Translanguaging knowledge and identity in complementary classrooms for multilingual minority ethnic children

Abstract

This article examines multilingual interactions in the complementary school classroom for ethnic Chinese children in the UK. Through a detailed analysis of classroom exchanges amongst the children and their teachers, the study aims to demonstrate how they alternate between different varieties of Chinese and English and different modes of communication, e.g. speaking and writing, and how they make use of their different linguistic knowledge and skills, personal histories, sociocultural experiences, attitudes, beliefs and ideologies in the negotiation of meaning, power relations and identities. It is argued that the complementary classroom is a translanguaging space, a space created by and for translanguaging practices where new configurations of language knowledge, cultural values and identities are generated and old understandings and structures are released, thus transforming not only the subjectivities of the pupils and the teachers but also social and cognitive structures. In so doing, orders of discourses shift and new, multiple voices emerge.