools. We identify the different threads that make up transcaring strategies—translanguaging, transculturación, transcollaboration and transactions through dynamic assessments—focusing on each of its components by drawing examples from our data.

Translanguaging and Education

This chapter traces the development of a theory of translanguaging in education, from its Welsh beginnings, and its relationship to the important educational concepts of creativity and criticality. The chapter explicitly states why it is important to go from bilingualism in education to translanguaging in education, and the impact of this shift to transform monolingual, foreign/second language education and bilingual education structures.

Reframing language allocation policy in dual language bilingual education

Abstract This article addresses language allocation policies in what is increasingly called “Dual Language Education” (DLE) in the U.S., offering a challenge to the strict language separation policies in those programs and a proposal for flexibility that transforms them into “Dual Language Bilingual Education” (DLBE). The article offers a historical review of policies and practices in bilingual education and the ways in which the present language policies for DLE have come about. It then provides a critical assessment of those policies, which focus on teaching two languages, rather than educating students bilingually. We argue that the rigid language allocation policies of DLE ignore the sociolinguistic realities of bilingual learning for all students, especially for language-minoritized bilingual students. The main part of the article sets forth a new alternative policy proposal for language allocation that more coherently reflects the dynamic nature of bilingualism and reclaims the criticality of bilingual education and its social justice purpose. The proposal embodies an understanding of bilingual education through a translanguaging lens to open up spaces where students develop not only their bilingualism and biliteracy, but also a criticality that resists social arrangements of language normativity that differentiate and exclude. The translanguaging allocation policy proposed here works with the existing spaces for English and the Language Other than English, but introduces three components that offer the flexibility and criticality needed to educate bilingual students for the future: (1) translanguaging documentation; (2) translanguaging rings; and (3) translanguaging transformative spaces.