Disinventing and reconstituting language for learning in school Science

Abstract

Language ideologies profoundly shape and constrain the use of language as a resource for learning in ‘multilingual’ or linguistically diverse classrooms. In this paper, we draw attention in particular to the ideology of languages as stable, boundaried objects and to the colonial invention of African languages. Against this backdrop, we analyse an example of pedagogical practice which was designed in response to a linguistic ethnography of Year 9 Science learning in a South African high school. The aim of this intervention is to move beyond the constraints of current language ideologies and to enable bilingual isiXhosa/English students to use a wide range of resources from their semiotic repertoires for learning Science. We will argue that debates about language of instruction in post-colonial contexts which pit one named language against another, misdirect our attention away from how the resources of language and other semiotic modes are or are not being used for learning in classroom discourse and learning materials. We aim to show how pedagogical translanguaging and trans-semiotising can be taken up as strategies of disinvention and reconstitution of ‘language’ for learning Science. (195)

Keywords:

• Language ideologies
• translanguaging
• trans-semiotising
• disinvention
• Science
• semiotic repertoires

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank guest editor Mastin Prinsloo, and the reviewers, for their very insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interests was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All students have been given pseudonyms.

2. In his explication of talk and learning, Barnes (1992) distinguishes between ‘presentational’ talk and ‘exploratory’ talk. He likens ‘presentational talk’ to ‘final-draft’ type communication where fluent explanations in full sentences using discipline-specific registers are the expectation. Exploratory talk by contrast is hesitant, incomplete and enables ‘working-on-understanding’ (1992, 126). While his focus is on spoken language, this description can also be applied to written texts.

3. See Brutt-Griffler (2002) on use of mother tongue medium of instruction in order to restrict access to English in the British colonies of Lesotho and Sri Lanka.

4. Makoni and Pennycook (2005) cite the influential work of Mudimbe (1988) on the ‘invention of Africa’ in relation to Europe as well as of Ranger (1983) on the colonial invention of traditions in Africa and Harries (1988) and Fabian (1991), among others, on the specific invention of language and discrete named languages. As their own review of the literature shows, the notion of languages as socially constructed and invented has been carefully documented.

5. A beat gesture is a rhythmic hand movement usually for emphasis (Kress et al. 2001).