From Researching Translanguaging

to Translanguaging Research

Li Wei and Ofelia García

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Early Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Major Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Work in Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Problems and Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Abstract
Translanguaging research has recently increased in visibility. But research in what
we now term translanguaging is not new. This chapter traces its development
from its Welsh origins to worldwide translanguaging research today. It grounds
this development in the increased questioning of monolingual practices, espe-
cially in education, that were the hallmark of twentieth century society. This
chapter also makes visible the challenges that translanguaging research poses, as
the language practices of multilinguals continue to be constrained by institutions
in nation-states.

Li Wei (*)
UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
e-mail: li.wei@ucl.ac.uk
O. García
Urban Education, Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages, City University of
New York, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: OGarcia@gc.cuny.edu

# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 1

K. King et al. (eds.), Research Methods in Language and Education, Encyclopedia of
Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02329-8_16-1
2 Li Wei and O. García

Keywords
Translanguaging • Dynamic bilingualism • Bilingual education • Multilingual-
ism • Culture • Language

Introduction

Researching translanguaging, that is, studying the language practices of bilinguals

from their own dynamic perspective, rather from the static monoglossic one of
monolinguals, and examining the ways in which those resources are deployed in
teaching and learning, characterizes much multilingual research in the twenty-first
century. In this chapter, we review how the concept of translanguaging emerged, as
well as how it is being used today to research this “multilingual turn” (Conteh and
Meier 2014; May 2013).
Translanguaging suggests that because bilingualism is dynamic (García 2009),
researchers cannot assume that there are clear-cut boundaries between the languages
of speakers whose language repertoire includes features that are associated with two
or more national languages. Researchers who work with translanguaging distinguish
between national languages as social constructions of nation-states and the language
practices of bilinguals. In so doing, translanguaging research reminds us that
although different languages do not have objective linguistic reality, they do have
a social reality that impacts bilingual speakers. This is so especially when it comes to
educational systems that function only in one language at a time, even in much
bilingual education. Translanguaging research in education focuses then on whether
flexible instructional arrangements that leverage all the features of the language
repertoire of bilingual students can improve their academic engagement and out-
comes, as well as develops their bilingualism and biliteracy. It also focuses on
whether translanguaging can develop the metacognitive and metalinguistic
awarenessTranslanguagingmetacognitive and metalinguistic awarenessMeta-
linguistic awareness of bilingual students so that they can use appropriate features
of their repertoire in different communicative circumstances. From the beginning,
this has been the focus of much translanguaging research.

Early Developments

The term translanguaging comes from the Welsh trawsieithu. It was coined by
Williams (1994) and popularized through Baker’s textbook Foundations of Bilin-
gual Education and Bilingualism (2001 and subsequent editions). In its original use,
it referred to a pedagogical practiceTranslanguagingpedagogical practicePe-
dagogical practice where students are asked to alternate languages for the purposes
of receptive or productive use; for example, students might be asked to read in
English and write in Welsh and vice versa. Lewis et al. (2012a, b) described the
historical context in which translanguaging practices emerged. The Welsh language
From Researching Translanguaging to Translanguaging Research 3

revitalization efforts began to show signs of success in the final decades of the
twentieth century. Lewis et al. (2012a) explained:

By the 1980s, the idea of Welsh and English as holistic, additive, and advantageous was
beginning, allowing the idea of translanguaging to emerge – firstly, within education in
North Wales and, subsequently, developing within that educational context especially at
classroom level. (p. 624)

