Moving beyond language(s): a case study on a newcomer’s translanguaging practices

3.1 Language, languaging and semiotic repertoire

At the beginning of the century, sociolinguists moved away from the traditional, structural concept of language perceived as a fixed, autonomous, and stable system, and reframed language as practice. The new perspective emphasises the act of using language or languaging, and acknowledges the interaction between linguistic, paralinguistic, and extralinguistic dimensions of communication (Li Wei and Lin 2019). Languaging is understood as the speakers’ use of mobile linguistic resources (Makoni and Pennycook 2007) which are part of a repertoire. The concept of repertoire is rooted in the works of Gumperz (1964) and Hymes (1974) who spoke of ‘verbal repertoire’ and ‘linguistic repertoire’, respectively, when describing language use. Unlike these two authors and in line with the languaging perspective, Blommaert (2010), Hall (2019) and Kusters et al. (2017) characterise the repertoire as ‘semiotic’.

To explain the move from a linguistic to a semiotic repertoire, its necessary to look into other fields. Scholars studying gestures in psychology, semiotics and linguistics hold that linguistic and embodied communicative practices are interrelated. However, the exact nature of the sign-gesture relation has been controversially discussed. While McNeill (2000) suggests a continuum, Goldin-Meadow (in Goldin-Meadow and Brentari 2017) speaks of two temporally co-existing systems and Kendon (2014), by contrast, holds that gestures and signs are an integral part of speech. Kendon (2014: 3) broadens the concept of language, includes different modalities and emphasises the flexible interrelation of different semiotic systems.

In the same way as the exact relationship between sign, language and gesture depends on the scholars and their definition of gesture, the relationship between translanguaging and semiotic repertoire varies with the scholar. What seems clear in all fields, however, is the connection between the social, physical and cognitive dimensions of communication. Atkinson et al. (2007) speak of the ways in which language users constantly adapt and align themselves both to other speakers and their social and physical environments. Thibault (2017: 76) explains that individuals adapt “their bodies and brains to the languaging activity that surrounds them” to communicate and participate in cultural activities and, lately, Li Wei and Lin (2019: 210) speak of the orchestration of “the neural-bodily-worldly skills of languaging”.

In this paper, we use the term semiotic repertoire to refer to an integrated inventory of resources including language varieties, registers, genres, modalities (e.g. speaking, writing), gestures, movements and visuals (Li Wei 2018).

3.2 The combination of semiotic resources

In the field of social semiotics, meaning-making refers to sign-making with all available modes in interaction (Kress 2013). The term mode denotes a set of resources for making meaning in interaction and in response to the environment (Kusters et al 2017). Modes of communication can by linguistic, gestural, aural, visual and spatial. In the process of communication, actors combine various modes thereby interconnecting linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic resources.

The orchestration of multiple semiotic resources has been highlighted by several scholars working in educational contexts across Europe, South Asia, the US and South Africa. Empirical studies from South Africa have shown that multimodal presentations increased the students’ engagement with the task (Guzula et al. 2016) and their audience (Newfield 2011), respectively. Relying on Stein’s work on oral storytelling practices, Newfield (2011), for instance, pointed out that a 13-year-old Zulu learner strategically combined Zulu, specific click sounds, facial expression, as well as body and eye movements to connect with her audience.

In South Asia, Wu and Lin (2019) investigated a Year 10 biology class in Hong-Kong and found that the teacher systematically used his voice, gestures and body in a culturally sensitive way to engage students and explain relationships between scientific concepts. Owing to this vivid combination of resources, the students recalled the content of the lesson and developed a deeper understanding of the concepts. Siry and Gorges (2019) took the investigation of multimodal resources to preschool education in Luxembourg. They observed science activities and found that, when given the opportunity, a 5-year-old drew on numerous resources other than linguistic ones to express and demonstrate their complex and nuanced understanding. In all three studies, the students were encouraged to draw on their entire semiotic repertoires and combine linguistic, visual, sonic, vocal and bodily resources. This stimulated their creativity and resourcefulness and enabled them to make and express meaning in a range of modes. This would have been impossible in ‘monomodal approaches’ which focus traditionally on languages as the primary means of communication (Newfield 2011:29).

