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Translanguaging in a township primary school: Policy and practice

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DOI: 10.2989/16073614.2016.1261039

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Translanguaging in a township primary school:

Policy and practice

Lara-Stephanie Krause & Mastin Prinsloo

To cite this article: Lara-Stephanie Krause & Mastin Prinsloo (2016) Translanguaging in
a township primary school: Policy and practice, Southern African Linguistics and Applied
Language Studies, 34:4, 347-357, DOI: 10.2989/16073614.2016.1261039

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Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2016, 34(4): 347–357 Copyright © NISC (Pty) Ltd
SOUTHERN AFRICAN LINGUISTICS
AND APPLIED LANGUAGE STUDIES
ISSN 1607-3614 EISSN 1727-9461
http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2016.1261039

Translanguaging in a township primary school: Policy and practice

Lara-Stephanie Krause and Mastin Prinsloo*

School of Languages and Literature, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa
*Corresponding author email: Mastin.Prinsloo@uct.ac.za

Abstract: We draw on a translanguaging perspective in this paper to examine teaching in schools

where heteroglossic languaging practices in classrooms encounter less fluid language ideologies in
educational policy and assessment practices. In an ethnographic-style case study in a Khayelitsha
school, the teachers’ languaging in classroom teaching is shown to be fluid, mixing language
resources, often in creative and helpful ways. One typical discourse pattern is that of ‘complementary
translanguaging’, where resources are meshed without translation from one named language to
another. On the other hand, ‘reproductional translanguaging’ also occurs, where meaning is first
made using one set of language resources and then made again using another set. We find that
teachers apply the language resources at their disposal with some skill to make learners engage
with subject content. However, the institutional language ideologies that materialise in the school’s
language policy and in testing regimes, turn such skilful language practices from an asset into a
relative disadvantage. While aware that they are transgressing the principal’s language policy as well
as knowing that their students are struggling with monoglossic examination requirements, teachers
continue to translanguage for the pedagogic advantages this brings, despite the rigid, separatist
language ideologies that inform school management.

Introduction
Teachers in national and regional schooling systems in many different locations around the
world (though not everywhere) face linguistically and socioculturally diverse groups of students
(Blackledge and Creese 2010; Gardner and Martin-Jones 2012). However, schooling policies
have often developed on the pretence that schooling is the same thing for all teachers and
students, where students get tested as if such tests are neutral measures of personal ability.
There is often little acknowledgement that schooling can be a very different experience depending
on differences in socio-economic, sociocultural and language backgrounds among student and
teacher populations. Sociocultural and linguistic diversity is a relatively recent focus and concern
in European and North American contexts (Vertovec 2007), brought to research attention by
the prolific contemporary flows of people across regions, national borders and continents, into
European and North American cities. This new mobility is associated with the emergence, since the
1980s, of a globalised division of labour, production and consumption (Appadurai 1999; Castells
2005). In South Africa, as well as in other African ex-colonial and post-colonial contexts, however,
challenges around socio-economic, cultural and linguistic multiplicities and specificities have long
featured strongly. But the resources for research and application of research insights in the study
of multilingualism in education have been lacking, hampered by views of discrete languages as
separate systems from each other and of static notions of groups of people as being tied to stable
and apparently timeless ethnolinguistic identities. Among other similar constructs, Jørgensen et
al.’s (2011) notion of ‘polylingual languaging’, Otsuji and Pennycook’s (2010) ‘metrolingualism’
and Blommaert’s (2010) ‘superdiversity’ point to revisions of established views of languages as
autonomous, bounded objects. We focus in this chapter on a study of translanguaging as a vehicle
for examining what is happening in schools under the pressure of fluid languaging practices and
less fluid language ideologies in education.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
348 Krause and Prinsloo

