<p>Language socialization (LS) is the process by which individuals engage in the social world using language and get introduced to society’s cultural practices. In school environments, this involves curricular language learning and students’ participation in extra-curricular activities regulated by school norms (e.g., school breaks, religious routines, etc.). The recent educational turn in linguistic landscape (LL) studies has shed light on various aspects of the “schoolscape,” suggesting the use of the LL to raise visibility of children’s diverse sociolinguistic repertoires. This study explores how monolingual/bilingual students in a Greek public elementary school get socialized through dominant language use and cultural practices. Specifically, we focus on the dynamics of the <em>performed</em> schoolscape, produced within the classroom and during the daily state-induced prayer, applying linguistic ethnography. Drawing on seventy-five hours of field notes (FN) recorded in a rural elementary school between February and March 2023, our key findings reveal aspects of classroom discourse, focusing on teachers’ voices and an unfolding power game, that together shape students’ LS. Specifically, school-based LS is performed in the form of: (a) classroom norms compliance; (b) a power game drawing on excellence discourse; (c) embodied cultural norms compliance; (d) grammar error correction; (e) socio-spatial arrangements beyond the verbal; and (f) sharing repertoires in research-initiated safe translanguaging spaces (language portraits). We conclude that the Greek schoolscape remains a socio-spatial process of selective or exclusive inclusion, and school-based language socialization, foregrounding the dominant Greek language and established cultural elements, is construed as a suppressive process that perpetuates bilingual students’ invisibility.</p>

ABSTRACT This article examines family language policy through a spatial lens, exploring how overlapping home-school spaces shape language ideologies and practices. Using the concept of translanguaging space and Lefebvre’s spatial triad, it analyses spatial-temporal dynamics influencing how multilingual resources are valued, used, or backgrounded in a transnational Indonesian family context, highlighting how constraints operate in these spaces. Drawing on ethnographic data from Indonesian families in Australia, and their children’s teachers, the study employs thematic, narrative and discourse analysis. The findings reveal FLP as spatially co-constructed, shaped by educational aspirations and institutional ideologies. The study contributes to the understanding of constrained multilingualism and highlights aspects of spatiality in FLP research.

ABSTRACT Building on ‘translanguaging space’ (Li Wei 2011. Moment analysis and translanguaging space: discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1222–1235) and ‘decoloniality’ (Mignolo, W. D. 2007. Introduction: coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking. Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3: 155–167; Quijano, A. 2007. Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies 21, no. 2-3: 168–178), we discuss how focusing on epistemic positionality and identity affirmation among multilingual students offers critical perspectives on understanding the role of translanguaging as a social justice pedagogy. Adopting a critical ethnographic approach, we analyze the data from a Multilingual Creative Writing Project for South Asian ethnic minority students in Hong Kong and Translanguaging Pedagogy in Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) in Mainland China. The analysis shows that translanguaging as a social justice pedagogy is an action that challenges linguistic and epistemic boundaries to affirm and reclaim multilingual students’ ‘translingual being’ (Li Wei, 2024. Transformative pedagogy for inclusion and social justice through translanguaging, co-learning, and transpositioning. Language Teaching, 57, no. 2: 203–214). Our findings suggest that translanguaging pedagogy should focus on affirming the epistemic subjecthood of multilingual students. For this, translanguaging could be purposefully integrated into pedagogical activities to show how breaking linguistic and epistemic boundaries is essential to reclaiming multilingual students’ translingual being and positioning them as epistemic subjects.

ABSTRACT This study examines how translanguaging practices in Heihe, a Chinese-Russian border city, construct borderland cultural identities through the mobilisation of multimodal resources. Grounded in García and Li Wei’s translanguaging framework and employing multimodal discourse analysis, it analyses vlogs from the Bilibili platform to explore how vendors, customers, and vloggers activate their full semiotic repertoires in cross-cultural interactions within a border translanguaging space. The findings reveal that translanguaging in Heihe facilitates identity construction along three interrelated dimensions. At the identity level, participants transform translanguaging competence into symbolic capital by innovating with mixed Chinese-Russian codes, thereby generating hybrid identities beyond monolingual affiliations. At the spatial level, everyday discourse reconfigures the border from a geopolitical divide into a cultural conduit. At the emotional level, shared rituals and reciprocal gestures forge affective bonds that transcend linguistic comprehension. Overall, the study demonstrates that everyday interactions in Heihe constitute a distinctive translanguaging space where language use not only meets communicative needs but also functions as a mechanism for producing new forms of borderland cultural identity. These findings extend the spatial scope of translanguaging theory and offer fresh insights into identity construction in borderland contexts.

