2. LANGUAGE

Sociolinguistic study of multilingualism has moved away from a view of languages as separate, bounded entities to a view of communication in which language users employ whatever linguistic features are at their disposal to achieve their communicative aims as best they can (Jørgensen et al., Reference Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen and Møller2011). Blommaert and Rampton (Reference Blommaert and Rampton2011) argued that languages are ideological constructions historically tied to the emergence of the nation-state in the 19th century. Rather than taking the named language as the unit of analysis, Blommaert and Rampton proposed that “it is far more productive analytically to focus on the very variable ways in which linguistic features with identifiable social and cultural associations get clustered together whenever people communicate” (Blommaert & Rampton, Reference Blommaert and Rampton2011, p. 1). Makoni and Pennycook (Reference Makoni, Pennycook, Makoni and Pennycook2007) argued for an understanding of the relationships between what people believe about their language (or other people's languages), the situated forms of talk they deploy, and the material effects—social, economic, environmental—of such views and use (p. 22). Recently, a number of terms have emerged, as scholars have sought to describe and analyze linguistic practices in which meaning is made using signs flexibly. These include, among others, flexible bilingualism (Creese & Blackledge, Reference Creese and Blackledge2010), codemeshing (Canagarajah, Reference Canagarajah2011), polylingual languaging (Jørgensen et al., Reference Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen and Møller2011; Madsen, Reference Madsen2011), contemporary urban vernaculars (Rampton, Reference Rampton2011), metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, Reference Otsuji and Pennycook2011), translingual practice (Canagarajah, Reference Canagarajah2013), and translanguaging (García, Reference García2009; Creese & Blackledge, Reference Creese and Blackledge2011). The shared perspective represented in the use of these various terms considers that meaning-making is not confined to the use of languages as discrete, enumerable, bounded sets of linguistic resources. Rather, signs are available for meaning-making in communicative repertoires (Rymes, Reference Rymes, Hornberger and McKay2010) that extend across languages and varieties that have hitherto been associated with particular national, territorial, and social groups. These terms, different from each other yet in many ways similar, represent a view of language as a social resource without clear boundaries, which places the speaker at the heart of the interaction.

Globalization has compelled scholars to see sociolinguistic phenomena and processes as characterized by mobility. Blommaert (Reference Blommaert2014) argued that adopting mobility as a central concept in a sociolinguistics of globalization has three major methodological effects: (a) it creates a degree of unpredictability in what we observe; (b) we can only solve this unpredictability by close ethnographic inspection of the minutiae of what happens in communication; and (c) it keeps in mind the limitations of current methodological and theoretical vocabulary. Blommaert (Reference Blommaert2014, p. 7) argued that in “superdiverse” environments (both on- and offline), people appear to take any linguistic and communicative resources available to them and blend them into complex linguistic and semiotic forms. Old and established terms such as “code-switching,” and even “multilingualism,” exhaust the limits of their descriptive and explanatory adequacy in the face of such highly complex blends. Taking mobility as a principle of sociolinguistic research challenges several major assumptions of mainstream sociolinguistics and invites a more complex, dynamic and multifaceted view of sociolinguistic realities.

Blommaert (Reference Blommaert2014) pointed out that a sociolinguistic system is a complex system characterized by internal and external forces of perpetual change, operating simultaneously and in unpredictable mutual relationships. He therefore proposed that in addition to mobility we take complexity as a paradigmatic principle of sociolinguistic analysis. Blommaert (Reference Blommaert2012) argued for a recognition that the contemporary semiotics of culture and identity need to be captured in terms of complexity rather than in terms of multiplicity or plurality. Indeed, he argued that “a vocabulary including ‘multilingual,’ ‘multi-cultural,’ or ‘pluri-,’ ‘inter-,’ ‘cross-,’ and ‘trans-’ notions all suggest an a priori existence of separable units (language, culture, identity), and they suggest that the encounter of such separable units produces peculiar new units: ‘multilingual’ repertoires, ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ identities and so forth” (Blommaert, Reference Blommaert2012, p. 2). Blommaert argued that a perspective that focuses on code-switching is emblematic of this view. Bailey (Reference Bailey, Martin-Jones, Blackledge and Creese2012) engaged with the limitations of an approach to linguistic analysis that emphasizes code-switching, arguing that a focus on linguistic features that are officially authorized codes or languages, for example, “English” or “Spanish” can contribute to neglect of the diversity of socially indexical resources within languages. Bailey pointed out that if the starting-point is social meanings, rather than the code or language in use, it is not crucial to ask whether a speaker is switching languages, alternating between a dialect and a national standard, register shifting, or speaking monolingually in a variety that highlights language contact. Language, whether monolingual or multilingual, carries social meanings through phonological, lexical, grammatical, and discourse level forms: “these forms index various aspects of individuals’ and communities’ social histories, circumstances, and identities” (Bailey, Reference Bailey, Martin-Jones, Blackledge and Creese2012, p. 506). Canagarajah & Liyanage (Reference Canagarajah, Liyanage, Martin-Jones, Blackledge and Creese2012) have noted that even so-called monolinguals shuttle between codes, registers, and discourses, and can therefore hardly be described as monolingual. Just as the traditional distinction between languages is no longer sustainable, so the distinction between monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual speakers may no longer be sustainable.

Canagarajah (Reference Canagarajah2013) adopted the term “translingual practice” to capture the common underlying processes and orientations of the mobility and complexity of communicative modes. In doing so, he argued that communication transcends individual languages and involves diverse semiotic resources and ecological affordances. He pointed out that languages in contact mutually influence each other, and so labeling them as separate entities is an ideological act. Multilingual speakers deploy repertoires rather than languages in communication, and they do not have separate competences for separately labeled languages. Canagarajah elaborated on these points, arguing that language is only one semiotic resource among many, and that all semiotic resources work together to make meaning. Separating out language from other semiotic resources distorts our understanding of communicative practice. Canagarajah pointed out that further research is needed to understand the complexity of communicative strategies that make up translingual practice, to explore the implications for meaning construction, language acquisition, and social relations. He also pointed out that the pedagogical implications of translingual practice warrant further attention.

Related to the notion of translingual practice is translanguaging. García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) argued that the term translanguaging offers a way of analyzing how the complex practices of speakers live between different societal and semiotic contexts as they interact with a complex array of speakers. A translanguaging approach to bilingualism extends the repertoire of semiotic practices of individuals and transforms them into dynamic mobile resources that can adapt to global and local sociolinguistic situations. At the same time, translanguaging also attends to the social construction of language and bilingualism under which speakers operate. We return to the educational implications of translanguaging as pedagogy and practice in section 4. First, though, we consider language and identity.

3. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

Riley (Reference Riley2007) pointed to an increasing weight of interdisciplinary evidence that identity is socially constructed, and that our sense of self can only emerge as the result of communicative interaction with others. Blommaert and Varis (Reference Blommaert, Varis, Duarte and Gogolin2013, p. 146) developed a four-tiered framework for investigating complex and dynamic identity processes. First, identity discourses and practices can be described as discursive orientations toward sets of features that are viewed as emblematic of particular identities. Second, these features are not randomly distributed in a free-for-all, but are more often presented in specific arrangements and configurations. Third, one has to have enough of the emblematic features in order to be ratified as an authentic member of an identity category. And fourth, these processes involve conflict and contestation, and are highly dynamic: configurations of features and criteria of authentic membership or belonging can be adjusted, reinvented, amended. Emblematic features include the way people speak, the way they text (in SMS messages), the way they update their Facebook profile, the way they dress, the food they eat, the beverage they prefer, the music they listen to, the films they enjoy, the novels they read, and so on. Judgments about whether a person has (or performs) enough of the requisite emblematic templates to be accepted as, or endowed with, membership of a particular identity or group are highly nuanced, and not always negotiable (Pavlenko & Blackledge, Reference Pavlenko, Blackledge, Pavlenko and Blackledge2004). Some may not have access to the necessary resources, while others may be viewed as “fake” members of an identity category. Moreover, it is likely that in picking our way through the complex and dynamic processes of identity negotiation, we develop an “identity repertoire” (Blommaert & Varis, Reference Blommaert, Varis, Duarte and Gogolin2013, p. 157) that enables us to adapt to the contingencies of social life. In this conception of identity, emblematic features are empirically observable and can be investigated ethnographically. Emblems of identity are not merely psychological, but are corporeal, and are performed as practice. This is true not only of the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the sport we play, and so on. It is also true of the way in which we deploy linguistic resources. It is to this aspect of identity performance and negotiation that we now turn our attention.

Gal (Reference Gal, Stevenson and Mar-Molinaro2006) pointed out that in Europe a new elite of multilingual speakers (e.g., of French, German, and English) sustains a breadth of linguistic repertoires that transcends national boundaries. For such groups ethnolinguistic identity may be only an occasional issue. For multilingual speakers of languages with lower status, however, language issues may still be salient as people attempt to negotiate identities, often from relatively powerless positions. Language ideologies are neither simple nor monolithic, however. Notwithstanding the argument that minority language speakers are subject to the symbolic violence of the dominant language ideology, some speakers who (or whose families) may traditionally have been associated with minority “ethnic” languages are using language and languages in new ways (Rampton Reference Rampton1995, Reference Rampton1999). While some speakers are either unable to negotiate their identities from inextricably powerless positions, and others in powerful positions have no need to do so, some speakers in modern nation-states are using their linguistic skills to negotiate new subject positions (Blackledge & Pavlenko, Reference Blackledge and Pavlenko2001; Pavlenko & Blackledge, Reference Pavlenko, Blackledge, Pavlenko and Blackledge2004). In what Gal (Reference Gal, Stevenson and Mar-Molinaro2006, p. 27) described as “self-conscious, anti-standardizing moves,” such negotiations may include linguistic practices which reframe previous standard varieties, incorporating, inter alia, urban popular cultural forms, minority linguistic forms, hybridities, and inventions. Here language practices associated with immigrant groups no longer represent backward-looking traditions, but may be linked to global youth culture and urban sophistication. Languages and language practices are not necessarily equated to national identity (but may be so), and are not necessarily dominated by the standardized variety. Despite powerful ideologies of homogeneity, populations in many countries—especially countries with a history of recent immigration—continue to be heterogeneous in their practices. May (Reference May2005, p. 337) proposed that linguistic identities need not be oppositional, and asks “what exactly is wrong with linguistic complementarity?” May calls for further ethnographic studies which articulate and exemplify broad linguistic principles of language ideological research in complex multilingual contexts. Duchêne and Heller (Reference Duchêne and Heller2007, p. 11) argued that rather than accepting ideological positions in which there is competition over languages, “perhaps we should be asking instead who benefits and who loses from understanding languages the way we do, what is at stake for whom, and how and why language serves as a terrain for competition.”

We agree with Makoni and Pennycook (Reference Makoni, Pennycook, Makoni and Pennycook2007) that the notion of languages as separate, discrete entities, and “countable institutions” (p. 2) is a social construct. Makoni and Pennycook argued for a critical historical account that demonstrates that, through the process of classification and naming, languages were “invented” (p. 1). They added that, in direct relation with the invention of languages, “an ideology of languages as separate and enumerable categories was also created” (p. 2). Makoni and Pennycook pointed in particular to the naming of languages such as “Bengali” and “Assamese” as the construction of “new objects” (p. 10). Thus languages cannot be viewed as discrete, bounded, impermeable, autonomous systems. Makoni and Pennycook proposed that “local knowledge” is crucial to our understanding of language: “we are arguing for an understanding of the relationships between what people believe about their language (or other people's languages), the situated forms of talk they deploy, and the material effects—social, economic, environmental—of such views and use” (Makoni & Pennycook, Reference Makoni, Pennycook, Makoni and Pennycook2007, p. 22). This interrelationship between what people believe about language and languages, and the way they access and make use of linguistic resources, provides a focus to our discussion in this article. If languages and identities are socially constructed, we nevertheless need to account for the fact that at least some language users, at least some of the time, hold passionate beliefs about the importance and significance of a particular language to their sense of “identity” (Blackledge & Creese, Reference Blackledge and Creese2010). As we have seen, it is now well established in contemporary sociolinguistics that one language does not straightforwardly index one subject position, and that speakers use linguistic resources in complex ways to perform a range of subject positions, sometimes simultaneously. However, while accepting this, May (Reference May2005, p. 330) argued that “historically associated languages continue often to hold considerable purchase for members of particular cultural or ethnic groups in their identity claims.”

Jørgensen (Reference Jørgensen2010) pointed to the fluidity of late modern society, in which identities are not necessarily imposed from above, but may be negotiable within certain social settings. Jørgensen proposes that language users create, construct, and negotiate identities on the basis of a range of resources which can be associated with meaning. To the extent that such resources are part of language, identities are constructed and negotiated in linguistic discourse. Identities are performed, constructed, enacted, produced, but only in interaction with others. That is, “identities arise in interaction among people” (Jørgensen Reference Jørgensen2010, p. 4). As such, identities are to a large extent subject to negotiation. García (Reference García, Fishman and García2010) referred to the role of language diversity in the negotiation and construction of identity, and suggests that language choice involves negotiation in every interaction, as particular linguistic resources may provide or prevent access to powerful social networks. That is, multilingual speakers “decide who they want to be and choose their language practices accordingly” (García Reference García, Fishman and García2010, p. 524). However, not all linguistic resources are equally available to all speakers at all times (Creese et al., Reference Creese, Bhatt, Bhojani and Martin2006). Certain subject positions may either be non-negotiable, or only partly negotiable, in particular places and at particular times, as social contexts prevent individuals from accessing resources (Pavlenko & Blackledge, Reference Pavlenko, Blackledge, Pavlenko and Blackledge2004). For these reasons, analysis of language practices should attend to spatio-temporal dimensions, and to relations of inequality and power.

4. TRANSLANGUAGING AS PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE

In this section we discuss language, identity, and education through the lens of translanguaging. García (Reference García and Wei2014) defined translanguaging both as an act of bilingual performance and as a bilingual pedagogy for teaching and learning. Coined initially in the 1980s (Williams, Reference Williams1994, Reference Williams, Williams, Lewis and Baker1996) and subsequently developed in response to changing linguistic phenomena in schools and communities (Baker, Reference Baker2001, Reference Baker2006), the term has recently gained currency in discussions of multilingualism, especially in educational contexts (Baker, Reference Baker2011; Blackledge & Creese Reference Blackledge and Creese2010, Creese & Blackledge Reference Creese and Blackledge2011; García, Reference García2009, Li Wei, Reference Wei2011). For García (Reference García and Wei2014), translanguaging refers to the flexible use of linguistic resources by bilinguals as they make sense of their worlds. She proposed that translanguaging as pedagogy has the potential to liberate the voices of language-minoritized students. A translanguaging approach to teaching and learning is not about code-switching, but rather about an arrangement that normalizes bilingualism without diglossic functional separation. Baker (Reference Baker2011, p. 288) defined translanguaging as the process of “making meaning, shaping experiences, gaining understanding and knowledge through the use of two languages.” In the classroom, translanguaging approaches draw on all the linguistic resources of the child to maximize understanding and achievement. Thus, both or all languages are used in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner to organize and mediate understanding, speaking, literacy, and learning (Lewis, Jones, & Baker, Reference Lewis, Jones and Baker2012). García argued that bilingual families and communities translanguage in order to construct meaning. She further proposed that what makes translanguaging different from other fluid languaging practices is that it is transformative, with the potential to remove the hierarchy of languaging practices that deem some more valuable than others. Translanguaging, she argued, is about a new languaging reality, a new way of being, acting and languaging in a different social, cultural, and political context, allowing fluid discourses to flow, and giving voice to new social realities (García & Leiva Reference García and Wei2014). Wei (Reference Wei2011, p. 1223) made a similar argument, that the act of translanguaging “is transformative in nature; it creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment.” Hornberger and Link (Reference Hornberger and Link2012) further conceptualized translanguaging in educational contexts, proposing that educators recognize, value, and build on the multiple, mobile communicative repertoires of students and their families. Translanguaging leads us away from a focus on languages as distinct codes to a focus on the agency of individuals engaged in using, creating, and interpreting signs for communication. Lewis et al. (Reference Lewis, Jones and Baker2012, p. 665) argued that the distinction between code-switching and translanguaging is ideological, in that code-switching has associations with language separation, while translanguaging approves the flexibility of learning through two or more languages: “Particularly in the bilingual classroom, translanguaging as a concept tries to move acceptable practice away from language separation, and thus has ideological—even political—associations.”

Hélot (Reference Hélot, Blackledge and Creese2014) explored the learning potential of translanguaging, as she described the deployment of texts by translingual authors to make trainee teachers aware of new ways of understanding bilinguals’ experiences and engagement with the world. Aware of the constraints inherent in restrictive language policy, Hélot argued for translanguaging as a means to counteract linguistic insecurity in the classroom, to ensure teachers understand that balanced bilingualism is a myth, and that translanguaging is a linguistic resource available to bilinguals to communicate in a creative and meaningful way. Noguerón-Liu and Warriner (Reference Noguerón-Liu, Warriner, Blackledge and Creese2014) suggested that the notion of translanguaging expands existing theories of multilingualism by focusing on the social practices of individuals. They adopted this term to move away from a focus on abstract, idealized notions of “a language” as a set of skills and to emphasize the fact that multilingual users deploy a variety of resources while engaging in everyday practice. They explicitly linked translanguaging and identity practices, saying: “For Latino communities in the USA, translanguaging practices have been an integral part of identity and belonging” (Noguerón-Liu & Warriner, Reference Noguerón-Liu, Warriner, Blackledge and Creese2014, p. 183). Low and Sarkar (Reference Low, Sarkar, Blackledge and Creese2014) argued that the politics of language is part of everyday interaction in downtown Montreal and is evidenced in the boundary-crossing implied by translanguaging.

García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014, p. 20) proposed that the concept of translanguaging is based on radically different notions of language and bilingualism than those espoused in the 20th century, “an epistemological change that is the product of acting and languaging in our highly technological globalized world.” For García and Wei,

That is, translanguaging is the enactment of language practices that use different features that had previously been independently constrained by different histories, but that now are experienced against each other in speakers’ interactions as one new whole. Translanguaging goes beyond code-switching, but incorporates it. García (Reference García, Fishman and García2010) pointed out that multilinguals translanguage to include and facilitate communication with others, but also to construct deeper understandings. Translanguaging includes but extends what others have called language use and language contact among multilinguals. García (Reference García, Fishman and García2010) argued that rather than focusing on the language itself, translanguaging makes it apparent that there are no clear-cut boundaries between the languages of bilinguals. Furthermore, translanguaging emerges from social practices between two or more languages that are neither static nor linked to one national or ethnic identity. For García (Reference García and Wei2014, p. 204), “translanguaging refers to social practices and actions that enact a political process of social subjectivity transformations.”

García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) argue that translanguaging differs from code-switching in that it refers not simply to a shift or a shuttle between two languages, but to the speakers’ construction and use of original and complex interrelated discursive practices that cannot be easily assigned to one or another traditional definition of a language, but that make up the speakers’ complete language repertoire. Translanguaging starts from the speaker, rather than the code or language, and focuses on empirically observable practices. Translanguaging practices are not viewed as marked or unusual, but are rather taken to be the normal mode of communication that characterizes communities throughout the world. A translanguaging lens proposes that, rather than making decisions about which language to use in a particular social setting, people have a linguistic repertoire from which they select resources to communicate. García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) claimed that translanguaging is transformative in its creative and critical potential. In its transdisciplinarity, translanguaging enables speakers to go beyond traditional academic disciplines and conventional structures, in order to gain new understandings of human relations and generate more just social structures, capable of liberating the voices of the oppressed.

Turning more explicitly to education, García (Reference García, Fishman and García2010) argued that translanguaging goes beyond code-switching and translation in education because it refers to the process in which students perform bilingually in the myriad multimodal ways of classrooms—reading, writing, taking notes, discussing, signing, and so on. That is, in line with the conception of identity performance outlined by Blommaert and Varis (Reference Blommaert, Varis, Duarte and Gogolin2013), translanguaging is multisemiotic. In education, García and Kano proposed that translanguaging is

This is clearly a definition of linguistic practice which goes some way beyond the question of which language is, or should be, in use in a particular pedagogical event. Rather, it refers not only to practice but to ideology, to beliefs about the value of students and teachers deploying the full range of their linguistic repertoires in educational settings.

Furthermore, García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) argued that creativity and criticality are key features of the transformative potential of translanguaging. Creativity is the ability to choose between obeying and breaking the rules and norms of behavior, including the use of language. It is about challenging boundaries and making something new. Criticality refers to the ability to use available evidence to inform considered views of cultural, social, political, and linguistic phenomena, to question and problematize received wisdom, and to express views adequately through reasoned responses to situations. These two concepts are intrinsically linked: boundaries cannot be challenged without a critical orientation; and creativity is often an expression of criticality. García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) pointed out that translanguaging, as a socioeducational process, enables students to construct and constantly modify their sociocultural identities and values, as they respond to their historical and present conditions critically and creatively. Translanguaging in education also pays attention to the ways in which students combine different modes and media across social contexts and negotiate social identities. García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) noted that translanguaging as pedagogy contributes to identity investment and positionality to engage learners. Creese and Blackledge (Reference Creese and Blackledge2010) similarly found that student translanguaging established identity positions that were both oppositional to, and encompassing of, institutional values. In a translanguaging pedagogy language practices belong neither to the school nor to the home. Instead, languaging is situated within the practice of the learner, as it emerges through social interaction (García & Wei, Reference García and Wei2014, p. 80). García & Wei concluded that the practice of translanguaging is not only based on a trans-semiotic system, it also produces “trans-spaces.” (Reference Wei2011) argued that the notion of translanguaging space embraces the concepts of creativity and criticality, which are fundamental but underexplored dimensions of multilingual practices. García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014, p. 80) pointed out that in producing a trans-subject, translanguaging is capable of transforming subjectivities and identities. Palmer, Mateus, Martinez, and Henderson (Reference Palmer, Mateus, Martinez and Henderson2014) presented classroom examples that demonstrate that modeling and engaging in dynamic bilingualism, celebrating hybridity and moments of metalinguistic commentary, and positioning children as competent bilinguals can be potentially powerful translanguaging pedagogies. They argued that translanguaging pedagogies open up spaces for students to engage in sensitive and important topics and take risks to express themselves in developing languages (e.g., attempting to translate).

García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014, p. 121) set out teachers’ goals of translanguaging pedagogy as follows:

In what follows we will consider these goals in relation to a transcript of a typical lesson in a Panjabi complementary school in the United Kingdom.

What we have argued so far is that, first, languages can no longer be held to be separate entities with fixed boundaries, but rather linguistic resources are deployed as people draw on communicative repertoires. Second, we have argued that identities are incorporated and performed as sets of emblematic, multisemiotic features, including linguistic resources, and that identity positions may or may not be negotiable in particular social settings. Third, we agree with García and Wei (Reference García and Wei2014) that translanguaging offers a pedagogy in a range of educational settings to offer transformative spaces for the performance and embodiment of identities that contribute to critical and creative learning. In the next section we present a brief example of translanguaging in the complementary school classroom.

5. TRANSLANGUAGING IN THE PANJABI CLASSROOM

In order to illustrate the theoretical points made so far we will very briefly present a single example from our recent empirical research in a Panjabi complementary (also known as community language or heritage language) school in Birmingham, UK. The main purpose of the school is to teach Panjabi to young people of “Panjabi heritage”. The school operates across two sites in Birmingham, on Saturdays only, throughout the school year. Complementary schooling is additional to regular (full-time) schooling and is largely funded by local communities.

In the following examples, the teacher, Kirpal, wears a digital audiorecorder with a tie-clip microphone. Two students, Sandip and Kiruth, also wear digital audiorecorders with tie-clip microphones. Kirpal is 23 years old; Sandip (male) and Kiruth (female) are both 17 years old. Pavan is a teaching assistant and is 19 years old. The other students range in age from 8 to 16 years old.

The task for the class is to write sentences about what they did on their holidays.

EXAMPLE 1

Here the student, Shaan, presents a sentence in the target language, Panjabi. The teacher, Kirpal, makes a teaching point in a form that includes English and Panjabi resources. This not only requires the student to make meaning from both languages in use together but also to recognize this form as an acceptable classroom practice. In what follows, Kirpal more formally models an appropriate sentence, offering the students an example of the past tense. In the next example Kirpal continues to adopt the usual discourse of this classroom:

EXAMPLE 2

Here Kirpal translanguages not only to make teaching points but also to maintain standards of classroom engagement, admonishing Sandip. It was noticeable that Kirpal would differentiate between students, adapting the extent and level of Panjabi for classroom management depending on the proficiency of the student. Here Kiruth, also relatively proficient in relation to most of the students, attempts to join in with the translanguaging discourse, defending her friend Sandip while adopting a linguistic form which pleases the teacher.

The prescribed classroom activity prompts a discussion of what Sandip did during the school holidays. The gurdwara is the local place of worship for members of the Sikh religion:

EXAMPLE 3

The discussion moves forward confidently as translanguaging discourse, again retaining Panjabi for terms associated with Sikhism and kinship. Sandip describes his commitment to the religious practice of undertaking 72 hours of continuous prayer, but he does so through a mini-narrative that partly usurps this serious cultural-religious practice (“I got constipation”). Kirpal acts as a moderator of cultural values here, intervening in the discussion to insist that there should be no criticism of the emblematic roti, bread served at the gurdwara to any poor person who may come looking for a meal. He finds support from Simran (“yeah, seva”) and Kiruth (“I love the gurdwara food to be fair”), and Sandip concedes with a more emollient “no, I do like it” (although in doing so he runs up against Kiruth's family values). The exchange provides examples of young people being light-hearted but also serious about their cultural heritages. But this is not an example of translanguaging which merely moves between English and Panjabi. Such an analysis would remain in the realms of code-switching. A more nuanced analysis reveals that the young people adopt a translanguaging discourse that is sharply aware of terms emblematic of certain cultural values and traditions (e.g., seva, akhand path, roti), and kinship (thyee). Furthermore, this is not a binary discourse. A more helpful lens than language(s) here is that of register, as the young people adopt a discourse that positions them as urban, sophisticated speakers of a repertoire that includes nonstandard terms commonly understood (by them at least) to index a youthful, “cool” positionality: “my days,” “dude,” “I'm not even joking,” “bad mouth,” “dank,” “to be fair,” “diss.” Such discourse is rapidly mobile, and at the time of writing, a year or two after the interaction itself, these same terms are no doubt as uncool as can be. At the time, however, they served as part of a repertoire which indexed a common identity position for this group of young people.

These are typical, everyday, unremarkable examples of teachers and students adopting, imposing, and negotiating identity positions as they translanguage, moving across and between mobile sets of linguistic resources within their communicative repertoires. Despite the complexity in evidence as the young people deploy different languages and registers, this is far from being a free-for-all. Rather, established norms are in play as teachers and students discursively orient toward sets of features which are emblematic of particular identity positions.