Williams (2012) emphasized the capacity of translanguaging in the Welsh

classroomTranslanguagingin Welsh classroom to reinforce understanding of what
is being taught and to augment the pupil’s activity in both languages. The cognitive
processingTranslanguagingcognitive processing involved in translanguaging was
seen to be particularly useful for retaining and developing bilingualism. As Baker
(2011) explained, “to read and discuss a topic in one language, and then to write
about it in another language, means that the subject matter has to be processed and
‘digested’” (p. 289). Translanguaging as a pedagogical practiceTranslanguagingpe-
dagogical practicePedagogical practice not only promotes a deeper understanding of
content, but also develops the weaker language in relationship with the one that is
more dominant. In addition, translanguaging promotes the integration of those who
are emergent bilinguals with those who have fuller use of bilingualism in a class-
room. Lewis et al. (2013) reported on a 5-year longitudinal research project in Wales,
using a combination of observation and standardized measures, that showed wide-
spread use of translanguaging in schools in Wales, as well as its academic advan-
tages to develop students’ bilingualism.
As we can see, the notion of translanguaging was tied with language policy,
especially language-in-education policy, from the very start. Translanguaging was
seen as a challenge to the one-language-at-a-time policies that were dominant in
society and scholarship at the time. Despite the dominance of monolingual instruc-
tional pedagogy in the teaching of additional languages – whether in foreign
language, bilingual, heritageHeritage, or second language classrooms – researchers
started to question its validity at the end of the twentieth century, coinciding with
globalization, technological changesTechnological changes, and increased move-
ment of people throughout the world. The early development of the present concept
of translanguaging also owed much to the work of other researchers in different
contexts who did not use the term translanguaging, but challenged the monolingual
assumptions in language education, researching what Cummins (2007) has called
“bilingual instructional strategies.”
As early as 1979, Cummins introduced his Interdependence Hypothesis, which
posited that much crosslinguistic transfer occurs because languages are connected by
means of a common underlying proficiency. There was substantial early research to
support Cummins’ Interdependence Hypothesis, including much in the teaching of
US Latinos, for example, that of Moll and Díaz (1985) that showed that Latino
students who were learning English increased their reading proficiency in English if
they were allowed to discuss in Spanish. In the 1990s, in the United States, Jacobson
proposed the “concurrent approach” in bilingual education of language-minoritized
4 Li Wei and O. García

students, which required teachers to change languages, although only inter-

sententially. Research into this approach was inconclusive and partial, but it opened
the door to questioning the assumption of what Cummins (2008) has called the “two
solitudes” in language education.
Around the same time, many researchers started to document the positive effect of
what they labeled “code-switching” in the education of language-minoritized stu-
dents in postcolonial contexts (see, e.g., Lin 1999; Lin and Martin 2005; Martin
2005). Lin’s (1996) study of Cantonese-English code-switching in Hong Kong
showed that it served important sociocultural, linguistic, and educational functions.
Lemke (2002) questioned “could it be that all our current pedagogical methods in
fact make multilingual development more difficult than it need be, simply because
we bow to dominant political and ideological pressures to keep ‘languages’ pure and
separate?” (p. 85).
Studying dual-language bilingual education programs in the United States during
the first decade of the twenty-first century Fitts (2006) demonstrated how language
separation had detrimental effects on students because it “illegitimizes the use of
vernaculars” (p. 339). Lee et al. (2008) explained that “the strict separation of the
two languages for instructional purposes appears to be diminishing opportunities to
use both codes as resources to problem-solve or as an indexical strategy” (p. 90).
Especially in literacy education, researchers in the United States documented how
bilingual writers, young and old, use their home language during writing activities in
English to cognitively manage tasks, as well as to leverage their multilingualism
(Fu 2003; Gort 2006). In her study of literacy, Martín-Beltrán (2010) noted that
bilingual students’ languages “can go back and forth symbiotically as mediational
tools and objects of analysis within the same interaction” (p. 256).
In Canada, the strict immersion approach also started to be questioned. Swain and
Lapkin (2000) found that the use of the students’ home language moved the task
along, allowed learners to focus attention on vocabulary and grammatical items, and
enhanced interpersonal interaction. In foreign language education, Anton and
DiCamilla’s research (1998) showed that using students’ home languages facilitated
the acquisition of an additional language.
All these studies demonstrated the potential of bilingual instructional strategies to
teach. But most of these scholars still worked with the concepts of first language
(L1), second language (L2), and code-switching, whereas the Welsh concept of
translanguaging went beyond these monoglossic ideologies with regard to bilingual-
ism. The Welsh concept of translanguaging was grounded on the linguistic repertoire
of Welsh bilingual speakers.
At the same time, the concept of separate languages in additive bilingualism had
also started to be seriously questioned. Grosjean, for example, had emphasized that
the bilingual is not two monolinguals in one (1989). Cook (1992) elaborated his
concept of multi-competenceMulti-competence, positing that it is impossible to
compare the linguistic competence of a bilingual in each language to that of mono-
linguals. Dynamic systems theoryDynamic systems theory, as developed by Herdina
and Jessner (2002) and de Bot et al. (2007), then argued that the psycholinguistic
system of bilinguals is simply different from that of monolinguals.
From Researching Translanguaging to Translanguaging Research 5

It is this different way of conceptualizing bilingualism, of viewing bilingualism as

dynamic, of language practices in interrelationship, and of a new and transformed
linguistic system rather than the addition of two, which has led to the uptake of the
term translanguaging in scholarship and research in the present.

