International Journal of Bilingual Education and

Bilingualism

ISSN: 1367-0050 (Print) 1747-7522 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbeb20

Translanguaging and named languages:

productive tension and desire

Marianne Turner & Angel M. Y. Lin

To cite this article: Marianne Turner & Angel M. Y. Lin (2017): Translanguaging and named
languages: productive tension and desire, International Journal of Bilingual Education and
Bilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2017.1360243

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2017.1360243

Published online: 09 Aug 2017.

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2017.1360243

Translanguaging and named languages: productive tension and

desire
Marianne Turnera and Angel M. Y. Linb
a
Education Faculty, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; bFaculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

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In this article, we address the epistemological conflict inherent in the Received 20 February 2017
relationship between named languages and translanguaging theory. Accepted 19 July 2017
Following with interest Turnbull’s (2016) reframing of foreign language
KEYWORDS
education as bilingual education and García’s (2017) response, we see Translanguaging; foreign
the logic of this reframing, but we also acknowledge García’s concern language education;
that the notion of deficit lies at the heart of language learning as it is bilingual education; majority
commonly conceptualized, and this deficit construct sits uncomfortably languages
within translanguaging epistemology. In the article, we draw on
Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogical theory of language, Thibault’s (2011)
distributed language view and the theoretical construct of desire as
both a lack and an energy (Ahmed 2010) to suggest that the naming of
languages needs to be incorporated into translanguaging theory in a
way that acknowledges the social construct of ‘named languages’ as
integral to the expansion of one’s linguistic repertoire as a whole. We
make this suggestion in order to help develop translanguaging theory
from a subaltern to a majority theory. We further suggest that language
education can play a significant role in furthering the translanguaging
project.

Introduction
There is a growing body of literature around the idea that speakers draw on one linguistic system,
rather than discrete languages, in order to communicate, and this idea has been increasingly referred
to as ‘translanguaging’ (e.g. Creese and Blackledge 2010; García 2009; Hornberger and Link 2012;
Lewis, Jones, and Baker 2012). Translanguaging, as a pedagogy, is considered to be both creative
and transformative (García and Li 2014; see also Li 2011), and it has generally been viewed to be effec-
tive and also affirming of the linguistic repertoire of students learning to be bi/multilingual. Trans-
languaging as a linguistic theory remains controversial, however (Li 2017). An important objective
behind translanguaging as a theory is the disruption of language hierarchies, and the need to
address the inequalities and symbolic violence faced by minority language speakers, most notably
in Anglophone countries (e.g. García and Li 2014; García and Sylvan 2011; Li and Zhu 2013; Creese
and Blackledge 2010), but also by speakers of local languages in formerly colonial contexts (Lin
and Wu 2015; Lin and Lo 2017).
Translanguaging in this sense of disruption is a political act (Flores 2014), which challenges mod-
ernist bilingual epistemologies (see Makoni and Pennycook 2007). However, the promise of trans-
languaging pedagogy in harnessing and validating students’ complete linguistic repertoires to
help them learn has often led to translanguaging losing its political sense, and this is perhaps clearest

CONTACT Marianne Turner marianne.turner@monash.edu

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 2 M. TURNER AND A. M. Y. LIN

