Multilingual interaction in chat rooms: translanguaging to learn and learning to translanguage

ABSTRACT

In this chapter, we analyse the co-construction of meaning by university students in romance language (RL) chat rooms, in an online platform focused on multilingual language practice and learning. This communicative situation can best be described through the concept of ‘intercomprehension’, i.e. a multilingual and multisemiotic communicative practice between speakers of different languages (in this case, typologically related languages), and will be analysed using a translanguaging lens, which is embedded in a heteroglossic perspective. Such an analysis invites us to perceive fluidity in the borders between languages and inside individuals’ repertoires. In this particular multilingual learning situation, where participants communicate to learn and learn to communicate in RL chat rooms, we will observe speakers’ double orientation towards translanguaging, i.e. the interconnection between ‘translanguaging to learn’ and ‘learning to translanguage’. The results demonstrate a strategic use of translanguaging skills (with specific affective, cognitive and social goals), together with the subjects’ explicit agency when engaged in intercomprehensive communicative practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercomprehension
• heteroglossia
• translanguaging
• multilingual interaction
• chat rooms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer is Associate Professor for Foreign Language Education (French and Spanish) at the University of Hamburg (Germany). Her research interests focus on pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures, plurilingual interaction and heritage language education.

Maria Helena Araújo e Sá is Full Professor for Foreign Language Education at the University of Aveiro (Portugal). Her research interests focus on Intercomprehension between Romance Languages, teacher education and intercultural education and research. She is the Director of the Research Centre on Didactics and Technology in the Education of Trainers – CIDTFF.

Notes

1 GALANET (plateforme pour le développement de l’intercompréhension en Langues Romanes) was a Socrates/Lingua Project, coordinated by Christian Degache of Université Stendhal, Grenoble 3 (France), which included six other institutions: Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Università de Cassino (Italy), Université Lumière Lyon 2 (France), and Université de Mons-Hainault (Belgium). For further information and access to team publications, please visit www.galanet.eu.

2 The session studied in this contribution was object of different analysis in previous publications, including Araújo e Sá, de Carlo, and Melo-Pfeifer (2010), Araújo e Sá and Melo (2007), Bono and Melo-Pfeifer (2011) and Melo-Pfeifer (2014, 2015 and 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia: [Grant Number PEst-C/CED/UI0194/2013].