Home General Interest Challenges in decolonizing linguistics: the politics of enregisterment and the divergent uptakes of translingualism
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Challenges in decolonizing linguistics: the politics of enregisterment and the divergent uptakes of translingualism

  • Suresh Canagarajah ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: February 1, 2022
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This article traces the roots of translingualism in the Global South, with particular relevance to the author’s South Asian heritage. After narrating his attempts to practice this orientation in his research and scholarship, the author analyzes the problematic ways in which translingualism is appropriated in the academic, economic, and political contexts in Global North. Employing the conceptual orientation of enregisterment, the article theorizes the challenges for decolonizing discourses in negotiating a critical and transformative uptake. It concludes by outlining some strategies that can help in entextualizing translingualism to preserve its decolonizing potential. It identifies areas of research that will expand the communities, contexts, and communication that will facilitate more pluriversal epistemologies and practices.


Corresponding author: Suresh Canagarajah, Applied Linguistics, Penn State – Main Campus, University Park, USA, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

I thank the reviewers and editors for useful suggestions.

  1. Research funding: None declared.

  2. Author contributions: The author has accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: Author states no conflict of interest.

  4. Informed consent: Not applicable. No empirical data used.

  5. Ethical approval: Not applicable. No empirical data used.

References

Agha, Asif. 2003. The social life of a cultural value. Language & Communication 23. 231–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0271-5309(03)00012-0.Search in Google Scholar

Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1). 38–59. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38.Search in Google Scholar

Ahmed, Sara. 2012. On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham: Duke University Press.10.1515/9780822395324Search in Google Scholar

Annamalai, Elayaperumal. 2001. Managing multilingualism in India. New Delhi: Sage.Search in Google Scholar

Baca, Damián. 2009. Rethinking composition, five hundred years later. Journal of Advanced Composition 29. 229–242.Search in Google Scholar

Baker, Colin. 2001. Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism, 3rd edn. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Search in Google Scholar

Bhabha, Homi K. 1999. Interview: Staging the politics of difference: Homi Bhabha’s critical literacy. In Gary A. Olson & Lynne Worsham (eds.), Race, rhetoric, and the postcolonial, 3–42. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Search in Google Scholar

Block, David. 2018. The political economy of language education research (or the lack thereof): Nancy Fraser and the case of Translanguaging. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 15(2). 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2018.1466300.Search in Google Scholar

Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511845307Search in Google Scholar

Blommaert, Jan. 2013. Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781783090419Search in Google Scholar

Campbell, Lee. 2003. Review of Geopolitics of academic writing. Journal of Advanced Composition 23(2). 455–459.Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 1993. American textbooks and Tamil students: Discerning ideological tensions in the ESL classroom. Language, Culture and Curriculum 6(2). 143–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908319309525145.Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2000. Negotiating ideologies through English: Strategies from the periphery. In Tom Ricento (ed.), Ideology, politics, and language policies: Focus on English, 107–120. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/impact.6.10canSearch in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2002a. A Geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.10.2307/j.ctt5hjn6cSearch in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2002b. Celebrating local knowledge on language and education. (Guest edited special topic issue). Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1(4). https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0104_1.Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh (ed.). 2005. Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.10.4324/9781410611840Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2013. Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. Abingdon: Routledge.10.4324/9780203073889Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2018a. Translingual practice as spatial repertoires: Expanding the paradigm beyond structuralist orientations. Applied Linguistics 39(1). 31–54. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx041.Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2018b. Materializing ‘competence:’ Perspectives from international STEM scholars. The Modern Language Journal 102(2). 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12464.Search in Google Scholar

Canagarajah, Suresh. 2022. Language incompetence: Learning to communicate through cancer, disability, and anomalous embodiment. Abingdon: Routledge.10.4324/9781003212065Search in Google Scholar

Cardoso, Fernando & Enzo Faletto. 1979. Dependency and development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520342118Search in Google Scholar

Coperahewa, Sandagomi. 2007. Language contact and linguistic area: Sinhala — Tamil contact situation. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka 53. 133–152.Search in Google Scholar

Creese, Angela & Adrian Blackledge. 2010. Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: A pedagogy for learning and teaching. The Modern Language Journal 94(1). 103–115. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00986.x.Search in Google Scholar

Cushman, Ellen. 2016. Translingual and decolonial approaches to meaning making. College English 78(3). 234–242.10.58680/ce201627654Search in Google Scholar

De Souza, L. Mario. 2002. A case among cases, a world among worlds: The ecology of writing among the Kashinawa in Brazil. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1(4). 261–278. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0104_2.Search in Google Scholar

de Souza Santos, Boaventura. 2016. Epistemologies of the south. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Degraff, Michelle. 2005. Linguists’ most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism. Language in Society 34(4). 533–591. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404505050207.Search in Google Scholar

Deumert, Ana, Anne Storch & Nick Shepherd (eds.). 2021. Colonial and decolonial linguistics: Knowledges and epistemes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198793205.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Flores, Nelson. 2013. The unexamined relationship between neoliberalism and plurilingualism: A cautionary tale. TESOL Quarterly 47(3). 500–520. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.114.Search in Google Scholar

García, Ofelia, Nelson Flores, Kate Seltzer, Li Wei, Ricardo Otheguy & Jonathan Rosa. 2021. Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2021.1935957.Search in Google Scholar

Gilyard, Keith. 2016. The rhetoric of translingualism. College English 78(3). 284–289.10.58680/ce201627660Search in Google Scholar

Gunder Frank, Andre. 1966. The development of under-development. Berkeley: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar

Han, Huamei. 2017. Trade migration and language. In Suresh Canagarajah (ed.), The Routledge handbook of migration and language, 258–274. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315754512-15Search in Google Scholar

Heng Hartse, Joel & Ryuko Kubota. 2014. Pluralizing English? Variation in high-stakes academic writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 24. 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.04.001.Search in Google Scholar

Jaspers, Jürgen. 2018. The transformative limits of translanguaging. Language & Communication 58. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2017.12.001.Search in Google Scholar

Johnstone, Barbara. 2016. Enregisterment: How linguistic items become linked with ways of speaking. Language and Linguistics Compass 10. 632–643. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12210.Search in Google Scholar

Kell, Catherine. 2017. Traveling texts, translocal/transnational literacies and transcontextual analysis. In Suresh Canagarajah (ed.), The Routledge handbook of migration and language, 413–430. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315754512-24Search in Google Scholar

Khubchandani, Lachman. 1997. Revisualizing boundaries: A plurilingual ethos. New Delhi: Sage.Search in Google Scholar

Kimball, Elizabeth. 2021. Translingual inheritance: Language diversity in early national Philadelphia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.10.2307/j.ctv1g4rvf6Search in Google Scholar

Kubota, Ryuko. 2013. ‘Language is only a tool’: Japanese expatriates working in China and implications for language teaching. Multilingual Education 3(4). 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-5059-3-4.Search in Google Scholar

Kubota, Ryuko. 2016. The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory, and neoliberal multiculturalism. Applied Linguistics 37. 474–494. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu045.Search in Google Scholar

Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Liu, Lydia. 1995. Translingual practice: Literature, national culture, and translated modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9781503615755Search in Google Scholar

Makalela, Leketi. 2017. Bilingualism in South Africa: Reconnecting with Ubuntu translanguaging. In Ofelia García, Angel Lin & Stephen May (eds.), Bilingual and multilingual education, 297–310. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-3-319-02258-1_14Search in Google Scholar

Massey, Doreen. 2005. For space. London: Sage.Search in Google Scholar

Mignolo, Walter. 2000. Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Mignolo, Walter & Catherine Walsh. 2018. On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Durham: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822371779Search in Google Scholar

Milu, Esther. 2021. Diversity of raciolinguistic experiences in the writing classroom: An argument for a transnational Black language pedagogy. College English 83(6). 415–441.10.58680/ce202131357Search in Google Scholar

Mohan, K. 1992. Constructing religion and caste: Manipulating identities. Social Science Research Journal 1. 1–12.Search in Google Scholar

Nixon, Rob. 2006–2007. Slow violence: Gender, and the environmentalism of the poor. Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 13(2)–14(1). 14–37.Search in Google Scholar

Pavlenko, Aneta. 2018. Superdiversity and why it isn’t: Reflections on terminological innovation and academic branding. In Barbara Schmenk, Stephan Breidbach & Lutz Kuster (eds.), Sloganizations in language education discourse, 142–168. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781788921879-009Search in Google Scholar

Pollock, Sydney. 2009. The language of the gods in the world of men: Sanskrit, culture, and power in premodern India. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar

Prebisch, Raul. 1962. The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems. Economic Bulletin for Latin America 7(1). 1–23.Search in Google Scholar

Raimes, Ann. 1993. The author responds. TESOL Quarterly 27(2). 306–309. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587149.Search in Google Scholar

Sadeghi, Shiva. 2007. Review of Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. Sociolinguistic Studies 1(1). 157–161. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v1i1.157.Search in Google Scholar

Said, Edward W. 1983. Travelling theory. In The world, the text, and the critic, 226–247. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Schmenk, Barbara. 2018. Sloganization: Yet another slogan? In Barbara Schmenk, Stephan Breidbach & Lutz Kuster (eds.), Sloganizations in language education discourse, 169–175. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781788921879-010Search in Google Scholar

Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Shulman, David. 2016. Tamil: A biography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.2307/j.ctt1g69zdtSearch in Google Scholar

Silverstein, Michael. 2014. Denotation and the pragmatics of language. In N. J. Enfield, Paul Kockelman & Jack Sidnell (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology, 128–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139342872.007Search in Google Scholar

Silverstein, Michael. 2019. Texts, entextualized and artifactualized. College English 82. 55–76.10.58680/ce201930305Search in Google Scholar

Snoddon, Kristin & Joanne Weber. 2021. Critical perspectives on plurilingualism in deaf education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781800410756Search in Google Scholar

Sousa, Laryssa & Rosane Pessoa. 2019. Humans, nonhuman others, matter and language: A discussion from posthumanist and decolonial perspectives. Trabalhos em Lingüística Aplicada 58(1). 520–543. https://doi.org/10.1590/010318135373715822019.Search in Google Scholar

Sugiharto, Setiono. 2015. The multilingual turn in Applied Linguistics? A perspective from the periphery. International Journal of Applied Lingusitics 25(3). 414–421. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12111.Search in Google Scholar

Tuck, Eve & K. Wayne Yang. 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1). 1–40.Search in Google Scholar

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1976. The modern world-system: Capitalist agriculture and the emergence of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar

Wortham, Stanton & Angela Reyes. 2015. Discourse analysis beyond the speech event. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315735207Search in Google Scholar

Yergeau, Melanie. 2017. Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness. Durham: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822372189Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2021-11-29
Accepted: 2022-01-16
Published Online: 2022-02-01
Published in Print: 2022-06-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 4.3.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/eduling-2021-0005/html
Scroll to top button