in discussions about foreign language education (see Turnbull 2016 and García’s response, 2017) and
content and language integrated learning (CLIL) (see Nikula and Moore 2016). There is an epistemo-
logical conflict between disrupting language hierarchies whilst continuing to retain the educational
objective of learning a named language – very frequently a language spoken in a country or countries
which are economically dominant. In CLIL one could argue that the objective is to learn different
content areas, but the objective is commonly greater proficiency in the target language as well.
This conflict is inherent in the way that the social construct of named languages is recognized to
be important even while promoting the full linguistic repertoire of students (García 2017, 10; see
also García and Lin 2016; Cummins 2017), and has been acknowledged by García (2017).
In this article, we address the social category of named languages in order to further trans-
languaging theory. Rather than exploring these named languages – for example French, Chinese
and German – as solely ‘external social constructions’ (García 2017, 9), we position them as part
of a dialogue that speakers navigate in order to make meaning. That is to say, we understand
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named languages to be external social constructions in that they are imposed on a speaker, but
the way speakers then appropriate these constructions is dialogic: the imposition of named
languages and the way they are used are not the same. Otheguy, García, and Reid (2015) referred
to the lexical and structural features with which an individual communicates as an ‘idiolect’, or the
repertoire of the speaker from the perspective of the speaker. In the article, we discuss the way that
a named language may be harnessed as a way to develop and transform a speaker’s idiolect. This
includes an acknowledgement and subsequent harnessing of a speaker’s desire for a named
language.
We posit that the social category of named languages can be used to expand a speaker’s linguis-
tic repertoire as an end in itself. In arguing this, we seek to inverse the common educational objec-
tive of using one’s entire linguistic repertoire, or idiolect, to learn a named language. For example, a
French speaker learning Spanish would draw upon her/his French, and would also draw upon the
Spanish s/he was learning to increase her/his linguistic resources. If the objective is to increase
these resources rather than learn a named language, the focus can change from the language
itself to what the speaker actually does with the language being taught; namely, communicate
with a greater number of people in a variety of modes that may include more than one named
language, communicate using a breadth of creative expression that crosses named language
boundaries (café au lait may well become café olé, and said with a flourish!), and learn different
content areas more effectively by accessing different ways of defining concepts. By inversing the
educational objective from named language to linguistic repertoire, we seek to avoid the epistemo-
logical conflict currently present in translanguaging theory of working towards the very hierarchies
that translanguaging is hoping to disrupt. We view the languages classroom as a place where this
inversion can take place (and hierarchies problematized), given its primary focus on language as
opposed to content.
The specific questions we aim to address are: What role do named languages play in translangua-
ging theory (and monolingual students being capable of translanguaging)? Can named languages
only act as the object of disruption, or something else as well? We view these questions as especially
important if translanguaging theory is to move beyond theorizing language for minority/subordinate
language speakers, or its current political framework, to also theorizing language for majority
language speakers, so that translanguaging theory does not remain a ‘subaltern’ theory (Spivak
1988). Moving beyond this framework whilst retaining its base of social equity has the potential to
speak back to the imbalance of power that the framework seeks to address because it has the poten-
tial to change the ‘deficit’ status of minority language speakers. If only minority speakers are the
focus, there is always the possibility that the theory will be viewed as a ‘subaltern’ or ‘minority’
theory rather than a theory that truly shows majority speakers that minority language speakers
have a greater armory, so to speak, or a greater linguistic repertoire. In this article, we thus explore
the notions of tension and desire in order to theorize a potential way of thinking about named
languages in translanguaging theory in an operational (as well as disruptive) sense.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 3