3.3 Translanguaging and the co-ordination of semiotic resources

Like the concept of repertoire, translanguaging has known a profusion of meanings over the last twenty years (Li Wei 2018). At first, it described the flexible use of linguistic resources which allowed for “making meaning, shaping experiences, gaining understanding and knowledge through the use of two languages” (Baker 2011: 288). Over the years, translanguaging came to incorporate features that were associated with multimodality. For instance, Conteh (2018) described translanguaging as the process through which individuals “use multimodal resources to construct meanings, shape experiences and perform identities in their social encounters” (p. 473). Lately, García and Otheguy (2019: 10) retained two definitions: translanguaging as a practice and translanguaging as the deployment of the semiotic repertoire. The notion of practice refers to both monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ habit of using features of various languages and registers, as well as to planned pedagogical practices. The translanguaging pedagogy in the United States expanded with García and her colleagues (García et al. 2017). It expects that teachers create opportunities for themselves and students to strategically select and flexibly assemble various resources to communicate and learn. At the individual level, translanguaging thus means using a range of resources from one’s semiotic repertoire (García and Otheguy 2019). It mediates social interactions and becomes a catalyst for meaning-making processes that extends beyond the use of linguistic resources and includes transformations within and across modes (Li Wei 2018). To emphasize the entanglement between language and other semiotic systems, Lin (2019: 11) coined the term “trans-semiotizing”. She holds that people co-ordinate their gestures, body movements, facial expressions, sounds and visuals while communicating. During these interactions with others with whom they share semiotic resources, they also adapt, co-construct and expand resources. In the present paper, we use translanguaging in line with the latest work of García and Otheguy (2019) and understand translanguaging as the co-ordination of all meaning-making resources.

In sum, to this date, the majority of researchers investigating teacher or pupil-led translanguaging understand translanguaging in relation to linguistic rather than semiotic repertoires. Furthermore, only few studies have been undertaken in multilingual contexts (Siry and Gorges 2019; Guzula et al. 2016) and even fewer with newcomers in primary schools (Degano 2019; Gómez-Fernández 2011). The purpose of this article is to analyse the ways in which a newcomer in Luxembourg deploys and combines the resources of his semiotic repertoire in interaction with his peers. The research questions read as follows:

1. What resources feature in the newcomer’s semiotic repertoire?

2. How does he combine his resources in interaction with his peers?

4.1 Participants

Of Cape-Verdean and Portuguese origins, Harry moved from Portugal to Luxembourg and was enrolled in his local primary school in April 2017. In Portugal, he had been taught in Portuguese and had learnt some English. Owing to his lack of proficiency in Luxembourgish, German and French, Harry was asked to join a Year 3 class. Like most pupils in his school, he attended the after-school programme on a daily basis where staff addressed him mainly in Luxembourgish.

At the beginning of the data collection period, in October 2017, Harry, aged 10, attended both a Year 4 class and the ‘accueil’ [reception], a so-called bridge class for newcomers. For example, he would go to this reception class during subjects taught in German, unless the teacher had prepared individualised tasks in French for him. Over time, Harry spent fewer hours in the bridge class and more time with his 15 peers in Year 4. The home languages of these children included Luxembourgish, Portuguese, Cape-Verdean Créole, Albanian, Arabic and French. A third of the pupils in his class had Portuguese citizenship, a ratio that mirrors the linguistic landscape of the school population and is also in line with the national statistics (MENJE 2020). While Harry communicated in multiple languages with his peers, he used French almost exclusively with his Year 4 teacher, Ms Anna.

Ms Anna was a native Luxembourgish speaker. In line with the curriculum, she reported sticking to the languages of instruction but refrained from doing so in order to address Harry in French and occasionally resort to Portuguese translations. She predominantly engaged in teacher-centred learning, with group or pair work occurring from time to time in both academic school subjects (e.g. science) and non-academic ones (e.g. Art).

4.2 Methods of data collection and analysis

To develop an understanding of Harry’s languaging and the deployment of his semiotic repertoire, Degano observed classroom interactions in a range of school subjects, video-recorded activities, and carried out both semi-structured interviews and stimulated recall interviews with teachers and pupils. The data for the present article were collected during 20 days between January and July 2018, and stem from six science and 14 French lessons during which 25 video-recorded activities were produced. Details can be found in Table 1.

