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Power, Ideology, and Linguistic Landscape: Promoting Multilingual

and Translanguaging Pedagogy

Presentation · September 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13804.59529

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 Power, Ideology, and Linguistic Landscape:
Promoting Multilingual and Translanguaging Pedagogy
Dr Fan (Gabriel) Fang
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
College of Liberal Arts, Shantou University
ffang@stu.edu.cn

Webinar on English and the Internationalisation of Higher Education: Global Views and Local Implications

29/09/2020
 Presentation Outline

• Power, Ideology and Unequal Englishes in ELT

• Cases from Linguistic Landscape
• Translanguaging Practices
• Revisiting Translanguaging Pedagogies: The Road Ahead
 Linguistic Racism
• … the ideologies and practices that are utilised to conform, normalise and
reformulate an unequal and uneven linguistic power between language
users (Dovchin, 2020, p. 774) including L1 use, accent etc.
• Linguicism: ‘ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate,
effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both
material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis
of language’ (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1989).
 Linguistic Racism (De Costa, 2020)
• needs to be historicised and examined in relation to the sociopolitical
contexts in which multilingual speakers are embedded;
• has to be examined in conjunction with vitally important and adjacent work
on linguicism, native-speakerism and raciolinguistics.
• […] ‘it is difficult for even well-qualified citizens with foreign degrees to
compete with expatriates, and if they do manage to get a job at an
institution of their liking, their salary and service conditions are not on
par with those of the expatriates, nor do they enjoy the same respect
and recognition accorded to native speakers. They are treated as
second-class citizens in their native land’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2016: 68-69)
– a quote of his student from Southeast Asia who completed a degree
in the US.
 Unequal Englishes
• Any discussion of English as a global language and its socio-educational
implications, therefore, cannot ignore the fact that far from being a
solution to the dismantling of the ‘unequal power’ relations in the world,
English is in fact often part of the problem (Rubdy, 2015, p. 43).
 Native Speakerism
• Native-speakerism is a pervasive ideology within ELT, characterized by the
belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘Western culture’ from
which spring the ideals both of the English language and of English language
teaching methodology (Holliday, 2005).
• Native-speakerism is seen instead as a divisive force which originates within
particular educational cultures within the English-speaking West (Holliday,
2005).
English Language Teaching Today Top-down policy

• Despite the initiative arguing for the importance of incorporating various

aspects of Global Englishes (GE) into classroom, actual ELT practices seem
to be relatively slow to reflect on GE.
• The entrenched ideology of native-speakerism is still salient in both job
market and classroom practices.
ELT Teachers’ Privilege and Marginalisation
• Chinese English Teachers vs. Native English Teachers (Fang, 2018)

• Professional job requirements (teaching, researching, admin)

• Unequal PayScale, remuneration even with same educational
background and working experiences
• Housing conditions
• Job markets
 ELT Teachers’ Privilege and Marginalisation
• ‘this will strangle the professional identity and personal endeavor of
CETs, and NNETs will no longer have a say in this field which is a grievous
and realistic concern’… (Interview data)
• NETs have a higher ‘face validity’… (Interview data)

• It is crucial that those in the ELT field reconceptualize the model of language
teaching and challenge the entrenched native ideology, in which
professional identities of NNETs will further be envisaged and constructed.
ELT should be more contextualized, as not only should people view ELT from
a global perspective, but also the localized versions of English should be
integrated into the language classroom for students to reflect upon the
current linguistic landscape of English across the world (Fang, 2018, p. 37).
TESOL Profession
• ‘By their uncritical acceptance of the native speaker dominance, non-native
professionals legitimize their own marginalization. Both the process of
marginalization and the practice of self-marginalization bring to the fore the
coloniality, rather than the globality, of the English language. They cast a
long, hegemonic shadow over the activity of TESOL’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2006,
p. 22).
 The Gap