The relationship between named languages and translanguaging theory

Much has recently been written about translanguaging and translanguaging pedagogy; literature on
translanguaging theory is less common (but see Lemke 2016 for a conceptual model of translangua-
ging). Translanguaging pedagogy challenges the traditional ‘two solitudes’ (Cummins 2007) thinking
behind the separation of languages in bilingual education and takes the view that translanguaging is
transformative (García and Li 2014) and integral to the performance of bi/multilingual identity (Creese
and Blackledge 2010), and the facilitation of a students’ complete linguistic repertoire in class is useful
and empowering (e.g. García and Li 2014). It is this theoretical focus on students’ complete repertoire
as one linguistic system that differentiates translanguaging pedagogy from other literature that advo-
cates the use of minority language speakers’ linguistic and cultural resources as ‘funds of knowledge’
to be used in the classroom (Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti 2005; see also Cummins and Swain 1986;
Moll et al. 1992; Schecter and Cummins 2003; Teo 2008).
It is also this focus on students’ complete repertoire as one linguistic system that creates the need
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to conceptualize named languages. In translanguaging theory, these named languages are under-
stood to be an invention. Drawing on Makoni and Pennycook’s (2007) edited work on the ‘disinvent-
ing and reconstituting of languages’, García (2017) related named languages to those invented by the
nation state. Invention is understood as ‘dynamic, intentional and complex’ and ‘dialectically co-con-
structed’ (Makoni and Pennycook 2007, 7). Makoni and Pennycook’s (2007) argument around the
invention of named languages is tied to European colonialism and Mühlhäusler’s (2000, 358) under-
standing of traditional linguistics in which ‘languages can be distinguished and named’. This con-
struct is tied to the perception that the norm is monolingualism. This includes the concept of
being monolingual in two languages – the underpinning belief of Cummins (2007) reference to
the ‘two solitudes’, and monoglossia, in which the desired outcome is ‘either proficiency in the
two languages according to monolingual norms for both languages, or proficiency in the dominant
language’ (García 2009, 115). The reconstitution of language away from named languages can con-
sequently be understood as a way to fight the reproduction of ‘nationalist ideologies that have led
states to oppress their minorities’ (García and Lin 2016, 16).
The positioning of named languages as a legacy of European colonialism and what Makoni and
Pennycook (2007) call ‘segregational linguistics’ is a call to go beyond critique and ‘understand the
interrelationships among metadiscursive regimes, language inventions, colonial history, language
effects, alternative ways of understanding language and strategies of disinvention and reconstitution’
(Makoni and Pennycook 2007, 4). Although very promising, this still leaves us with an extremely
powerful construct to dismantle in the realm of education: Makoni and Pennycook’s (2007)
premise is based on the recognition that languages do not exist independent of power relations.
This raises the question of whether any reconstitution of language could exist independent of
power relations – translanguaging is very often a tool for giving minority speakers access to dis-
courses of power, for example. Certainly, as humans, we have a very long (and continuing) history
of marked social inequality. Is the objective of the translanguaging project to reconstitute how
power relations play out in language, or is it to give more students the upper hand in these
power relations? The focus of this paper is on the former. Further, it is hard to argue that different
languages do not have some kind of pattern/linguistic system, often overlapping but often very
different from other patterns/linguistic systems. For example, if there had been no system for Arkad-
dian written on the very large number of ancient tablets uncovered in present day Iraq, linguists
would not have been able to make sense of them. Theorizing this idea of a system in the context
of a speaker’s idiolect, or linguistic repertoire, is our aim in this article.

Tension
In order to discuss the potential role of named languages, we will commence by focusing on
Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theory of language, in which heteroglossia features prominently, and
 4 M. TURNER AND A. M. Y. LIN

the concept of polyglossia also plays a role. Much of translanguaging epistemology stems from
Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of heteroglossia. The term heteroglossia was first used by Bakhtin in his
essays on The Dialogic Imagination (1981). He theorized heteroglossia as intra-language differen-
tiation and stratification: ‘language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline of
oneself and the other’ (1981, 293). He understood an utterance to be a two-sided act – a response
to something that has come before and an anticipation of what will come later. Bakhtin viewed
monoglossia, on the other hand, as ‘in its essence relative. After all, one’s own language is never
a single language: in it there are always survivals of the past and a potential for other-languaged-
ness that is more or less sharply perceived by the working literary and language consciousness’
(Bakhtin 1981, 66).
Although Bakhtin focused on speech diversity within language rather than among languages, he
also wrote about the concept of polyglossia, for instance in his critique of the ‘monoglotic’ Hellenic
world. When discussing the place of the Orient in this ancient world, he wrote:
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But the Orient, which was itself always a place of many languages, crisscrossed with the intersecting boundary
lines of ancient cultures and languages, was anything but a naïve monoglotic world, passive in its relationship
to Greek culture. The Orient was itself bearer of an ancient and complex polyglossia. Scattered throughout the
entire Hellenistic world were centers, cities, settlements where several cultures and languages directly cohabited,
interweaving with one another in distinctive patterns (1981, 64).