The use of various qualitative methods not only ensured contextual validity and trustworthiness, but also helped identify ethnographic rich points (Agar 1996). In the first stages of data analysis, Degano highlighted such rich points in the field notes completed after the school visit and marked them as key events. These key events included learning situations in which he used Portuguese, shifted between languages and used multiple resources to engage with curricular content. In the second stage, Degano presented some selected key events to Harry and discussed them to gain additional information or validate her own interpretations. For instance, a video-recorded stimulated recall interview relating to Excerpt 2 confirmed that Harry flexibly assembled a range of resources to ensure that his interlocutor could comprehend him. The third stage focused on the analysis of Harry’s semiotic repertoire and the combination and co-ordination of resources in interactions with others. For this purpose, the video-recordings were transcribed multimodally: relevant descriptions of non-verbal behaviour and video captures were added to describe the complex character of the interactions. Next, all field notes as well as most of the transcribed observations were coded in NVIVO. The analysis was influenced by Norris’ (2004) multimodal interaction analysis and Mercer’s (2004) sociocultural discourse analysis. The former made it possible to investigate the interplay of the resources of Harry’s semiotic repertoire, and the pupils’ reactions to the respective semiotic combinations, while the latter enabled the investigation of the pupils’ speech acts, and the embeddedness of the resources in the social context. The interactions were coded according to the addressees and speech acts (e.g. asking, explaining), the school subject and the materials (e.g. visuals, texts). To examine Harry’s repertoire, Degano coded the linguistic resources (e.g. features of named languages), the extralinguistic ones (e.g. gesture, gaze, mime), and the paralinguistic ones (e.g. pitch, tone, volume, pace, sounds). To identify the combination of resources in interaction with others, Degano and Kirsch analysed the speech acts of Harry and his peers in conjunction with the children’s deployment of their repertoires. Preliminary patterns related to the frequency of specific resources and modes (e.g. singing), the frequency of certain resource combinations (e.g. the use of Portuguese in combination with iconic gesture), and similarities across lessons. Member checks with researchers from the University of Luxembourg, University of Cologne, and University of Hamburg have been used to explore the validity of the results.

5.1 Co-ordinating and attuning semiotic resources

A representative example of a science lesson (Excerpt 1) will illustrate the complex assemblage of Harry’s linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic resources. This particular lesson on Egypt took place in February 2018 when Harry had been in Luxembourg for ten months. Ms Anna had asked the pupils to choose a topic they wanted to investigate and Virgil, Jean and Harry opted to work on mummies. Ms Anna made materials available in German and, for Harry, in French. She gave him a difficult French text on mummification that explained how embalmers eviscerated the corpse, preserved the organs, and wrapped the body. Pictures illustrated this process. Ms Anna encouraged Harry to ask Virgil, a native French speaker, to help him understand subject-related terminology if needed. As seen in Excerpt 1, Harry did so as well as interacting in Luxembourgish, German and Portuguese with Luxemburgish-speaking Jean and Portuguese-speaking Tiagitos. The excerpt presents the interactions in the original languages and in English translations. Utterances originally voiced in French are represented in normal script, those in Portuguese are in italics, the Luxembourgish ones are underlined, and those in German are in bold. Descriptions relating to extralinguistic and paralinguistic resources are put in curly brackets. The video captures were taken out to protect the children’s identity.

While reading his text on the mummification process (line 1), Harry came across the unknown French word ‘removed’. To understand its meaning, he tried to draw Virgil’s attention to the word in three different ways. He first called him in a strained and crackling voice (lines 2, 13), explicitly asked in French for his help (lines 4, 5), told him where to look (lines 6, 8), turned around his sheet (line 7), repeatedly pointed at the word in addition to deictic words (lines 12, 17) and, ultimately, changed the tone of his voice (line 16) and identified the word by circling it with his pen (line 18). In other words, to co-construct knowledge with Virgil, Harry combined his linguistic resources in French with sonic ones (i.e. voice), gestures (i.e. pointing) and movements (e.g. circling). To help his friend, Virgil, read the complex sentence twice in a low voice and stuck out his tongue, using the sound ‘Eeh’ to express disgust (line 14). He then explained the word ‘remove’ with a combination of linguistic (i.e. French) and extralinguistic resources (i.e. pull-away hand movements) (line 19). Harry mirrored Virgil’s combination of facial expression and sound effect, leaned back and continued reading on his own (line 20). The act of mirroring showed that Harry attuned his semiotic resources to those of his friend.

A few minutes later Harry expressed his understanding of the mummification process, including the verb “remove”, by combining his multimodal resources differently. When he explained to Tiagitos that the embalmers removed the organs of the corpse, kept the skin and wrapped it in linen, Harry shifted into Portuguese and supplemented his utterance with touch and rotating hand movements (lines 22–23). In this way, he added information to Virgil’s explanation and recontextualised and transformed it. He thereby showed that he had processed the information. Harry’s semiotic combination reflected that of Virgil – a combination of linguistic and extralinguistic resources – but included features of a second language. A further example of a yet different way in which Harry expressed his understanding multimodally can be seen in lines 24–27. Virgil had mentioned a hole in a deceased person’s body in a mixture of Luxembourgish and German and had pointed to the hole represented in the picture. Harry acknowledged the answer in French and directed his gaze from the hole in the mummy’s body to the embalmed mummy and then to the canopic jars in the middle and bottom of the page. His gaze suggests that he processed visual information and imagined the way the organs travel from the body to the jar. He attuned his linguistic and non-linguistic resources to those of Virgil, this time not to mirror his friend’s semiotic combination but to contextualize and make meaning of his comment.