ABSTRACT This study explores how multilingual users engage with and emotionally experience generative AI through human–AI communication. Adopting the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) framework, we analysed 123 naturally occurring screenshots of the communication between multilingual users and generative AI platforms (e.g. ChatGPT and Gemini) and conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with four AI users. Findings reveal that multilingual users co-construct a ‘virtual translanguaging space’ with generative AI, which is categorically distinct from typical human–human interactions. This specific virtual communicative space is characterised by a sense of emotional freedom and reduced social pressure, which in turn enables highly strategic, creative, and analytical linguistic practices. Meanwhile, we found that the critical dimension of translanguaging shifts from social critique to a form of metalinguistic awareness focused on communicative efficacy on task-specific meaning-making. This study offers one of the first empirical accounts of translanguaging practices in a direct human–AI interaction context.

Abstract This article analyses how playful, deliberate translanguaging can serve to reflect, construct and perform the identity of the Vlach community from Eastern Serbia, which speaks a Romance variety that is historically and structurally related to Romanian. I focus on “Vlasi na kvadrat”, a Facebook page comprising memes, and in particular, on the ways in which the page becomes a translanguaging space in which the administrator and the community practice their multilingualism creatively and critically. Through humour and deliberate translanguaging, the administrator of the page manages to mimic the spontaneous everyday multilingual practices of the Vlach community, but also to creatively perform the community’s hybrid identity.

This paper explores bilingual peer interaction during classroom activity transitions —defined as unstructured temporal and spatial configurations between scheduled lessons or other activities. Drawing on audiovisual recordings from a first-grade (Grade 1) “English-only” classroom in Japan, the study employs multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to examine how children mobilize two languages (Japanese and English) along with a range of multimodal resources to engage in (i) improvised performances and (ii) imaginary play with objects. The analysis shows that these transitional moments serve as a vehicle through which children perform heteroglossia and create a “translanguaging space.” In doing so, they display their bilingual competence, challenge the “English-only” language policy, reproduce and transform the classroom’s moral order, and socialize peers—thereby constituting the bilingual peer group. Data are in Japanese and English.

This study aims to investigate how pedagogical translanguaging in language education constructs a translanguaging space to mediate and reduce extraneous cognitive load in EFL classrooms. Using a descriptive qualitative design, classroom observations and video-stimulated recall interviews were conducted with Indonesian university students. Data were analyzed through Multimodal Conversation Analysis combined with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results show that teacher-led pedagogical translanguaging connects multiple languages, addresses linguistic insecurity, and incorporates multimodal resources. These practices reduce cognitive load because they allow students to process new information by using their full linguistic repertoire, lowering stress and enhancing engagement. Constructing a translanguaging space fosters an inclusive environment, enabling students to participate more actively, retain content better, and develop metalinguistic awareness. The findings support the integration of pedagogical translanguaging into EFL teaching as a means to promote equity, linguistic diversity, and quality education, in alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 4.

ABSTRACT Shared reading, the practice of an adult reading a picturebook with one or more children, holds value for supporting young children’s multilingual learning and multimodal literacy, that is, their capacity to interpret and use different linguistic and non-linguistic modes. However, very few studies have examined the potential of the shared reading of wordless picturebooks (WPBs), in which meanings are constructed through visual resources (e.g. images). Drawing on the concept of translanguaging and social semiotic theory, the present study examined how 15 Chinese-English bilingual parents and their 4-to-5-year-old children interacted with two award-winning WPBs – Sunshine [Ormerod 1981. Penguin Books Ltd] and Wave [Lee 2008. Chronicle Books]. We then interviewed the parents about their language use during these shared reading interactions. The analysis reveals that WPBs provide a translanguaging space where parents and children flexibly employ various linguistic and non-linguistic resources. It also demonstrates that WPBs vary in their potential to promote multilingual children’s basic interpersonal communication skills and academic language proficiency, while providing opportunities to extend children’s multimodal literacy. The findings have implications for efforts to promote multilingualism and multimodal literacy in early childhood.

Pop linguistics in social media: translanguaging and literacy edutainment

This article explores how “puntos y rayas” (full stops and lines) function as symbolic and structural barriers in education for language-minoritized students. Through autobiographical reflection and classroom cases, the authors show how rigid boundaries around standardized language and raciolinguistic ideologies marginalize students and obscure their rich communicative repertoires. A contrasting example of a translanguaging classroom illustrates how educators can disrupt these boundaries by validating students' full semiotic, linguistic, and multimodal practices. The authors present the case of a teacher who creates translanguaging spaces, enabling students to draw on their full semiotic, linguistic, and multimodal resources to construct knowledge collaboratively. By positioning spontaneous translanguaging as pedagogical, this framework resists deficit views and creates space for sociolinguistic analyses as opportunities for transformation in the classroom. Ultimately, translanguaging offers both a theoretical lens and practical approach for dismantling linguistic barriers and advancing justice in education for minoritized communities.