Bakhtin understood the problem of polyglossia to be intertwined with the problem of heteroglossia,
the problem being ‘a confident and uncontested monoglossia, one that viewed the polyglossia of the
barbarian world with contempt’ (67). He understood that ‘speech diversity achieves its full creative
consciousness only under conditions of an active polyglossia. Two myths perish simultaneously:
the myth of a language that presumes to be the only language, and the myth of a language that pre-
sumes to be completely unified’ (68). He saw this active polyglossia as taking place in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance in Europe and as preparing the way for intra-language heteroglossia in the
modern European novel. Active polyglossia, in which languages jostled with each other, finding
new patterns, thus helped people understand that the idea of a bounded, static kind of language
was an illusion. Also, in Bakhtin’s (1981) discussion, active polyglossia took place over time. For
example, he speaks of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in relation to modern Europe. We
also view the notion of active polyglossia as an important tool for the creativity and speech diversity
inherent in heteroglossia for the individual speaker, and this view is consistent with the way that het-
eroglossia has been taken up in literature on bilingual education.
Employing Bakhtin’s (1981) term heteroglossia as an underpinning concept in translanguaging,
García (2009, 117) understood heteroglossic linguistic practices and beliefs to be ‘the realization of
multiple co-existing norms which characterize bilingual speech’. This is theoretically coherent from
the translanguaging perspective because speakers are considered to have one linguistic repertoire
which they draw upon in different ways depending on the particular situated social interactions in
which they are engaged. However, we understand that the ‘bilingual speech’ part of the quotation
above is important. By theorizing one linguistic repertoire, ‘monolingual’ speakers who only have a
linguistic repertoire based on one named language may still be bound by the tyranny and myth
of ‘one’ language (Bakhtin 1981, 61) because they do not necessarily see the jostling and patterning
of languages, or an active polyglossia. Little room is left for recognition of the relationship between
language(s) and the way thinking is represented in different languages, as well as the fertile ‘inter-
animation’ of languages, to use Bakhtin’s terminology.
The example given below, taken from a laminated sheet welcoming the first author’s younger son
to his first day at a Japanese-English bilingual school is a case in point. In the English version, the idea
of ‘work’ is emphasized and in the Japanese version, the idea of ‘sticking at it’ (がんばるぞ in the third
line) substitutes the idea of work. Also, ‘fun and play’ are related to the students in English, whereas
fun is linked twice to school in Japanese (たのしいがっこう) and play is not mentioned. From a
translanguaging perspective, this could be taken as an illustration of active polyglossia that, when
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 5

learned and understood, can transform into heteroglossia, or become part of the idiolect of the
speaker (Table 1).
The focus on heteroglossia in translanguaging demonstrates an emphasis on the social meanings
of language over the referential meanings, or the kinds of ‘language-as-code’ meanings that domi-
nated linguistics throughout the twentieth century. Saussure (1983) understood referential meanings
to be the (arbitrary) relationship between the form of a word and the idea connected to the word, and
Saussure’s influence on linguistics as a field has been profound. Bourdieu (1991, 33) understood ‘the
entire destiny of modern linguistics’ to be ‘determined by Saussure’s inaugural act through which he
separates the ‘external’ elements of linguistics from the ‘internal’ elements […] reserving the title of
linguistics for the latter’. In this context of denial of ‘external’, or sociopolitical, cultural-historical
elements, the emphasis on social meanings is extremely important. Nevertheless, there is perhaps
now a danger that the patterns internal to linguistic systems will be, to some extent, denied,
leaving us with a similarly lopsided view of language.
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From a Bakhtinian perspective, there is room for thinking about different languages as unitary
while theorizing language as suffused with power relations and social meanings. Bailey (2012, 505)
pointed out that ‘a distinctive characteristic of heteroglossia is that it conceptualizes language
meaning as a function of both linguistic forms and historical social relations’. Bailey (2012) stated
this in order to show the relationship between Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia and sociolinguistic
perspectives on multilingualism. But what of the linguistic forms associated with named languages?
In Bailey’s (2012, 503) example in the last line of the transcript that appears there, Janelle says ‘Only
with that turkey thingee// ya yo estoy llena’ (I’m already full), there are clearly two learned codes at
play here – one could say that there are two quite contained parts to this utterance. Even when
Janelle puts English and Spanish together in the first part of the excerpt: ‘Okay, a turkey club is
pan to(s)ta(d)o’, the descriptive words ‘turkey’ and to(s)ta(d)o conform to English and Spanish place-
ment norms respectively. These appear to be excellent examples of Bakhtin’s (1981) centrifugal and
centripetal forces between the concepts of heteroglossia and ‘unitary’ language, or the idea of a more
fixed, sociohistorically situated form of language. Centripetal force refers to a ‘push towards the
centre and so represent the pressure towards uniformity in language’ (Barwell 2016, 107). It is this
sociohistorically constructed, sedimented uniformity that we seek to address in this article. Centrifu-
gal force refers to a ‘push away from the centre, representing the production of heteroglossia’
(Barwell 2016). The Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia, therefore, offers a way of thinking about
the tension-filled dialogic nature of language and the role of this dialogism in the development of
our creative consciousness.
The ‘distributed language view’ (Thibault 2011, 211) also offers a way of theorizing unitary forms of
language in relation to ‘embodied, embedded processes of languaging behavior’ – Lemke (2016) was
the first to draw on this distributed language view in his theorization of translanguaging as flows. Thi-
bault (2011) discussed two important concepts that make up the distributed language perspective:
first order languaging and second order language. He considered first order languaging to be dialogic
and thus not to belong to any one individual; he understood this to be a fundamental point. Individ-
uals ‘assemble languaging events out of a heterogeneity of resources and component parts that are
interlinked as wholes on the basis of objective historical processes on diverse ontological scales’ (Thi-
bault 2011, 214). First order languaging therefore positions language as social and dialogic in reaction
to the Saussure-inspired notion that language is an abstract code that can be researched as such.
Thibault (2011) used the notion of second order language to refer to what many people would