Literature
Diversity as a social phenomenon poses a range of social, cultural and material challenges to
educational systems that were developed around the dictates of a ‘monoglossic language ideology’
(García 2009), where variations from the Standard are understood to be deficiencies. At the most
elementary level, educational institutions commonly insist on monolingual instruction through the
medium of a standard regional, national or international language. However, increasing awareness
of diversity would seem to require more dynamic and mobile concepts around language and literacy
than the monolingual, standard orientations often prevalent in educational discourse (Makoni and
Pennycook 2007; Blommaert 2010; Blommaert and Rampton 2012). While people’s sense of
themselves and of their relationship to the world is shifting and multiple—particularly in the case of
younger people under globalised circumstances that include digitalised communicative resources of
various kinds—linguistic ethnologies that conceive ethnocultural identity as being embodied in distinct
languages still predominate. In the UK (Blackledge and Creese 2010) and the USA (Leeman 2015),
researchers have started to look outside of formal schooling for examples of classroom interaction that
treats students’ language backgrounds as resources rather than as problems. In particular, they have
looked to complementary schools and classes run for children of migrants or other linguistic minorities,
where classes are held on weekends or after regular day school. Typically such programmes are
run by community groups, cultural associations, churches, or other non-profit groups. A particular
feature that these researchers identified in these schools is that of ‘translanguaging’, where, freed from
the pedagogic demands of practising only the standard, dominant language for testing purposes in
school, students and teachers alike are free to draw on the best available language resources in their
multi-language and multi-register repertoire. Translanguaging as a concept and idea first emerged
in Welsh education in the 1980s (Lewis, Jones and Baker 2012: 642) as a reaction to the historic
separation of ‘two “monolingualisms” (Welsh and English) with a difference in prestige’. From an
opening position of conflict and suppression of Welsh, and of English language dominance, Welsh
language revitalisation efforts produced a situation where the idea of Welsh and English as ‘holistic,
additive, and advantageous’ emerged and where language synergies rather than solitudes became
acceptable. The idea of translanguaging as a strategy for bilingual, linguistically diverse and minority
language classrooms has since grown, promoted in the work of García and Wei (2014), Hornberger
and Link (2012) and Canagarajah (2011) among a number of others, and, in the South African context,
particularly by Makalela (2013; 2015a; 2015b). In this developing work, the opening understanding of
translanguaging as a practice of conscious switching in conversation or writing between two or more
discrete languages has given way, theoretically, to the idea of communicants drawing on available
language resources with a less sharp distinction made regarding a practice of conscious switching
between two or more distinct ‘languages’.
We can look at one example of translanguaging here as an illustration: Blackledge and Creese
(2010) described translanguaging practices at a complementary school in the United Kingdom that
was not regulated by a formal language policy and did not work with any form of written assessments.
The head teacher is talking in front of parents and learners:
Amare kidhu ne ke GCSE presentation chhe…awanu chhe. I know that we’re finishing on
Friday in mainstream school, pun aiya agal badhayne awanu chhe…I know, it’s a surprise…
Translation: As Amar said, there’s GCSE presentation, you have to come. I know that
we’re finishing on Friday in mainstream school, but you all have to come here. I know, it’s a
surprise… (Blackledge and Creese 2010: 108).
The head teacher translanguages here on an inter- and intra-sentential level. In the words of
Jørgensen et al. (2011: 33), he ‘may code-switch between utterances, in the middle of utterances,
sometimes in the middle of a single word’ and back again as he pleases. He does not use Gujarati
to translate what was said in English, but employs language resources complementarily. Blackledge
and Creese (2010: 108) emphasise that the information conveyed in the statement would not be
complete without the resources from both languages. They are used together by the headmaster
in engaging with his audience to communicate both information as well as a connectedness with
his audience, a double task that a monologic address in a standard language might not accomplish
so well.
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2016, 34(4): 347–357 349

In a related example, Owodally (2011) describes how Mauritian Creole is the everyday language
of Mauritians but is not used in schooling for teaching or writing, where Standard English holds sway.
Outside of state schooling, in the madrasah religious school that she studies, Creole, along with
other languages, including Arabic, French and English is used for children’s religious instruction.
She finds that the practices of the madrasah are multilingual, multiliterate and multiscriptural, while
at the same time fluid identities are shaped and negotiated through these heteroglossic and indexical
resources, in contrast to formal schooling practice where instruction is carried out in English, which
is hardly spoken outside of the classroom. Owodally’s (2011) research resonates strongly with other
post-colonial settings where the languages of former colonisers become the language of power and
education, while they are not a feature of everyday life among the masses of people in such settings.
To clarify and elaborate further on this perspective, we review key developments in recent revisions
of and substitutions for Suassurian or systemic understandings of language, which get displaced by
attention to language as situated and variable social practices.

