Polylingualism and Languaging

AlastairPennycook and EmiOtsuji. Metrolingualism: Language in the City. Abingdon, U.K./New York: Routledge. 2015. 205 pp. Pb (9780415831659) £29.99.

“…This resonates with a more general trend in sociolinguistics (e.g. Blommaert and Rampton ; Jørgensen and Møller ) as well as earlier work from the authors (e.g. Otsuji and Pennycook ) that argues against taking languages (or codes) as the point of departure when analyzing linguistic diversity.…”

Translanguaging and the Transdisciplinary Framework for Language Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual World

“…Given this protean nature of language, the often unquestioned acceptance in language education that languages have stable, even fixed, lexicogrammatical and pragmatic characteristics and properties has served to perpetuate a form of reification. Adopting a broadly similar perspective, Jørgensen and his colleagues (Jørgensen, ; Jørgensen et al, ; Jørgensen & Møller, ) take the view that while conventionally we have come to see languages as different entities each with their own linguistic and pragmatic features, in contemporary societies we can see the porous and leaky nature of language. Working in ethnolinguistically diverse urban environments in Denmark, they provide evidence of language use in context that is not restricted to one single ‘named’ language.…”

“…What counts is that they share a common linguistic repertoire that comprises features that they all understand and use to express themselves. As Jørgensen and Møller (, p. 73) observe: “(…) speakers employ linguistic features associated with different languages as a matter of habit.” They call this polylanguaging. We note that polylanguaging does not dispense with the idea that for language communication to take place, there is a need for a certain amount of shared patterns and resources among interlocutors.…”

Fixity and Fluidity in Sociolinguistic Theory and Practice

“…Recent sociolinguistics has seen numerous new terms for characterising the flexible use of linguistic resources commonly associated with separate languages. In addition to polylingualism (Jørgensen 2008;Jørgensen & Møller 2014), translanguaging (García & Li 2014), and metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010), there is codemeshing (Canagarajah 2011), transidiomatic practices (Jacquemet 2005), truncated multilingualism (Blommaert et al 2005), flexible bilingualism (Creese & Blackledge 2011), heteroglossia (Bailey 2007), and multilanguaging (Nguyen 2012). These terms add to a range of predecessors such as codeswitching, code-mixing, crossing (Rampton 1995), fused lects (Auer 1999), and dual lingualism (Lincoln 1975), among others.…”