Table 1. Excerpt taken from a laminated sheet welcoming children to their first day at a Japanese-English bilingual primary school
in Australia.
たのしい　がっこうの　はじまりだ Welcome, welcome school has begun.
じぶんの　このてを　つかって Time for work. Time for fun.
いつでも　どこでも　がんばるぞ I use my hands for fun and play.
きようから　たのしい　がっこうだ School has started just today!
 6 M. TURNER AND A. M. Y. LIN

call (often as a result of historical, political and institutional forces) ‘language’. Thibault (2011, 216)
described second order language as formed of lexicogrammatical patterns that act as ‘attractors –
future causes – that guide and constrain first-order languaging. They are stabilized cultural patterns
on longer, slower cultural timescales’. He went on to discuss the subsequent importance of cultural
selection:
Cultural selection shapes the first-order dynamics of populations of speakers on longer timescales that are simply
not apparent to individual speakers on the very different spatiotemporal scale of the first-order speech events in
which individuals engage with other individuals. This is so because cultural selection requires a large enough
population of individuals and a large enough number of vocal tract gestural events over a long enough time
scale in order to operate and to see its effects registered. (Thibault 2011, 217)

In the article Thibault (2011) mostly focused on the constraints of second order language in relation
to the way meaning is compressed through the use of lexicogrammatical patterns that enforce cul-
tural expectations. However, what if a speaker knows different sets of lexicogrammatical patterns that
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enforce different – though related – sets of cultural expectations? Second order language does not
necessarily refer to the social construct of a named language – Thibault does not refer to second
order language in this way. However, named languages also harness lexicogrammatical patterns
that enforce cultural expectations, and we consequently suggest that a named language could fit
in this category. The first order languaging of speakers who have access to more than one named
language has been found to be transformative and incredibly rich (see Li and Zhu 2013; Lin & Li
2015). If named languages can be understood as a kind of second order language, they can be incor-
porated into translanguaging theory not only in relation to constraint but also in relation to the
opportunity to create and transform as long as they are not the ultimate focus. Given that the disrup-
tion of hierarchies is an aim of translanguaging theory, this is an important point. Harnessing named
languages to develop a speaker’s linguistic repertoire or idiolect is key. If speakers only communicate
in what they consider to be one language (with all its concomitant compression and enforcement of
cultural expectations), it follows that first order languaging has a smaller linguistic repertoire on
which to draw.