Major Contributions

The term translanguaging was taken up by researchers worldwide a decade after it

was first used in Wales. The concept was extended to adjust to different sociolin-
guistic contexts and the various language needs of bilingual people and students. The
extension of the concept of translanguaging also owes much to our changing views
of multilingualism and the ways in which bilingual people languaged, now made
visible by globalization, increased immigration, and advanced technology.
Studying bilingual education across global contexts, García (2009) broadened the
scope of translanguaging to mean “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals
engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds” (p. 45, emphasis in
original), as well as the instructional practices that leveraged those practices. For
García (2009), translanguaging refers to new language practices that make visible the
complexity of language exchanges among people with different histories and
releases histories and understandings that had been buried within fixed language
identities constrained by nation-states. For Creese and Blackledge (2010),
translanguaging enables the inspection of bilingual discourse for trace of the social,
historical, and political forces that have shaped it. In education, translanguaging has
been definedTranslanguagingdefinition as a “a process by which students and
teachers engage in complex discursive practices that include all the language prac-
tices of students in a class in order to develop new language practices and sustain old
ones, communicate and appropriate knowledge, and give voice to new sociopolitical
realities by interrogating linguistic inequality” (García and Kano, as cited in Conteh
and Meier 2014, p. 261).
Based on extensive ethnographic research in the Bengali, Chinese, Gujarati, and
Turkish complementary schools in Britain, Creese and Blackledge (2010) used the
term translanguaging to describe a range of flexible bilingual approaches to language
teaching and learning. Creese, Blackledge, and their colleagues argued for a release
from monolingual instructional approaches and advocated teaching bilingual chil-
dren by means of bilingual instructional strategies, in which two or more languages
are used alongside each other. In examining the translanguaging pedagogies used in
complementary schools, Creese and Blackledge (2010) stated:

Both languages are needed simultaneously to convey the information, . . . each language is
used to convey a different informational message, but it is in the bilingualism of the text that
the full message is conveyed. (p. 108)

And in analyzing the pair work students do, they commented “it is the combina-
tion of both languages that keeps the task moving forward” (p. 110). In developing
6 Li Wei and O. García

their argument, Creese and Blackledge took a language ecology perspective and
sought to emphasize the interdependence of skills and knowledge across languages.
Canagarajah (2011) described the translanguaging strategies of a Saudi Arabian
undergraduate student in her essay writing and how the feedback of the instructor
and peers helped her to question her choices of strategies, think critically about
diverse options, assess the effectiveness of the choices, and develop metacognitive
awareness. Canagarajah argued that it is possible to learn from students’
translanguaging strategies while developing their proficiency through a dialogical
pedagogy.
Situating their study in the US national policy context where standardized tests
dominate curriculumCurriculum and instruction and first language literacy is dis-
couraged and undervalued, Hornberger and Link (2012) identified new spaces for
innovative programs, curricula, and practices that recognize, value, and build on the
multiple, mobile communicative repertoires, and translanguaging/transnational lit-
eracy practices of students and their families. They connected translanguaging to
Hornberger’s (e.g., Hornberger and Link 2012) notion of “continua of biliteracy,”
enabling the potential “to explicitly valorize all points along the continua of biliterate
context, media, content, and development” (p. 268).
Coming from a different perspective and building on the psycholinguistic notion
of languaging, a process whereby “language serves as a vehicle through which
thinking is articulated and transformed into an artifactual form” (Swain 2006,
p. 97), Li Wei (2011) defines translanguaging as going between and beyond different
linguistic structures and systems including different modalities. It includes the full
range of linguistic performances of multilingual language users for purposes that
transcend the combination of structures, the alternation between systems, the trans-
mission of information, and the representation of values, identities, and relation-
ships. The act of translanguaging then is transformative in nature; it creates a social
space for multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of
their personal history, experience, and environment; their attitude, belief, and ideol-
ogy; their cognitive and physical capacity into one coordinated and meaningful
performance and making it into a lived experience. Li Wei calls this space –
translanguaging space – a space for the act of translanguaging as well as a space
created through translanguaging.
The notion of a translanguaging space is particularly relevant to multilinguals not
only because of their capacity to use multiple linguistic resources to form and
transform their own lives, but also because the space they create through their
multilingual practices, or translanguaging, has its own transformative power. It is a
space where the process of what Bhabha (1994) calls “cultural translation” between
traditions takes place; it is not a space where different identities, values, and practices
simply coexist, but combine together to generate new identities, values, and prac-
tices. The boundaries of a translanguaging space are ever shifting; they exist
primarily in the mind of the individual who creates and occupies it, and the
construction of the space is an ongoing, lifelong process. The idea of
translanguaging space, as García and Li Wei (2014) point out, embraces two
concepts, namely, creativity and criticalityTranslanguagingcreativity and criticality,
From Researching Translanguaging to Translanguaging Research 7

which are fundamental to multilingual practices. Creativity refers to the ability to

choose between following and flouting the rules and norms of behavior, including
the use of language. It is about pushing and breaking the boundaries between the old
and the new, the conventional and the original, and the acceptable and the challeng-
ing. Criticality is the ability to use available evidence appropriately, systematically,
and insightfully to inform considered views of cultural, social, and linguistic phe-
nomena; to question and problematize received wisdom; and to express views
adequately through reasoned responses to situations. These two concepts are intrin-
sically linked. Li Wei (2011) argues that one cannot push or break boundaries
without being critical; and the best expression of one’s criticality is one’s creativity.
Multilingualism by the very nature of the phenomenon is a rich source of creativity
and criticality, as it entails tension, conflict, competition, difference, and change in a
number of spheres, ranging from ideologies, policies, and practices to historical and
current contexts. While rapid globalization has made everyday life in late modernity
look increasingly routinized, repetitive, and monotonous, the enhanced contacts
between people of diverse backgrounds and traditions provide new opportunities
for innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Individuals are capable of
responding to the historical and present conditions critically. They consciously
construct and constantly modify their sociocultural identities and values through
social practices such as translanguaging.
For García and Li Wei (2014), translanguaging is not some new linguistic
phenomenon to be investigated in the traditional way. Rather, it offers a brand new
analytical lens that would alter our common understandings of language, bilingual-
ism, and education. The emphasis on the “trans” aspects of language and education,
as García and Li Wei (2014) claim, enables us to transgress the categorical distinc-
tions of the past. In particular, a “trans” approach to language and education liberates
our traditional understandings and points to three innovative aspects in considering
language on the one hand and education on the other:

1. Referring to a trans-system and trans-spacesTranslanguagingtrans-system and

trans-spaces; that is, to fluid practices that go between and beyond socially
constructed language and educational systems, structures, and practices to engage
diverse students’ multiple meaning-making systems and subjectivities.
2. Referring to its transformative natureTranslanguagingtrans-formative nature; that
is, as new configurations of language practices and education are generated, old
understandings and structures are released, thus transforming not only subjectiv-
ities, but also cognitive and social structures. In so doing, orders of discourses
shift, and the voices of others come to the forefront, relating then translanguaging
to criticality, critical pedagogy, social justice, and the linguistic human rights
agenda.
3. Referring to the transdisciplinary consequencesTranslanguagingtrans-disciplin-
ary consequences of the languaging and education analysis, providing a tool for
understanding not only language practices on the one hand and education on the
other, but also human sociality, human cognition and learning, social relations,
and social structures.
8 Li Wei and O. García

Translanguaging in education also pays attention to the ways in which students

combine different modes and media across social contexts and negotiate social
identities. For example, Kenner (2004) reported on how bilingual/biliterate young
children in the United Kingdom learn different writing systems (Chinese, Arabic,
and Spanish) at home, in complementary schools, and in the mainstream primary
school. Her work illustrated how a focus on different modes, including the children’s
sets of linguistic resources, can foreground the different culture-specific ways
multilingual children mesh the visual and actional modes (i.e., make use of shape,
size, and location of symbols on the page, directionality, and type of stroke) in the
process of learning how to write in two languages. Moreover, such a focus shows the
different ways multilingual children combine and juxtapose scripts as well as
explore connections and differences between their available writing systems in
their text making. By translanguaging, that is, drawing on more than one set of
linguistic and other modal resources to construct bilingual texts in settings where
multilingual communication was encouraged, Kenner argued, children could
“express their sense of living in multiple social and cultural worlds” (p. 118).
Research on translanguaging in schools not only creates the possibility that
bilingual students could use their full linguistic and semiotic repertoire to make
meaning, but also that teachers would “take it up” as a legitimate pedagogical
practiceTranslanguagingpedagogical practicePedagogical practice. Rather than just
being a scaffolding practice to access content or language, translanguaging is
transformative for the child, for the teacher, and for education itself, and particularly
for language education. These have been the findings of some of the studies carried
out by García and her colleagues (see, for example, Flores and García 2013; García
et al. 2012). Velasco and García (2014) showed how translanguaging strategies
promote a high sense of self-efficacy, as bilingual students also self-regulate their
learning and their use of certain features from their repertoire in different contexts.
Thus, translanguaging has come to mean a practice where two or more languages are
used in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner to organize and mediate
mental processes in understanding, speaking, literacy, and, not least, learning.
Lately, the concept of translanguaging itself has been taken up by many
researchers. Especially in studies of pedagogy, researchers are increasingly using
the translanguaging lens to study what is going on in multilingual classrooms (see,
for example, Sayer 2013). The next section discusses the ways in which researchers
are presently extending the concept of translanguaging.