Bilingualism, education and heteroglossia

Emerging work in critical interpretive sociolinguistics has made the case for research into the
interactional and textual fine-grain of everyday life in educational settings with attention to specific
institutional regimes, including wider processes of political economy and change in contemporary
society (Heller 1999; Martin-Jones 2007; Blackledge and Creese 2010). Martin-Jones (2007) calls
for attention to the everyday communicative practices of teachers and learners in schools as well
as to the wider policy discourses as they are articulated in policy documents. A starting point in this
research is a recognition of the potential fluidity of language resources and attention to their often
more rigid construction in educational policy and practice. As Martin-Jones (2007: 172) puts it,
[s]chools operate as institutions (linked to the state) where specific languages (national
official languages) and specific linguistic practices (ways of speaking, reading and writing)
come to be inculcated with legitimacy and authority.
Such work draws our attention to the ways in which schools function as spaces to select and
categorise students, for assessing performance (including linguistic performance) and providing
credentials tied to positioning in the world of work. In contrast, from a perspective that draws on the
writings of Bakhtin, Bailey (2007: 272) suggests that ‘processual and socially infused constructs such
as heteroglossia and indexicality’ are useful for directing attention to the historical and ideological
dimensions of language meanings and identity construction. Heteroglossia, as developed by Bakhtin
(1981), refers to the multilinguality, the multivoicedness and the multidiscursivity of society, and
approaches the study of language and multilingualism in terms of situated practices and not as
abstract and absolute competences. The idea of a perfect mastery of two or more languages is
dismissed in favour of the notion of multilingual competencies organised around activities, situations
and topics. As Busch (2010: 284) summarises it: ‘In this view, linguistic practice differing from the
normalized standard, such as language crossing, or the appropriation of elements across language
boundaries, is understood as resource rather than as deficiency’. Secondly, indexicality refers to
the perception that language in use is invested with sociopolitical and cultural interests which are
identifiable in the recognisable, often routinised and ritualised, ways that speakers and writers
‘express themselves’ as noticeably certain kinds of people engaged in identifiable socially situated
actions and activities. To be understood and to communicate meaningfully, they draw on salient
models for how particular kinds of meaning get made along with communicating particular identity or
identification characteristics of their own. Blommaert (2007: 4) explains this point as follows:
[L]anguage occurs both as an individual, one-time and unique phenomenon and,
simultaneously, as a collective and relatively stable phenomenon. Indexicality refers to the
ways in which unique instances of communication can be seen, as ‘framed’, understandable
communication, as pointing towards socially and culturally ordered norms, genres, traditions,
expectations.
The concept of indexicality, it must be pointed out, goes beyond the general idea that people
draw on broad models or genres in their situated communication. It also addresses variability,
unpredictability and change in language pragmatics. Switching (code-switching) across identifiable
350 Krause and Prinsloo

languages and registers by speakers or writers in multilingual contexts can thus be seen as examples
of second-order indexicality, or as forms of skilled performance whereby individuals communicate, or
intend to communicate, specific social and pragmatic meanings, using language forms as culturalised
resources to index particular meanings that are situated, constructed and might be shifting, in that
they arise from a history, however long or short, of usage by speakers/writers in particular social
circumstances. Through recurrent connections between a context and a linguistic form, indexical
meanings are constituted (Bailey 2007) and because of the interactive, reflective or heteroglossic
nature of these connections, multiple orders of indexicality are possible.
We can then study the ways in which educational policies and classroom practices contribute to the
reproduction of asymmetries of power between groups with different social and linguistic resources
in specific places.