Desire
Along with tension, the theoretical construct of desire can help to conceptualize how named
languages can be harnessed to provide linguistic resources that expand a speaker’s first order langua-
ging repertoire. We consider desire to be very important in any discussion on named languages
because, however colonizing and reflective of an atrocious inequality these languages are, the fact
that they are desired means that, in all probability, they will be perpetuated. The desire construct
is beginning to make inroads into the field of TESOL in particular (e.g. Kubota 2011; Lin & Motha,
forthcoming; Motha and Lin 2014), given the position of English as the globally dominant named
language. However, theorizing the role desire plays in language learning should not be limited to
TESOL only. Here, again, we seek to theorize from the same point of departure as translanguaging
theory – inequality in power relations – but also explore how desire for named languages can be inte-
grated (as well as critiqued/ disrupted) in translanguaging theory by harnessing it to the project of
increasing a speaker’s idiolect and giving space for it to be problematized.
Norton’s (2000) concept of investment was instrumental in thinking about the relationship
between language and desire. Arguing from a poststructuralist and sociocultural perspective,
Norton maintained that categories such as instrumental and integrative motivation (see Gardner
and Lambert 1972) gave rise to the image of a ‘unitary, fixed, and ahistorical language learner’
(2000, 10), whereas investment gave rise to the image of the relationship between the language
learner and target language that was ‘socially and historically’ constructed (11). This focus on
socio-historical context explicitly included the idea of power and Norton drew attention to this
through her focus on Bourdieu and cultural capital. Cultural capital refers to particular knowledge,
ways of thinking, and (embodied) predispositions which are considered to have value in a particular
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 7

social group or social groups (Bourdieu 1977). For example, for Norton (2000, 10), language learners’
investment in the acquisition of ‘a wider range of symbolic and material resources’ was a product of
the learners’ understanding that there would be a subsequent increase in the value of their cultural
capital. However, she contended that this was not a straightforward process given the complexity of
the learners’ social history and potentially conflicting desires.
Desire has been theorized as a lack, as an energy and as a combination of both. First, Lacan (1977)
understood desire in relation to what we lack, what causes us to feel incomplete in some way. In their
article on desire in TESOL, Motha and Lin (2014) considered lack in relation to English and how people
are socialized into this ‘incompleteness’. This is reminiscent of García’s (2017) argument against the
idea of deficit that is so strongly tied to modernist understandings of language education. Fighting
against the idea of ‘native’ speaker and incompleteness is a central idea in the translanguaging
project. Deleuze and Guattari (1977), however, did not view desire in this way, rather seeing it as a
positive force, or energy, because it helps move us towards our objectives. It is this view of desire
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in a positive sense as an energy that is less clear in current conceptualisations of translanguaging.

However, for the purposes of translanguaging theory, it may be more constructive to view desire
as both a lack and an energy. Ahmed (2010) connected the two, understanding desire to be a
promise that necessitates a lack and the pursuit of that promise as giving energy. Drawing on
Ahmed’s (2010) work, Motha and Lin (2014, 335) discussed desire in relation to the racialized and
imperial history of English as:
A lack and an energy, simultaneously productive and oppressive, and that in moving desires from unconscious to
conscious planes we can harness greater control over which of these directions we move in, over whether we are
fleeing an undesirable condition or pursuing a desirable one, and furthermore become better equipped to criti-
cally analyse the ways in which factors converge to shape a given identity as desirable or undesirable.