Work in Progress

From its Welsh beginnings as purely an instructional practice in the context of

education, the concept of translanguaging is being used today to study the fluidities
of language and identity in many different contexts. A new journal appeared in 2015,
Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, focusing not only on
educational contexts, but also in the workplace and on travel. The Translation and
Translanguaging research team involving researchers from Birmingham, Birkbeck,
From Researching Translanguaging to Translanguaging Research 9

Cardiff, Leeds, and UCL in the United Kingdom is also investigating how multilin-
gual speakers translanguage to communicate in business, sports, heritage,Heritage
and socio-legal domains. The term translanguaging has also been taken up by
scholars who study language socialization of bilingual children and especially
those who study the use of language by bilingual children who serve as translators
in what is called “language brokering.” TESOL Quarterly published an issue in 2013
on plurilingualism in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. Many of
the contributions in that issue make reference to translanguaging.
Translanguaging in assessing what bilinguals know is another area where work is
progressing. Shohamy (2011) has long spoken about the need for multilingual
assessments. López et al. (forthcoming) have developed a Math test for Spanish-
speaking emergent bilinguals in US middle schools (six to eighth grade) that is
delivered through a computer-based platform (CBT) and is based on
translanguaging. The assessment encourages students to use their language reper-
toire fully to show what they know. For example, students have the opportunity to
see or hear an item in both English and Spanish and to then write or say responses
using their full language repertoire. To create the space for translanguaging and
encourage student-to-student interactionsTranslanguagingstudent-to-student interac-
tions, students are asked to select a virtual friend or assistant, while responding to
content-related questions. This virtual friend can then, for example, provide a read
aloud of the assessment item in the language preferred by the student, ensuring that
the student can understand the content-related task. The translanguaged multimodal
assessment creates a space for translanguaging by stimulating student-to-student
interactions and promoting what López and his colleagues call “bilingual
autonomy.”
If translanguaging, as García and Li Wei (2014) argue, goes beyond our tradi-
tional concept of autonomous languages, focusing on the language features of a
bilingual single repertoire which are always available and which bilinguals learn to
selectively suppress or activate depending on the communicative context, then the
concept of translanguaging can also extend to those who are considered speakers of
minoritized varieties of what is considered one national language. In the United
States, Barrett (2012) has used translanguaging as the lens to study participation of
both Latino and African-American students in a classroom Hip-Hop media
production.
Another area of potential is research on the neural bases of translanguaging.
Research on cognition and multilingual functioning has supported the view that the
languages of bilingual speakers interact collaboratively in listening or speaking
(de Groot 2011). Beres (2014) is presently testing the effects of bilingual speakers
responding to new knowledge when the response is in the same language as the input
as opposed to when it is in a different language than that of instruction, following the
Welsh definition of translanguaging. Preliminary findings indicate that when the
input and output language are different, rather than the same, students engage in
deeper thinking and more meaningful learning.
In New York, García and her colleagues have been deeply involved in develop-
ment and research of translanguaging in teaching emergent bilingual students. The
10 Li Wei and O. García

project, known as CUNY-NYSIEB, has paid attention to what Canagarajah (2011)

believes is the area of greater underdevelopment – the pedagogical side. The project
has developed a series of materials all accessible under the Publication tab on the
project’s website (www.cuny-nysieb.org).