Research methods and background

The research reported on here was a school-based ethnographic-style case study carried out
by the first author of this article, Lara-Stephanie Krause. The study takes place in a state school,
under the administration of the Western Cape Education Department, in noteworthy contrast to the
complementary and religious schools described above. The researcher spent one month at the
school, observing language use outside the classroom and engaging in conversations with teachers
and staff before classroom observation commenced. A detailed research diary was kept with field
notes on interactions and language use. The first month at the school formed an indispensable
base for the study as the researcher had the chance to familiarise herself with the day-to-day
realities of the school and to get an impression of language use outside the regulated classroom
sphere. Furthermore, in this initial phase, teachers and learners got used to her being on the school
premises. This familiarity facilitated the second research phase of two more months, during which
she recorded language use in selected intermediate phase classrooms where the official medium
of instruction is English. After having observed and recorded ten different lessons, she proceeded
to conduct semi-structured interviews with teachers, which focused on their language ideologies
and perceptions of their language use in class. Semi-structured interview methods were used, so
as to accommodate unexpected points made by the research participants, but at the same time to
ensure that the questions we considered essential for the research would be answered by every
teacher (Lodico et al. 2006). She also interviewed the principal and other staff members around
matters of language at the school so that we had fourteen recorded interviews to draw on. Detailed
transcriptions of classroom talk and interviews allowed for in-depth data analysis, which was informed
by a combination of the grounded theory method and discourse analysis (Johnson 2014). Grounded
theory is an effective trailblazer for discourse analysis, as it provides a well-structured framework for
the initial readings and interpretations of the data. Discourse analysis can then build on and extend
the findings and provide additional perspectives in data analysis (Johnson 2014).

The research site

The school is located in Khayelitsha, a residential area in Cape Town. The spatialisation of apartheid,
achieved through city planning aimed at keeping population groups separate, continues to be a
defining feature of Cape Town, along with other cities in South Africa. Townships such as Khayelitsha,
comprising low-cost formal housing along with proliferating shack settlements, cluster and grow on
the city periphery and are strong reminders to residents and visitors alike that Cape Town, which
is often idealised in tourist publicity, is a profoundly unequal, spatially fractured environment.
Originally laid out in the late 1980s to house 250 000 people moved from elsewhere in Cape Town
because of their race classification, the National Census of 2011 counted between 400 000 and 600
000 inhabitants in this township (Department of Provincial and Local Government [DPLG] 2007:
10; City of Cape Town [CCT] 2013: 2), 54.5% of them living in shacks and only 44.6% living in
formal housing. Due to its vast informal conglomerates of shacks, however, accurate counting of
Khayelitsha’s inhabitants is almost impossible and commonly quoted estimates talk of 1 to 1.2 million
and even 2 million inhabitants. According to the National Census of 2011, 99% of Khayelitsha’s
resident are black (CCT 2013: 2). Transport from Khayelitsha to the multi-cultural inner city of Cape
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2016, 34(4): 347–357 351

Town is available using trains or taxis but is relatively expensive. Most parents cannot afford to
send their children to what they perceive to be the ‘better schools’ in the city and its affluent suburbs
(Fataar 2009: 2–3). Nonetheless, as Fataar (2009) describes it, a huge morning exodus of children
takes place, in taxis, trains and buses, to suburban schools nearer the city centre, to ex-‘Coloured’
schools in nearby Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats, where teachers speak English and Afrikaans
but no isiXhosa, and also to elsewhere in Khayelitsha, where better schooling at slightly higher cost
is sought. The large majority of children go to school in Khayelitsha, however, and most of them
stay isolated from the city centre, along with their parents (Fataar 2009: 10), due to the geographical
distance and a lack of financial means (DPLG 2007: 10).
Linguistically the township is predominantly associated with isiXhosa, which is, according to a 2001
survey, spoken by 96% of its population (DPLG 2007: 14). However, the isiXhosa that is spoken in
people’s homes is not the same as the standard language that is tested in schools. The standard
was codified in a rural environment in the 19th century and the contemporary urban language that is
spoken by children differs considerably from the standard.
Inequality has a strongly linguistic dimension in this setting, where access to an imagined Standard
English, as taught to the well-off in suburban schools, acts as a profoundly reified and instrumental
motivation for families living on the periphery to send their children to suburban or inner-city schools.
There, better access to English, and through that to the job market, is thought to lie (Maile 2004;
Lombard 2007). ‘Township schools’ in Khayelitsha and other settlements that house the urban
poor are the only option available for the many children whose parents cannot afford to send them
elsewhere. The steady influx of job-seeking migrants from the Eastern Cape into Cape Town’s
low-cost housing areas leads to new township schools being built every year (Grant 2014). With
these socio-economic dynamics at play, ‘the majority of black learners will still attend township
schools for many years to come’ (Lombard 2007: 54), which makes these schools key elements in
South Africa’s schooling system and important research sites for education and language scholars.