Thus, if translanguaging is to be a theory of language where creativity and transformation are central,
can desire be integrated in this way? If a speaker who grows up understanding themselves to be
monolingual is to have access to what is positioned as another language and so free their conscious-
ness from their own myths about language (see Bakhtin 1981), a feeling of promise in the form of
lack, may be necessary. This does not have to be the end in itself but can act as a lure in the trans-
languaging project – a way to give speakers tools to expand their idiolect, and to bring them to a
language classroom, or space where language can then be carefully problematized.
It could thus be said that the social construction of the lack as something essentialised and
belonging only to other people, such as in the case of the ‘native’ speaker, is at fault, rather than
the desire itself. However, in order to problematize it, acknowledging the existence of desire is impor-
tant, no matter what form it takes. For example, Kubota (2011) explored the existence of desire and its
complexity in relation to the learning of English through eikaiwa, or English conversation classes, in
Japan. She maintained that whiteness and native speakers had been commodified to promote
akogare (desire/ yearning) in these eikaiwa schools, and female customers were especially targeted
(see also Bailey 2002; Kelsky 2001; Piller and Takahashi 2006; Takahashi 2006). Kubota (2011) found
that many of her participants went to eikaiwa classes principally for leisure and enjoyment, and
akogare was connected to an imagined English-speaking community.
Kubota’s (2011) findings thus indicated desire to be forgiving of power relations, to the point that
it facilitates the perpetuation of the very relations translanguaging theory is attempting to disrupt.
However, the construct of desire as it has been theorized in the field of TESOL places great impor-
tance on power relations: it has agency and unequal structures of power as its point of departure.
For Motha and Lin (2014, 354), discussion of desire in TESOL brings ‘(unconscious) desire into (con-
scious) research focus’. If desire is visible, it can be unpacked and critiqued, and it can be made visible
through discussion on named languages in particular because it is the imaginary around these
languages that is generally desired.
The language classroom is a place where this discussion can occur. We conceptualize it as a
language classroom rather than an English, French or Spanish classroom because the focus is the
 8 M. TURNER AND A. M. Y. LIN

choice of one of these as a tool for expanding a speaker’s linguistic repertoire as a whole and decon-
structing desire, not only in relation to the desire of the speaker but also in relation to what the desire
might be doing to others. For example, in Kubota’s (2011) eikaiwa study, the commodification of
English may bring hope and refuge to those doing the desiring, but stereotype and (racialized/sex-
ualized) objectification in unwanted ways to those being desired. Although English is in a category all
its own in current processes of globalization, it is also important to note that unequal power relations
further exist among other named languages. For example, less than ten languages in the world are
commonly used for science communication. These languages are connected to former – and existing
– regional powers and (as well as English) include French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic,
Hindi, German and Portuguese.
If translanguaging theory is to move beyond its current focus on minority/subordinate speakers in
an immersive English-speaking environment, or speakers who are exposed – whether they like it or
not – to at least two named languages in their everyday lives, the desire for a named language to
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which the speaker gets little daily exposure can play an important role in bringing the speaker to
the table, so to speak. Facilitating the visibility of this desire, critiquing it and exploring how the
named language, as a social construct, can be used as a tool to develop first order languaging
(rather than the other way around) may help the integration of majority language speakers into trans-
languaging theory. This could be achieved through guided class discussion and the encouragement
of student reflection on (1) their beliefs around language, (2) the myriad ways they use (and desire to
use) language, and (3) the ways in which a particular named language may be adding to their reper-
toire as a whole.

(Re) positioning named languages in translanguaging

The ‘trans’ in translanguaging theory seems important because it is what separates the theory from
other social theories of language (see Bakhtin 1981; Thibault 2011). These other theories principally
conceptualize tensions and first order languaging in an intralanguage way, or as related to the ten-
sions between (1) cultural historical, socially situated ways of daily expression and (2) one lexico-
grammatical (relatively unitary) system that has evolved over a longer timescale. Two or more of
these relatively unitary systems are not included at the same time in the theories of heteroglossia
or first order languaging, which leads to the idea that the relatively unitary system acts as a constraint
on a speaker’s expressiveness. However, even though Bakhtin’s (1981) main point of focus was het-
eroglossia, he did understand an active polyglossia to prepare the way for heteroglossia.
In translanguaging theory there consequently exists the possibility of transformation/ creativity as
well as constraint because, by virtue of the ‘trans’, two or more relatively unitary systems that people
commonly perceive as the languages they speak are bumping up against each other. Theorized in
this way, the social construct of named languages can be positioned as central to translanguaging
theory, not only in terms of disruption but also in terms of giving tools that can be used to
expand and transform a speakers’ idiolect, or linguistic repertoire.
This is not to argue for the colonial idea of segregational linguistics (Makoni and Pennycook 2007)
– we understand the boundaries of systems are porous and there is an enormous amount of overlap
between what have been named (arbitrarily by sociohistorically powerful institutions) as different
systems. However, really exploring what is afforded by this notion of ‘trans’ in translanguaging
theory may mean engaging with different languages as a central construct – an important tool for
expanding one’s linguistic repertoire and the consciousness that comes with this expansion. A
place to explore this in a critical way is a language education classroom, as long as it is understood
that the learning and critiquing of a named language serves a higher purpose: that of expanding stu-
dents’ holistic linguistic repertoire, converting polyglossia into heteroglossia and thus feeding and
expanding the students’ creative consciousness.
By conceptualizing language education as bilingual education, we risk viewing the translangua-
ging project as working towards a named language as an educational objective. Bilingual education
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 9