Problems and Difficulties

School systems throughout the world have misled students as they have transmitted
only national and selective values about the concept of “language.” Elite students
come to believe that the ways in which they use language, which most often reflects
the characteristics of the language of school, are the only valid “language.”
Minoritized students are also taught that the language practices they bring from
home are “corrupted” and inferior to those practiced in schools. In such situations,
the definition of language has little to do with the language practices of individuals
and everything to do with the will of the dominant groups of the nation-state to
conserve their privilege by sanctioning only their language practices that we learn as
children in schools. The concept of language that we have acquired has everything to
do with its constructed and manipulated social reality and little to do with the
complex linguistic reality of speakers, especially multilingual speakers. The lan-
guage features of individual speakers which they use as they speak, read, and write
have little to do with the definition of language as given by the nation-states and their
education systems.
Precisely because the complex meanings of “language” have been preempted by
the sole national definition, we find it difficult to use the word “language” except
when speaking about the constructed concepts of English, Spanish, French, and so
on. Translanguaging offers a way of speaking about these individual complex
practices of multilingual speakers, although in recognizing multilingualism, it is
resorting to the national definitions of language. Thus, the term translanguaging in
itself contains a contradiction. On the one hand, it recognizes bilingualism/multilin-
gualism, as languages constructed by nation-states, and validates the material and
symbolic reality of this social construction to which bilingual speakers are subjected.
But on the other hand, it goes beyond the idea of national languages as linguistic
objects and recognizes the bilingual speakers’ features of an integrated repertoire
that they use to language.
Because it signals a different linguistic reality, translanguaging is not an easy
concept to take up either by speakers themselves, students, or educators. Many resist
and argue that only the “language” as defined in national school curricula and
grammar books is important and needs to be used in schools. Just as the concept
of translanguaging itself contains the contradiction of language as defined by nation-
states and language as defined by speakers themselves, translanguaging has to be
used not only to legitimize and leverage the fluid language practices of bilinguals to
be equal participants in a just society, but also to make bilingual speakers conscious
of when and how to use the different features of their repertoire. Research is
beginning to emerge that shows that focusing on how to do language, regardless
From Researching Translanguaging to Translanguaging Research 11

of features, is a much better way of acquiring the “standard” features of language that
schools require, than drilling students only on those features. This is, for example,
the point made by García et al. (2012) when they focus on developing students’
general linguistic proficiency (i.e., the ability to use language to express complex
thoughts, summarize, infer, find evidence, joke, etc.) regardless of specific language
features.
Yet another tension in translanguaging research has to do with those who believe
that accepting the fluid language practices of bilinguals will in some way weaken the
non-dominant language. For example, although English as a second language
teachers are often easily convinced of the value of translanguaging in their
English-only classrooms, dual-language bilingual teachers in the United States
have been more reticent to take it up. This in part has to do with their teacher
training, which has in the past focused on complete language separation. But it also
has to do with the fear that they will lose the little that they have accomplished in
carving out a protected space for the minoritized language.

Future Directions

Some important future directions for research on translanguaging have been

suggested throughout this chapter, and especially on the section on Work in Pro-
gress. With regard to pedagogy, much research needs to be conducted on what
different translanguaging strategies work best with certain students at different
times, for various contents. Because pedagogy includes assessment, research on
the use of translanguaging in assessment is very much needed.
To date, much translanguaging research has been conducted on the language
education of minoritized students, whether in bilingual or second language pro-
grams. There is now a need to also conduct research on translanguaging in other
educational contexts with dominant language students. There has been much interest
in the use of a first language in foreign language instruction, but the field has not
embraced translanguaging wholeheartedly. The emergence of Content and Language
Integrated Language Learning (CLIL) models in the European context is a fertile
ground for the study of translanguaging. As noted above, taking the study of
translanguaging beyond education contexts would be important.
Finally, our technological future will make more multimodal texts possible.
Translanguaging research must take up multimodalities in order to understand how
meaning is made as we integrate the very different modes of signification today –
sound, image, print, different scripts, and language features. As research on
translanguaging moves beyond classrooms, studies of translanguaging such as in
texting, blogging, social media, gaming, and how these very different modes are
simultaneously brought together to understand messages will be an important area of
study.
12 Li Wei and O. García

Conclusion

Translanguaging has moved from what seemed to be a neologism to describe diverse

multilingual practices to a new critical analytical lens that deals with multilinguals’
languages not as discrete and separated systems, but that form an integrated whole, a
repertoire that is accessed for specific communicative purposes. Translanguaging
research is just beginning to emerge.

Cross-References

▶ Code-switching in the Classroom: Research Paradigms and Approaches

▶ Ethnography of Language Policy
▶ Researching Globalization of English
▶ Researching the Continua of Biliteracy

Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Translanguaging as a Pedagogical Tool in Multilingual Education. In volume:

Language Awareness and Multilingualism
Translanguaging in Bilingual Education. In volume: Bilingual Educatio

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