Functions of Translanguaging Performed by Korean-American Emergent Bilinguals

Chaehyun Lee

doi:10.11648/j.ijeedu.20200903.11

Abstract

In this article, I employed a qualitative discourse analysis method from a heteroglossic perspective to investigate first-grade Korean American bilingual students’ translanguaging practices in a Korean heritage language (HL) school. Although the instruction was delivered exclusively in Korean in the HL classroom, the students were allowed to use English and translanguage if they needed. The transcripts of audio-recordings of students' spoken language were the main resources for this qualitative study. I first examined the incidence of the students' translanguaging. In performing the analysis of translanguaging function, I adopted Jakobson's [1] six functions of language (directive, expressive, referential, phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic). The findings showed that the function of students' translanguaging was documented in the five following categories: referential, directive, expressive, metalinguistic, and poetic. The close analysis revealed that 14 different subsidiary functions were further discovered under the five functional categories. The functional analysis of the students’ translanguaging performance indicates that their translanguaging was not accidental or deficient, but they were sophisticated, systematic, and purposeful. The findings imply that engaging in translanguaging when communicating even in a monoglossic classroom setting (such as an HL classroom) is considered as a natural phenomenon among bilingual students as they were activating and developing their bilingualism through everyday translanguaging practices. The article provides implications for teachers of bilingual learners.

Highlights

In the past, bilingual educators believed that bilinguals’ languages should be kept separate in learning and teaching so that emergent bilingual students were provided with appropriate amounts of instruction in the target languages, and the mixing of languages should not be allowed in the classroom setting [2]
In order to narrow the gaps in the current literature, the present study aims to investigate translanguaging practices by KoreanEnglish emergent bilingual students in a knowledge in the target language (Korean) heritage language (HL) classroom
The students' oral language use data shows that all three students (Mino, Jina, and Bomi) employed their language repertoires both from Korean and English by engaging in translanguaging practices both at the word- and sentencelevels

Summary

Introduction

Bilingual educators believed that bilinguals’ languages should be kept separate in learning and teaching so that emergent bilingual students were provided with appropriate amounts of instruction in the target languages, and the mixing of languages should not be allowed in the classroom setting [2]. Research with emergent bilingual children was conducted from a monoglossic perspective, in which bilinguals were viewed as developing competence in two separate languages since “[they] are expected to be and do with each of their languages the same thing as monolinguals” [3]. García [5] called the heteroglossic practices that bilinguals utilized across their languages, “translanguaging.” The heteroglossia perspective allows speakers to utilize their full language repertoires and collective linguistic resources to achieve their communicative aims in a given situation [7], and translanguaging opens up the spaces to accept and appreciate all kinds of multimodal languaging practices [6]. An increasing number of researchers have examined bilingual students’ translanguaging practices by investigating how they incorporate their full language repertoires [8, 9]

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