still includes the learning of a named language, and it also includes the idea of desire or the cultural
imaginary surrounding the named language for students, parents and communities at large. Uncon-
scious desire for some kind of elusive ideal language proficiency and inclusion into an imagined
group is not necessarily problematized in the way that it could be if studying a named language
were to become a means to an end and linguistic resources the end in itself. As well as problematiz-
ing elusive desire, more tangible desires can also be brought to the fore: everyday desires such as that
of learning what a Japanese Pokémon card says so it can be incorporated into Pokémon battles
alongside its English counterparts.
We consider the disruption of linguistic hierarchies to be the most important aim of trans-
languaging pedagogy. However, this disruption cannot even begin to occur for majority language
speakers of dominant, powerful languages if they cannot see the point of learning other
languages. These speakers are left with the tyranny and myth of monoglossia (Bakhtin 1981).
For these monolinguals, a language classroom could be harnessed as a space to position the
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expansion of their linguistic repertoire and the critiquing of what constitutes language as
central, but this necessitates theorization of the role of named languages in translanguaging
theory. Focusing translanguaging theory on the way more than one named language come
together to produce embodied (first order) languaging events for speakers would still focus on
speakers having one linguistic system, but it would allow study (and critique) on how this linguis-
tic system is expanded and transformed.
It is clear from the diversity of metropolitan life that modernist notions such as L1 and L2 do not
take into account the complex social worlds of speakers and do not do justice to lived realities. Never-
theless, trying to come to grips with named languages in translanguaging theory, however they are
named, is an important enterprise. The recognition of named languages as having a role more than
only the object of disruption acknowledges the strong interrelationship between culture and socio-
historically sedimented/codified language. How can we then disrupt the colonizing and imperial
influence of powerful named languages if they are integrated into translanguaging theory? We
can view and critique them as relatively stable systems that are culturally and historically produced
and, as such, always in the process of changing, albeit very slowly, under the standardizing forces of
sociopolitically powerful institutions. Positioned as secondary to first order languaging, named
languages can be made a resource for us to appropriate and transform as we will in the service of
our own expression. They are best viewed as historically sedimented ‘envelopes’ and we need to
see them as open rather than sealed (Lemke 2016) – they are not the whole story of languaging.
Rather than having translanguaging as a tool for learning a named language, we need to inverse
this and see named languages as a tool for expanding our holistic linguistic repertoire as well as
for transforming these historically named languages. We believe that the language education class-
room has the potential to play an important role as a site of developing and leveraging linguistic
resources for the purpose of translanguaging.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor
Marianne Turner is a senior lecturer in bilingual education and TESOL at Monash University. Her research interests
include the leveraging of students’ linguistic and cultural background as a resource for learning and language education
in institutionally monolingual settings. This latter includes researching and facilitating learning around context-sensitive
approaches to content and language integrated learning (CLIL).
Angel M. Y. Lin is Professor & Head of the English Language Education Division at the Faculty of Education, University of
Hong Kong. She is well-respected for her interdisciplinary research in classroom discourse analysis, plurilingual edu-
cation, and language-in-education policy and practice in postcolonial contexts.
 10 M. TURNER AND A. M. Y. LIN

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