• To a large extent, the ELT world today generates a ‘false image’

between the local and the global and create an ‘invisible
hierarchy’ between the ‘Centre’ and the ‘Periphery’. English is
still perceived as the property of its native speakers (cf. Lippi-
Green, 2012).
 Linguistic Landscape
• Linguistic Landscape: ‘The language of public road signs,
advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial
shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines
to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or
urban agglomeration;
• visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial
signs in a given territory or region’ (Landry & Bourhis 1997: 23,
25)
 Language and
Symbolic Power
• The tension between retaining the culture and values
associated with the mother tongue and the adoption of a
national identity symbolized by a foreign language is not easy
to reconcile (Tsui & Tollefson, 2004: 7).
Translanguaging (García, 2009; García & Li, 2014; Lin,
2019)
• Translanguaging has been adopted to describe bi/multilingual
speakers’ complex language practices;
• Multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to
make sense of their bilingual worlds;
• Translanguaging also embraces code-switching, L1 use, multimodal
and further trans-semiotic practices
• A study on Translanguaging use in EFL/EMI class teaching

• Liu, Y., & Fang, F. (2020). Translanguaging theory and practice: How stakeholders
perceive translanguaging as a practical theory of language. RELC Journal.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688220939222
• Fang, F., & Liu, Y. (forthcoming). ‘Using all English is not always meaningful’:
Stakeholders’ perspectives on the use of and attitudes towards translanguaging at a
Chinese university. Lingua.
 Research Context
• A tertiary university located in South-east China with more than
1,500 staff members and 10,000 students in nine schools and
colleges;
• More than 40% of faculty members have overseas education
backgrounds and/or work experience;
• Promotion of EMI in Business School, Law School (with students
majoring in International Law only take EMI courses), School of
Journalism, etc.
Research Questions
• RQ1: What kinds of translanguaging practices have been
adopted by both teachers and students at the Chinese
university in this study?
• RQ2: What are the students’ attitudes towards translanguaging
practices at this Chinese university?
• RQ3: What are teachers’ attitudes towards and reasons for
translanguaging practices at this Chinese university?
Translanguaging for Comprehension Check

The teacher expected her students to identify the corresponding word of ‘新

颖性’ in English to check the students’ understanding of key concepts, and
to help them develop bilingual literacy
Translanguaging for Content Knowledge

The teacher deployed some Chinese culture-

specific words, such as 库尔勒香梨 and 二奶酒,
to illustrate the two legal principles.
Translanguaging for Class Rapport

The teacher used a metaphor, referring to the writing sample

as ‘good stuff’, which is ‘好东西’ in Chinese.
 Interview: Optimal Position
• T2: L1 is used for highlighting a point, especially when what I need to say is so
important. I need to make sure that every student receives the message. Furthermore,
when the recess bell is about to ring and they become not so focused, using L1 would
help capture their attention.

• T1: I think using Chinese to inject humour is a way of creating a warm atmosphere.
Since we are all Chinese, if you don’t use the mother tongue, it would sometimes turn
out to be too business-like, and this is not the classroom atmosphere I want.

• T2: The use of all English would, to some extent, compromise communication between
teachers and students. Using Chinese brings us closer, especially the less proficient and
less active students. I would speak in English most of the time and switch to Chinese
sometimes to relax, and this acts as a rhythm.
 Interview: Maximal and virtual positions
• T4: We have an international legal programme, in which students are required to
complete a certain number of credit hours in EMI courses. In these courses, both
PowerPoint presentations and lectures are required to be in English only.

• T5: In the department staff meeting, it was clarified that EMI means implementing the
English-only policy, including in teaching language in classrooms, textbooks and
PowerPoint presentations.