Results
The school that was studied follows the early-transition language policy model with isiXhosa as the
Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT) from Grade 1 to Grade 3. In Grade 4, policy dictates a
switch to English as the LoLT. This model assumes the possibility and desirability of two languages
being learned and practised side by side in one societal setting without significant mingling or
interfering of their respective spheres. Heller (1999) coined the term parallel monolingualism, to
describe such teaching strategies in schools where two or more standard languages are taught as if
in separate silos. Martin-Jones (2007: 167) identified a ‘container metaphor of competence’ in such
approaches, where languages and linguistic competencies are thought of as separate containers,
side by side, that are more or less full or empty. Despite the school apparently subscribing to a
separatist language policy and ideology that endorses monolingual English as the language of
instruction, in classroom talk we found patterns of translanguaging taking place that were very
similar to those referred to in the complementary schools described earlier. However, in this school,
translanguaging was happening ‘under cover’ as it were, not supported in the explicit language
ideas of the teachers but sustained and nurtured in their classroom practices, as we see in the
following example.

Complementary translanguaging in the classroom

In a Grade 5 Mathematics classroom, where formal language policy prescribes English as the LoLT,
the teacher explains a calculation on the board. While writing the numbers he says:
Alright let’s carry on! He showed us ba we are adding two hundred and thirty four, five, thirty-
eight. Zisteps zakhe ebethatha apha besimva sonke. Waze wabhala usixteen phaya right?
Ecaleni ukusikhumbuza. That is what you do, siyavana?
Translation: Alright let’s carry on! He showed us that we are adding two hundred and thirty
four, five, thirty-eight. These are his steps that he was taking here, we all heard him. Then he
wrote sixteen there, right? On the side, to remind us. That is what you do, do we understand
each other?
352 Krause and Prinsloo

What stands out first, is that most of the numbers are referred to either by their English names or
by using terms in which an isiXhosa prefix meets the English name for the number (e.g. usixteen).
These terms and phrases are heteroglossic because they are lexical items which are built from
linguistic features conventionally associated with different languages (Bailey 2007). The use of
isiXhosa words for numbers is very uncommon in the Western Cape and among isiXhosa speakers
generally, both in schools and outside of schools, with the minor exception of early literacy classes
in primary schools where the isiXhosa names get briefly taught and learnt but are hardly ever used
thereafter. In all domains of social life in Khayelitsha, even among older generations, people normally
count in English or in heteroglossic terms, where the English terms are incorporated into isiXhosa
syntactical patterns (usixteen).
In the above example, the teacher translanguages on the inter- and intrasentential level as well as
within single words. We first see a low level of translanguaging. When he starts speaking, linguistic
resources associated with English clearly dominate and the only trace of isiXhosa, at first, is the
lexical item ‘ba’, the shortened form of the conjunction ‘ukuba’ (that). In the next sentence the situation
is reversed. Again we find a low level of translanguaging, but this time linguistic resources associated
with isiXhosa clearly dominate, with the only trace of English being the heteroglossic term ‘zisteps’. A
more translingual utterance follows where isiXhosa resources dominate, but the heteroglossic term
‘usixteen’ and the English lexical item ‘right’ are incorporated. An isiXhosa utterance follows and
then the teacher ends the explanation with an English statement followed by an isiXhosa expression,
reaffirming that the learners have understood.
The official ‘Language in Education Policy’ (LiEP) (Department of Education 1997) is generally
thought by teachers to restrict the language they are supposed to use in the classroom. Indeed, the
policy does put forward a ‘two silos’ approach to classroom language, where ‘home language’ can be
used for occasional explanatory purpose, while the ‘language of learning or teaching’ (or LoLT) should
predominate. In this case, the teacher assumes that he is supposed to focus on using monoglossic
English as the LoLT and only use isiXhosa in cases where learners do not understand, despite the
fact that learners’ Standard English language competence is very limited indeed and the teacher is
not a fluent user of Standard English himself. The excerpt shows, however, that the classroom register
is heteroglossic or translingual. The teachers’ languaging is fluid, sometimes leaning more towards
English, then again more towards isiXhosa and often mixing them. We have titled this discourse
pattern ‘complementary translanguaging’, as isiXhosa is not used to translate what was being said in
English or vice versa, just as in the example from Blackledge and Creese’s (2010) study, but resources
commonly associated with the different languages complement each other.

