Translanguaging and visuality: Translingual practices in literary art
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Tong-King Lee
Tong-King Lee is an assistant professor in the School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong. He is the author of
Experimental Chinese Literature: Translation, Technology, Poetics (2015) andTranslating the Multilingual City: Crosslingual Practices and Language Ideology (2013).
Abstract
Translanguaging is a resource for linguistic creativity in communication and for critical engagement with one’s sociolinguistic or sociocultural reality. This article examines how translanguaging operates in two visual art installations by the contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing. Square Word Calligraphy takes a visual turn on translanguaging by inventing a hybrid calligraphy that incorporates English words into the orthographic frame of Chinese. By physically tracing the alphabet through the character, viewers gain an embodied translingual experience, which encompasses an intercultural imaginary negotiating and transcending the English-Chinese divide. By contrast, Post Testament demonstrates an intralingual mode of translanguaging, whereby a biblical text is inflected with heterogeneous registers and rendered ineffectual as coherent discourse. Here the encounter and intertwining of text registers create a transformative space replete with ambiguity and mayhem. In these radical works of language art, translanguaging delineates borders while simultaneously interrogating them, creating liminal zones and articulating a politics of (mis)recognition, (un)readability, and (in)communicability.
Funding statement: Funding: This research is supported by a General Research Fund from the Research Grants Council, HKSAR (Project Code: 17405014).
About the author
Tong-King Lee is an assistant professor in the School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Experimental Chinese Literature: Translation, Technology, Poetics (2015) and Translating the Multilingual City: Crosslingual Practices and Language Ideology (2013).
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Clarifying the relationship between translingual practice and L2 writing: addressing learner identities
- Translanguaging and visuality: Translingual practices in literary art
- The effects of word form variation and frequency on second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Clarifying the relationship between translingual practice and L2 writing: addressing learner identities
- Translanguaging and visuality: Translingual practices in literary art
- The effects of word form variation and frequency on second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading
