Playing with words across visual humor in an Iranian EFL context with Arab students: Pedagogical translanguaging for enhancement of multicultural spaces in language education

Abstract

This study focuses on how translanguaging in language instruction with the aid of audiovisual materials can teach Iranian EFL students with Arab ethnicity wordplay in English . Given the significant role wordplay plays in generating humor within TV shows, it can provide a challenge for EFL learners to understand both the humor and cultural nuances of such audiovisual materials. To this end, this study initially selected two popular series, Friends and The Simpsons, translated into Persian. The researchers taught linguistic and translation models to 15 EFL students with Arab ethnicity to identify and categorize the diverse types of wordplay and strategies used to translate them from English to Persian. Students participating in the action research found that the most commonly utilized wordplay and translation strategy were lexical-semantic wordplay and no wordplay strategy, respectively. They also reported that the equivalents were not appropriate in many instances. Interview results with these learners demonstrated the participants' enhanced understanding of wordplay, with translanguaging through translated audiovisual materials identified as a motivating and effective approach for language learning. Ultimately, this research has important implications for teaching English within the expanding cycle of world Englishes with the possibility of promoting translanguaging and intercultural competence.