Reproductional translanguaging in the classroom

In the next example we identify particular discourse patterns as ‘reproductional translanguaging’,
instances when meaning first made using one ‘set’ of language resources is then made again using
another ‘set’. Such reproductional translanguaging occurs when teachers at the school either read
out a monolingual (usually written) English statement and then translate it into isiXhosa or into a
translingual statement. The same process also happens in reverse, where isiXhosa is translated into
English or into a translingual statement. In other instances of reproduction, teachers might also just
vary the level of translanguaging in the repetition. Here is an example from a Grade 4 Geography
lesson where the teacher is giving the learners a task to complete:
Underlina uvillages! Underlina uvillages! Some people live in villages. Underlina pha
uvillages. Mkrwele umngca ngaphantsi, mkrwelele umngca ngaphantsi kovillages!
The first two exclamations are highly translingual, built exclusively from heteroglossic terms. The
verb ‘underline’ gets the isiXhosa present tense verb ending –a and ‘villages’ receives the isiXhosa
noun class prefix u-. These translingual exclamations ask the learners to underline the names of the
villages that they can find on the worksheet. A monolingual sentence follows as the teacher is reading
out text from the worksheet. He follows suit with a translingual repetition of the instruction: ‘Underlina
pha uvillages’ (Underline the villages there). Then he repeats the instruction again on a much lower
level of translanguaging, leaning strongly towards isiXhosa but still including the heteroglossic term
‘kovillages’ (in this context: ‘under villages’) with the isiXhosa prefix kwa- that, combined with the
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2016, 34(4): 347–357 353

noun class prefix u-, merges into ko-, according to grammatical and phonological rules around vowel
collision in isiXhosa. We assume he keeps the term in, either to maintain a connection to the written
instruction, or because the monoglossic term for ’village’ in isiXhosa has been largely replaced by
the heteroglossic term in the teachers’ and learners’ day-to-day classroom language use. In the
subsequent part of the task, the learners are asked to this time underline the towns that they can find
in the text and the teacher now applies the same discursive strategy but in reversed order:
Wakugqiba elandelayo isentence ithi: Some people live in towns. Uza kukrwela umngca
ngaphantsi kotowns! Underlina kotowns!
The teacher transitions to the next task on a low level of translanguaging with isiXhosa resources in
the lead and the only trace of English being the heteroglossic term ‘isentence’ (‘When you are done,
the next sentence says:’). He then reads the English heading of the task. Instead of first instructing the
learners through a highly translingual exclamation like in the sequence before (Underlina uvillages!),
he now keeps his translanguaging closer to isiXhosa, keeping only the heteroglossic term ‘kotowns’,
again featuring the isiXhosa prefixes kwa- and u- that merge into ko- (in this context: ‘under towns’).
Then he reproduces this instruction highly translingually (Underlina kotowns!), linking it closer to the
actual written instruction, as we had already seen in the first task. It can be taken from this sequence
of the lesson that, in the course of the first task he gave to the learners, the teacher has assessed
the linguistic resources at their disposal. In the second task he then already drew on this previous
experience and adjusted his translingual practice to accommodate the learners.

Discussion
Our point here is that translanguaging as it is currently promoted in the literature as an advance
on restrictive monolingual teaching strategies (Canagarajah 2011; Makelela 2015a; 2015b; Probyn
2015), is in fact common practice in these township classrooms. There is no lack of teachers applying
the language resources at their disposal with some skill to make learners understand subject content.
However, the institutional language ideologies that materialise in the school’s language policy and in
testing regimes turn such skilful language practices from an asset into a relative disadvantage, as our
analysis of the following interview data shows.

Translingual practice, monolingual regime

We spoke to teachers about their language use in class. Table 1 shows two quotes that the same
teacher uttered in the course of one interview, the left one referring to language use in class, the right
one referring to language demands in exams.
When describing his language practices in oral classroom interactions, this Grade 4 Geography
teacher states that he prefers ‘mixing’, or in our terms translanguaging, over leaving the learners
behind by sticking to English. Hence, conceptual understanding is worked towards translingually.
The written reproduction of this knowledge, however, must be in English. This leads to instances
where learners describe a concept correctly but with the ‘wrong’ language resources. Therefore: ‘It’s
correct but it’s, it’s wrong’. This mismatch, that an answer can be right and wrong at the same time
results from translingual classroom discourse meeting monoglossic norms for standardised English
language use in school writing and testing activities. The degree of ‘correctness’ demanded in writing
is significantly higher than that in oral classroom interactions. In the words of Canagarajah (2006:

Table 1: Interview extracts Grade 4 isiXhosa and Geography teacher

Language use in class Language use demanded in exams

So if [.] I said [.] ‘umlambo’, then translate ‘umlambo’ to T: In Geography there must be, all the things must be
‘a river’, in English, I’ll rather do that. Rather than just in English.
speaking English, leaving them behind. Because if they L: Mhm so when they answer in Xhosa you gonna
don’t understand, if a learner doesn’t understand the mark it wrong?
first word in a sentence, she or he won’t understand T: Yes.
the whole sentence and then they become bored. That L: So even the content if it’s correct?
is why you have to mix, especially in Grade 4. T: It’s correct but it’s, it’s wrong.
354 Krause and Prinsloo

595), this is ‘motivated by the assumption that writing is formal and requires the established code’
and the established code in this case is Standard English, because ‘English’ indexes high-status
resources, whereas the language resources that students actually have access to for learning
purposes are indexed as low-status.
The Grade 5 Mathematics and Natural Science teacher described the written results some learners
produce when they struggle with the contradiction between fluidity in spoken and rigidity in written
language (see Table 2).
Notably, the left-side quotation shows that what the teacher in this case means by ‘their language’
is a mix of English and isiXhosa, not one or the other. He claims that when he speaks to them in
‘their language’, they do the same when they reply, namely ‘they mix English and Xhosa’ just like
the teacher did. Teachers generally do not judge the learners’ translanguaging. Their only reason
for concern is the mixing in of isiXhosa repertoires in written tests, as that transgresses the rigid
requirements for Standard Written English. While not understanding what is asked of them or
struggling to actively produce text in monolingual English, some of the learners ‘just copy back what
the question is’ in vivid illustration of the communicative breakdown that these practices produce, and
with often disastrous consequences for the students’ schooling careers. Teachers’ perceptions of
these dynamics are undoubtedly crucial here and it is of interest to see the tensions that they express
between policy, practice and their own language constructs.

Language ideologies and language policy at the school

An interview with the principal provided insights into the powerful language ideologies in operation at
the school. We had noticed that in intermediate phase, although the official LoLT is English, all the
teachers were home language speakers of isiXhosa. When asked how this came about, instead of
answering the question, the principal presented his perception of teachers’ language practices in class:
…they tend to teach Maths in Xhosa, because they are Xhosa people. They tend to teach
English in Xhosa. That’s why we have problem with our children, because they mustn’t
code-switch, we call it a code-switching. They must teach English, even Grade 4. They must
be taught the language of the lesson, of the learning area. All the learning area, the language
of the learning area is English. Only Xhosa as a learning area that must be taught in Xhosa.
And it’s not happening, that’s why we have problems. And we know that not to happen, we
know that it’s a failure of the teachers, because the teachers think they have, they got a
sympathy for the children, they undermine the knowledge of the children. They also think
that children will not be able to understand them. Now they want to get onto the level of the
children, the time is going. That’s why we have a problem.
The principal makes a clear distinction between English and isiXhosa and assigns distinct spheres
to the two languages. IsiXhosa is only to be spoken in isiXhosa lessons and English is the language
of any other subject area. Deviating from this strict allocation through ‘code-switching’ is despised
as a weakness on the part of teachers. They are accused of underestimating the learners’ language
abilities and of responding by reverting to code-switching. This practice is then said to be responsible
for the learners’ failure in subjects that are to be taught in English.
The principal reflects the widespread folk-metapragmatics or indexical assumptions in educational
circles regarding languages, their boundedness and their relative status, where translingual classroom
practices are not seen as resourceful but are instead blamed for learners’ low performance. Under
the ideologically monolingual umbrella of language in education policies and school management,

Table 2: Interview extracts Grade 5 Mathematics and Natural Science teacher

Language use in class Language use demanded in exams

I’ve noticed is that you explain to these learners When you give them question papers, or special
something in our, in their language. When they papers must come in English. Which becomes a
answer questions they do the same. They will mix problem…Some of them just copy back what the
English and ah and, and ah Xhosa. question is. They give you back the questions that
you gave them in the question paper.
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2016, 34(4): 347–357 355

translingual classroom practice happens ‘under the covers’. It is practised because teachers in this
environment feel the pedagogic need for it, but the benefits do not materialise in learners’ good
results, because the rules and regulations do not consider actual practice.

Implications and conclusion

Through our analysis of the presented data, we found that teachers’ language practice in class
is heteroglossic or translingual. They employ different types of translanguaging (complementary
and reproductional), depending on what the particular classroom situation calls for. With their fluid
language practices they counteract the rigidity of the school’s separatist language policy that treats
languages as bounded objects and assigns them to specific learning spaces at the school. Our
analysis of the interview data shows that teachers are aware of their translingual practices and
how they deviate from the mostly monolingual teaching style that school management, in line with
the official language policy, expects them to adhere to. Teachers also know from experience that
translanguaging in class clashes with the language requirements learners have to fulfil in written
exams, as shown by their accounts of learners failing to understand or adequately respond to
questions in Standard English. However, in their quest to make learners understand subject content,
they do not shy away from employing the multiplicity of linguistic resources at their disposal. We have
shown that translanguaging, as it is promoted in recent scholarly literature as a revised pedagogy
that moves away from monolingual teaching strategies towards a more integrated, less boundaried
use of language resources in teaching and learning (Canagarajah 2011; Makalela, 2015a; 2015b;
Probyn 2015), already features strongly in the daily practices of these township teachers. Meanwhile,
the potentially positive pedagogic effect of their translingual teaching is stifled by rigid, separatist
language ideologies that inform school management (embodied here by the principal and his
views), language policy and resulting assessment practices. These real constraints of the schooling
environment do not get displaced bottom-up, through a promotion of translingual practice alone. As
it is, teachers’ language practices and higher level ideological constraints that operate at the school
paralyse each other: On the one hand, the constraints do not stop translanguaging, since teachers
do translanguage in class. They do so while aware that they are transgressing the principal’s
language policy as well as knowing that their students are struggling with monoglossic examination
requirements. This shows how indispensable they deem translingual practice in the daily classroom
realities they face. On the other hand, translingual pedagogic practice does not disarm the strong
monoglossic language ideologies that are a central pillar of the education system and nor do
they help the students to develop resources that use the various registers of Standard Academic
English. Therefore, translanguaging and monoglossic ideological constraints are suspended in
an unproductive balance. To end this paralysis, we argue for freeing up the potential of already
established translingual practice as a tool to make learners understand and engage with subject
content. In our view, effective conveyance of content in the diverse linguistic set-ups of contemporary
schools demands flexibility of the language medium. This means that linguistic rigidity in language
policies and examination frameworks needs to be addressed, particularly at early to middle primary
school level, and school management and policy makers need to be challenged to acknowledge
classroom linguistic realities.

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