ABSTRACT Not only have advances in social media technology accelerated the evolution of online language, they have also strengthened the retrieval capabilities of censors. Camouflaged forms of language have developed and survive on the fringes of the network. This paper examines the emergence and evolution of the Chinese cyberlanguage ‘Aminoac’ on the platform Bilibili as a carnival. Originating from a vulgar expression, Aminoac has been creatively transformed by netizens into a versatile term of critique and defiance against censorship. Data of online posts including Aminoac are classified into three patterns, followed by a discussion of its affordances and audience feedback. These multimodal online discourses demonstrate orchestrations of semiotic resources which are flexible, confrontational and playful, and yet they construct a virtual community with a distinct culture and identity through viral dissemination. This paper analyzes Aminoac and its related expressions as products of translanguaging, exploring how netizens negotiate, refine, and expand this online carnivalesque in a translanguaging space where they take up different roles and identities in relation to the addressees (i.e. trans-positioning).

Abstract Japan’s efforts to internationalize higher education through English-Medium Instruction (EMI) programs have attracted a diverse population of mobile international students. However, many students, for example, Chinese students—the largest international student group in Japan—face challenges in using Japanese for communication as they are not required to learn the language by school while the society demands so. To investigate how multilingual students survive in the process of internationalization and how universities should respond to this phenomenon by conducting language policies, this longitudinal study adopts a sociolinguistic ethnographic approach to investigate the oral and written communication practices of 6 Chinese students in EMI programs. The findings reveal that these students employ three key translanguaging strategies to communicate outside the classroom: inter-language translanguaging, intra-language translanguaging, and extra-language translanguaging. These translanguaging practices also provide implications for the diversity of Japanese higher education and indicate the importance of recognizing and fostering translanguaging spaces and competence.

Abstract This study investigates the collaborative inquiry among Korean-English translingual scholars who utilize translanguaging spaces to foster collective agency toward decolonization. We rethink language beyond a mere communication tool, framing it instead as a dynamic process that shapes identities, ideologies, and interpersonal relationships in academia and society. By examining data from three projects – a reading group focused on Asian Critical perspectives, a writing group exploring transnational experiences, and an inquiry into languaging practices over three years – we uncover the complexities and impact of English language ideology in knowledge production. Our transnational experiences, spanning from South Korea to the United States, highlight the disproportionate epistemic influence of English-speaking countries in academia, revealing inherent linguistic power dynamics. Our roles as Asian faculty intersect with notions of native speakerism, affecting our professional interactions and contributions significantly. This study highlights the transformative potential of translanguaging as a methodology for examining and reclaiming our dynamic scholarly practices across borders. We embrace our “in-betweenness,” stressing the importance of engaging with translanguaging spaces, analyzing metalanguaging, and decolonizing processes to reflect our transnational identities. By celebrating our translinguistic selves, we contribute to a broader understanding of languaging as epistemic resistance in higher education.

ABSTRACT Asian American bilingual children navigate their language practices and identities within monolingual and monocultural spaces shaped by racialized stereotypes, such as the ‘model minority’ and ‘forever foreigner’. These spaces impose linguistic and cultural borders, forcing Chinese American bilingual children to choose between English monolingualism or heritage language monolingualism. This qualitative case study explores the co-construction of a translanguaging space with five Chinese American children in a five-week Chinese Language and culture workshop, where the children engage in collaborative translanguaging to communicate and accomplish tasks. The findings highlight that when translanguaging spaces are co-constructed with bilingual children, they actively expressed their identities, and asserted their agency and expertise as bilingual and bicultural individuals. In turn, these practices shaped and reshaped the translanguaging space, making the space a site of transformation that provided a more complex and critical understanding of the children’ bilingual identities and Chinese American identities. This study joins the effort to reimagine a space of linguistic and social justice – a translanguaging space – for Asian American bilingual children, calling for a shift from a teacher-centred approach to an approach that centralises students’ agency and power in constructing and transcending the linguistic boundaries in educational settings.

