/College of Arts and Sciences
Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication

Language Justice as a Scholar/ Researcher

2a. Language awareness: scholarly perspectives 

For decades now, scholars from around the world have advanced research and discourse about language and education (its policies, politics, pedagogies, and more). Here are just a few of the perspectives (or juicy quotes) contributed by the group of SBU scholars behind this resource: 

Translanguaging: “Translanguaging is a theoretical lens that offers a different view of bilingualism and multilingualism. The theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally thought, bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative contexts. Translanguaging also represents an approach to language pedagogy that affirms andleverages students’ diverse and dynamic language practices in teaching and learning” (Vogels & Garcia, 2017) 

 

Multilingual Identity: “I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish. . . . I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice. Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue--my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza).

 

Translingual Instinct (Li Wei): “. . . drives humans to go beyond narrowly defined linguistic cues and transcend culturally defined language boundaries to achieve effective communication” (p. 24-25. “Translanguaging as a practical theory.” 2018)

 

Translingual Practice (Suresh Canagarajah): “No act of communication is free of values. The universality of [standard written English] or written language is also . . .  a language ideology, similar to the orientation of texts as being self-standing and devoid of meaning negotiations. SWE cannot be treated as a monolith, masking the diversity that is already there in written discourse” (p. 109. Translingual Practice, 2013).

 

Agency in Language Use (Min-Zhan Lu & Bruce Horner): “A translingual perspective (in teaching)...would involve engaging students in exploring what they care to advance about the people, language, and culture with which they are identified and may identify, and how and why and when to do it (p. 601. “Translingual literacy, language difference, and matters of agency.” 2013). 

 

Translingual Approach: “Imagine all the languages valued equally, multiple scripts and media used routinely, and new genres flourishing in ways that recreate institutional and disciplinary contexts. You may say I am a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. . . . the translingual approach aspires to the proposition that revealing and leveling colonial matrices of power might be possible” (Ellen Cushman, “Translingual and Decolonial Approaches to Meaning Making,” College English, 2016; p. 236-37). 

 

A Translanguaging Theory: “takes the point of view of the bilingual speaker himself or herself for whom the concept of two linguistic systems does not apply, for he or she has one complex and dynamic linguistic system that the speaker then learns to separate into two languages, as defined by external social factors and not simply linguistic ones” (García and Kleyn, 2016, italics in original)

 

Translinguality: For our students, though, translinguality is not somewhere they have to go, but rather somewhere that they already are, a place that they already inhabit every time they speak and each time they engage in reading and writing practices. They already live and embody translinguality [the condition where languages are used and their borders transcended, rather than “translingualism” as an -ism/theory or ideology], an often-unconscious state that many of them may not think about much, and that they may never have regarded as important until challenged in a course, when the instructor recast language difference, which they had thought of as a negative or at best neutral, as, instead, a potential source of positive strength” (Heather Robinson, Jonathan Hall, & Nela Navarro, 2020; p. 3)

 

2b. Translingual strategies

  • Seek out and read sources in different languages and also from different societies and contexts; include minoritized/ minoritized/ marginalized/ overlooked voices when you do this, because language-based exclusion usually intersects with other axes of injustice/exclusion. 

  • Cite scholars from beyond the dominant/mainstream groups, making expanded knowledge and perspectives more accessible for others. 

  • Translate parts of texts (as in citation) or whole texts to create access for different language communities.  

  • Acknowledge translation and translators in your research, presentations and publications. 

  • Include translation (and the costs associated with it) in research proposals, funding applications, and all other forms of research planning

  • Seek to share your ideas (at conferences, community events, etc) beyond the dominant language/social community. 

  • Invite scholars from beyond traditional boundaries to join academic conversations and collaborations, making them linguistically accessible where needed. 

  • Include speakers of multiple languages among research participants, as well as research projects leaders; inclusion enriches understanding and opportunities. 

  • Engage in co-design, co-research, and co-production with colleagues working in different linguistic and cultural contexts; build equitable partnerships without always expecting them to assimilate to dominant standards, starting with language standards.

  • Act as a translator between bodies of knowledge and communities, as well as supporting translation initiatives, for instance by actively signaling the work of translation in reviews or by including translation among relevant outputs for tenure and promotion. 

  • Write, present, and interact with communities and stakeholders that use different languages in which you have some skills.  

  • Caption video materials and presentations in one or more languages to increase audience access or accessibility.  

  • Include a translated abstract or full text when feasible; help normalize bilingual/multilingual scholarship, challenging the assumption that scholarship can/should only be conducted in a dominant language. 

  • Whenever possible, include sign language among the languages in which you aim to disseminate knowledge, findings, etc.

  • Challenge language ideologies that are embedded in your disciplinary values or professional standards, such as when engineers enforce “white middle class” English language habits as universal norms of “clarity.” [Read example in the publication, Internationalizing Writing in the STEM Disciplines]

  • Embrace variation, complexity, and rhetoricity in language use in any discipline; don’t use the excuse of “formal” communication for rigidity. 

  • Language variations (such as Black English Vernacular, Chinese accent, or widely used South Asian usage) are not the same as “inappropriate” language (such as obscenity or disrespect); call out the conflating of these in the name of disciplinary and professional demands for “appropriate” language.

  • Be sensitized to the role of interpreters and translators in mediating exchanges in professional contexts (for instance between doctor and patient, in legal contexts, etc).

  • When we mobilize different languages as scholars, it helps to create welcoming and inspiring learning and professional environments; it also helps to foster the agency and self-regard of multilingual/multicultural members of academe. 

  • It creates new/expanded space for new/expanded communities to engage in or benefit from scholarship, usually including communities that are marginalized/excluded. 

  • It better connects knowledge work with other work in life and society, providing stronger social context and purpose to scholarship and promoting its social impact. 

  • It potentially expands the social and economic value of scholarship by allowing more people to apply and advance new knowledge in society and the professions.

  • It creates safe spaces for exchange, transfer, transformation, and creativity.