• T3: Because we have a principle in class of using English only . . . I have never confirmed
this with others, but I think it is an unspoken rule . . . In class, if I hear students speaking
in Chinese, I forbid them from doing so, although there is no punishment. I would usually
remind them not to use Chinese. For me, even when I encounter content that is difficult
to explain, I will still not randomly resort to Chinese. Otherwise, my students might feel
that they could use Chinese too . . . so, I would like to start with me.
Summary
• Despite the English-only policy, the teacher participants utilise
translanguaging strategies to facilitate content teaching,
includingconcept/language point explanation, comprehension check, and
content knowledge localisation.
• Teachers show different positions towards translanguaging. The teachers in
favour of translanguaging strategies recognise more functions of
translanguaging practices.
Challenges of Translanguaging Practices
• the influence of the monolingual policy: Revisiting Language Policy
• the students’ overuse of L1: Understanding language Practice
 Implications
• Although the role of English is undoubtedly prominent in students’ future
employment and career development, it does not mean that mastery of
English only would naturally lead to optimal outcomes in terms of content
subject learning and enhancement of English language proficiency;
• The adoption of English as a language of instruction should be contextualised
as language policy makers should reconsider the feasibility and availability of
the necessary resources for EMI and understand L1s and local cultures as
resources in order to promote translanguaging pedagogies and challenge
linguistic inequality and racism (Kirkpatrick, 2016; Tollefson & Tsui, 2004).
 Multilingual Education for Translanguaging
Pedagogies
• … systematic and contextualised translanguaging pedagogical strategies
should be developed …

• … ‘building a TESOL field that wholly embraces and builds upon the dynamic
cultural and linguistic repertoires of our students across contexts’ (Tian and
Shepard-Carey, 2020, p. 11)
 A Multilingual Lens
• Re-consider the monolingual bias (idealised native speaker) in traditional
SLA theories (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018);
• Adopt a sociolinguistic perspective of what competence means to bi/multi-
lingual speakers instead of constructing societal monolingualism as the
norm (May, 2015);
• Respect linguistic and cultural resources as people’s repertoire – a need to
understand the ‘complexity, reciprocity, and porosity of multilingual
repertoires with the ongoing need for access to standardized language
varieties’ (May, 2015, pp. 216-217);
• Recognise students’ L1s as language resource and allow translanguaging as
a natural linguistic practice (García & Li, 2014; Li, 2018)...
 Anti-racist Pedagogy (De Costa et al. in press)
• addresses the intertwined nature of race and language teaching;
• supports both students and teachers in recognising and making visible the
racialised nature of language
 Lippi-Green (2012, pp. 334-335)
• The question is, can this unbroken circle of intimidation (e.g. linguistic
discrimination, linguistic racism – my note) truly not be broken, or do we like
things the way they are? Language serves as a convenient excuse to turn
away. Are we unwilling to consider a nation in which the cost of success is
achievement measured by other, fairer, means?
• Language subordination is about taking away a basic human right: to speak
freely in the mother tongue without intimidation, without standing in the
shadow of other languages and peoples. To resist the process, passively or
actively, is to ask for recognition, and acknowledgement. It is a demand for
the simple right to be heard.
 Selected References
• De Costa, P. (2020). Linguistic racism: its negative effects and why we need to contest it. International Journal of Bilingual Education
and Bilingualism, 23(7), 833-837.
• Dovchin, S. (2020) Introduction to special issue: linguistic racism, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 23(7),
773-777.
• Fang, F. (2018). Glocalisation, English as a lingua franca and ELT: Re-conceptualising identity and models for ELT in China. In: B. Yazan,
& N. Rudolph, (Eds.), Criticality, teacher identity, and (in)equity in ELT through and beyond binaries: Issues and implications (pp. 23-40).
Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
• Fang, F., & Liu, Y. (forthcoming). ‘Using all English is not always meaningful’: Stakeholders’ perspectives on the use of and attitudes
towards translanguaging at a Chinese university. Lingua.
• García, O., Li. W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Holliday, A. (2005). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385-387.
• Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Dangerous liaison: Globalization, empire and TESOL. In Julian Edge (Ed.). (Re)Locating TESOL in an age of
empire (pp. 1-32). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Kumaravadivelu, B. (2016). The decolonial option in English teaching: Can the subaltern act?. TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 66-85.
• Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Liu, Y., & Fang, F. (2020). Translanguaging theory and practice: How stakeholders perceive translanguaging as a practical theory of
language. RELC Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688220939222
• Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & R. Phillipson. (1989). ‘Mother tongue’: The theoretical and sociopolitical construction of a concept. In U.
Ammon, (ed.). Status and function of languages and language varieties (pp. 450-477). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
• Tupas, R. (2015). Unequal Englishes: The politics of Englishes today. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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