ABSTRACT Research on English‐Medium‐Instruction (EMI) highlights inadequate support for students transitioning from L1‐medium‐instruction to EMI. To date, little research has focused on how L2 students’ adaptation to an EMI environment influences their L2 learning motivation (LLM). Translanguaging has shown positive effects on boosting students’ LLM, but its advantages for EMI students’ LLM have been less explored. Considering the complex and dynamic nature of LLM, this study draws on a reconceptualised framework of the L2 Motivational Self‐System in order to examine the interaction between students’ translanguaging learning experiences in an EMI context and students’ LLM. Specifically, this study will explore (1) how EMI teacher's creation of translanguaging spaces in EMI classroom interactions shapes students’ translanguaging learning experience and contributes to students’ LLM, and (2) how teachers and students make sense of translanguaging practices in EMI classrooms. This paper argues that the creation of a translanguaging space in EMI classrooms can play a role in enhancing students’ LLM and facilitating their transition to a new EMI environment. The findings will have implications for the advancement of translanguaging as a pedagogy, strategies to enhance students’ LLM, and language support initiatives as students’ transition from L1‐Medium‐Instruction to L2 EMI contexts.

Transpositioning, an emerging concept in Applied Linguistics, has been recently regarded as a fundamental component in the construction of a translanguaging space. Albeit research has demonstrated how a translanguaging space is created for and through translanguaging practices in Digital Multimodal Composing (DMC), less is known regarding how a translanguaging space is created for and through translanguaging practices and through transpositioning in collaborative DMC process. To endorse this under-researched area, this study employs translanguaging and transpositioning perspectives to offer an exploratory account of how students create a translanguaging space for cross-curricular connection in collaborative DMC process. This study uses Multimodal Conversation Analysis to analyse students’ small group interactional data, which is subsequently triangulated with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of video-stimulated-recall-interview data. The findings illustrate that students create a translanguaging space for integrating academic knowledge from other subject areas in collaborative DMC process, thus creating cross-curricular connection. By accentuating the transcendence of different subject boundaries within the translanguaging space, this paper argues that the process of creating cross-curricular connection is facilitated by translanguaging and transpositioning. The space transforms students’ learning experiences by empowering them to see the interconnectedness of different academic knowledge, thereby taking an active role to make their learning more meaningful.

This study investigates the efficacy of task-based chatbots in enhancing speaking skills and shaping the attitudes toward language learning of L2 learners while fostering a translanguaging space. The research employs a mixed-methods approach through quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. A sample of 80 L2 learners participated in the study. Quantitative data were collected through pre- and posttests to measure speaking proficiency and a translanguaging scale to gauge L2 learners’ ability to transition seamlessly between languages. Qualitative data were gathered through semistructured interviews with the participants. The findings reveal a significant improvement in speaking proficiency among the learners following the chatbot interventions. Moreover, there was a positive shift in the learners’ attitudes, from negative to positive, toward L2 speaking proficiency. The qualitative analysis highlights creating a translanguaging space wherein the learners effectively utilize their linguistic repertoire to facilitate communication. The results underscore the importance of integrating chatbot technologies into language instruction to enhance engagement and foster authentic communication.

ABSTRACT Deaf individuals can enact flexible and complex selves thanks to their access to multiple semiotic resources. These include, but are not limited to, signed, spoken, and written languages and other embodied resources. This qualitative study interviewed four deaf college students to explore relationships between communication experiences, selves, and translanguaging – the use of communication resources unbounded by named languages. Dialogical discourse analysis enabled an understanding of how participants used their multilingual and multimodal repertoires to express nuanced preferences or distance from languages in dialogue with varied recognisable social positions. Participants take discursive positions that make evident the dominance of spoken English in their lives, reflecting a longing for alternative, more inclusive ways of arranging communication. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of considering how sensory orientations shape communication preferences and selves in deaf college students.

Abstract Foreign Language Anxiety refers to the emotional response experienced when learning or using a second language (L2) in a classroom setting. Research on ethnic minority (EM) students in Hong Kong (HK) indicates that they face difficulties in learning Chinese-as-an-Additional-Language (CAL), and the lack of adequate Chinese language education is often seen as a contributing factor to their anxiety, hindering their integration into HK society. However, there is a scarcity of studies exploring how teachers can foster a positive classroom environment to reduce students’ L2 anxiety in L2 classrooms. To fill this gap, this study employs translanguaging as an analytical framework to explore how creating emotionally secure translanguaging spaces can help mitigate EM students’ anxiety in learning CAL. The classroom interaction data will be analysed through Multimodal Conversation Analysis, and this data will be corroborated with findings from video-stimulated recall interviews, analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, to understand teachers’ and students’ perspectives on translanguaging practices in CAL classrooms. The study posits that establishing a secure translanguaging environment in CAL classrooms can potentially ease EM students’ anxiety related to learning CAL. Nevertheless, the teachers’ reliance on certain linguistic resources for scaffolding EM students’ CAL learning could potentially limit the transformative power of the translanguaging space as teachers do not fully tap into the students’ entire linguistic repertoire for scaffolding students’ CAL learning and reducing their anxiety.