Translingual practice among African immigrants in the US: embracing the mosaicness of the English language

ABSTRACT

There is a need to embrace translingualism in order to avert covert tensions that emanate from the ascription of linguistic supremacy to ‘standard’ English, especially among teachers of immigrant children and in overall public discourse. Drawing inspiration from the 1974 resolutions of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the 1996 Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights which advocate the empowerment of students to ‘own’ their languages, this paper examines the diversity inherent in world Englishes in orthography, grammar, lexis, and phonology. A plethora of indigenous and European languages spoken across Africa have influenced the emergence of varied Englishes; as a result, Africans in the US speak English with varying accents and proficiencies. The following factors contribute to the translingual character of English spoken by most first- and 1.5-generation African immigrants in the US: medium of instruction in their countries of origin; duration of exposure to ‘standard’ English; age at immigration to the US; and their willingness to yield to social pressure to speak English like mainstream Americans. This paper foregrounds the historical as well as the contemporary socioecological linguistic realities of African immigrants’ English speech and how these realities impact African immigrant acculturation in their host country.

KEYWORDS:

• Translingualism
• world Englishes
• African immigrants
• linguistic diversity
• codeswitching
• language identity
• multiculturalism