Critical Dialogues: Translingualism/Translanguaging, Translation, and Sociolinguistic Justice
This seminar takes stock of the attitudinal and pragmatic shifts that translingualism (alongside its cousin translanguaging) and translation have brought about as central theories of knowledge and meaning creation amid the linguistic and cultural plurality and complexity of the 21st century. We will be collaboratively examining the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of these critical activist frameworks and their connections to other similar movements— including but not limited to, raciolinguistics, global language justice, transnational rhetorics, decolonial and southern theory— against the power structures within which languages, literacies, rhetorics, knowledges and identities operate.
Throughout the quarter, we will be reading a wide selection of theoretical, ethnographic narrative-based and grounded, pedagogical texts that deepen our understanding of the who, what, when, where, why and how of the intersections of language, agency, ideology, inequality, and power dynamics in local and transnational contexts. Our readings and deliberations in this seminar will open up opportunities for us to explore the promise and practicality of translingualism/translanguaging and translation as “a way out” of a dominant English-centric monolingual mindset for institutions, communities, and individuals, and a pathway towards language and social justice.
With the rise of white nationalistic sentiments and discourses in the Trump 2.0 era and the widespread access to GenAI writing and translation tools which seem to be perpetuating and fortifying dominant linguistic hierarchies and standards, we will spend time toward the end of the quarter turning a critical gaze on the languaging around us and in the changing landscapes of higher education. As a point of departure in this seminar, we will engage in conversations and hands-on activities around the different ways translingual-oriented framings and doings of language should shape our curriculum design, research, advocacy and activism in English-dominated spaces. In this sense, the seminar will be an opportunity for collaboration and collective thinking around an overarching question that matters now more than ever before: How do we continue doing critical work that centers language in the shifting contexts of our work in writing, language and rhetorical studies and education, where language matters sit at the heart of diverse forms of oppression and inequality?