Translanguaging in performance: an ethnographic drama approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Translanguaging involves communication through available semiotic resources, including embodied action. In this paper, we report research in which we observed communication in a volleyball team. We also show how we found conventional academic writing to have limited scope in the representation of embodied communicative practice and came to ethnographic drama as a viable alternative. In the theatre, the enaction of everyday communication is laid out before the audience, inviting reflection, and critical evaluation. We discuss theatre techniques that steer the audience away from emotional involvement and towards intellectual judgement. We propose that techniques introduced in Bertolt Brecht’s [1978. Brecht on Theatre. London: Bloomsbury Academic ] theatre of estrangement have the potential to expand the range and scope of ethnographic analysis, offering a creative means of critical reflection on translanguaging as embodied communication.