Finally, the assemblage of linguistic, visual and gestural resources also occurred at other moments, for instance, when Harry jokingly told Jean off (line 21). He made use of features of formulaic Luxembourgish and German, his gaze (a side-glance at the teacher) and a bright grin to warn Jean that Ms Anna was nearby. In sum, this excerpt has shown that Harry aligned his resources with those of his peers and combined them in different ways to engage with curricular content, develop and share knowledge, and make a joke. He combined linguistic resources with either one or three of the following ones: gestures, facial expression, gaze and tone of voice. For instance, he assembled French, tone of voice and deictic gesture (lines 1–17); Luxembourgish, German and facial expression (line 21); Portuguese and deictic gesture (lines 22–23) and German, French and gaze (lines 23–27). Table 2. summarises Harry’s complex resources in seven science and French lessons.

In the table, F stands for French, G for German, L for Luxembourgish, P for Portuguese and E for English; brackets indicate that Harry has shown understanding of utterances voiced in specific languages without having used these himself. S refers to science and F to French.

5.2 Translanguaging across modes and modalities

Excerpt 1 has illustrated that Harry combined various modes of communication, using multiple resources (shown in brackets): linguistic (e.g. various languages), visual (e.g. gaze, facial expressions, pictures), gestural (e.g. gestures, movements) and aural (i.e. sounds). Excerpt 2 provides further insights into Harry’s complex meaning-making process. In addition, it foregrounds a different modality and gives a second example of mirroring.

Harry’s persistence and task engagement were also shown by his co-ordination of semiotic resources in the science lesson on snails in June 2018. Ms Anna had asked the pupils to work individually, look up information on snails in either German or French books, and write a short text. Excerpt 2 presents the interactions between Harry and Tiagitos who worked with a German book. Harry leafed through two pages of his French book. The first page displayed snail eggs and bore the title ‘Salut les petits’ [Hello little ones] and one of the following showed four stages of the development of snails with a picture of a three-week-old baby snail.

In addition to responding in the language he was addressed in (lines 3, 5), Harry used features of four languages (i.e. English, French, Luxembourgish and Portuguese) and mixed languages on a few occasions (lines 3, 7, 11, 12), an assemblage of linguistic resources that was typical for Harry towards the end of the academic year. Like in Excerpt 1, he added a range of paralinguistic resources (i.e. using a raspy voice) and extralinguistic ones (i.e. closing his thumb and forefinger) (lines 7, 12) when he told Tiagitos that one of the pages in his book showed snail eggs (line 6) and explained that a three-week-year-old snail is extremely small (line 12). Unlike Excerpt 1, however, Harry additionally sang a few bars of two English songs which perfectly fitted the visuals (lines 5, 9). This illustrates that he had picked up information from the page ‘Le temps des amours’ (The time of love), switched language, and changed modality, moving from written language to singing. By translanguaging across modes and modalities, he recontextualized the written and iconic information and gave the curricular content a new meaning. Harry systematically interjected such musical interludes to get his peers’ attention before sharing knowledge. Tiagitos’ verbal and non-verbal response to Harry’s semiotic combinations (lines 8, 10) signaled his interest in the interaction around the topic. He smiled, looked at Harry and sustained the conversation.

In both excerpts Harry initiated the conversation, but the alignment of resources changed. Whereas Harry attuned his resources to those of Tiagitos in the science lesson, Tiagitos followed Harry’s lead in the French lesson and mirrored Harry’s actions. He showed Harry his book, read his title (line 8), used multiple languages, and mixed languages (line 10).

5.3 Translanguaging practices in the classroom

The previous excerpts have shown that children combined different modes of communication thereby interconnecting linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic resources to interact with peers. The attunement of linguistic resources was particularly remarkable. To help Harry understand and communicate, Virgil did not refrain from using his home language French whereas he did so with his other peers and Ms Anna. Likewise, Tiagitos drew on his home language Portuguese to address Harry whereas he rarely did so when talking to his other friends. By using their home languages in class, the boys adapted their language use to Harry. As seen before, Harry also adapted his language use to the interlocutors and the situation at hand. In fact, the pupils’ translanguaging practices reflected the languaging practice in the classroom. At the beginning of the school year, the school had seen an increase in refugee children whose repertoires did not include the school languages. Ms. Anna tried to accommodate the language needs of newcomers and other children. She communicated in German, French, Luxembourgish and at times in Portuguese and used these languages flexibly and strategically. When interacting with Harry, she also made ample use of gestures. The pupils were therefore used to hearing three to four languages during a lesson and see the teacher combine different modes of communication. As a result, they reproduced this practice in peer-interactions.