Beyond language fluidity: the role of spatial repertoires in translingual practices and stancetaking

ABSTRACT

In Research Group Meetings (RGM) and other professional activities, sometimes positions are fluid, but stances illustrate international scholars’ bilingual competence in an RGM in Microbiology. In stances, people index sociocultural values by evaluating discursive figures in talk, proffering epistemic/affective assessments, and positioning each other [Jaffe, A. 2009. “Introduction: The Sociolinguistics of Stance.” In Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by A. Jaffe, 3–28. New York, NY: Oxford University Press]. I show how international scholars troubleshoot and problem-solve with senior colleagues as they enact stances to maintain relationships. Competence entails language fluidity and diverse semiotic resources, or translingual practices [Canagarajah, S. 2013. Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. London, UK: Routledge], in stances. While existing stance models stress verbal resources [Du Bois, J. W. 2007. “The Stance Triangle.” In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, edited by R. Englebretson, 139–182. Amstderdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company], they overlook the role of spatial repertoires. This micro-interactional analysis of RGMs demonstrates how diverse semiotic resources inform stances, and argues for stance methodologies and analyses which include multimodal, gestural, and semiotic repertoires. Findings indicate that power relations are managed through scholars’ use of verbal and semiotic resources in interpersonal stances. I argue that bilingual competence should acknowledge the role translingual practices play in stance taking, and the management of professional relationships in such meetings.

KEYWORDS:

• Language use
• spatial repertoires
• translanguaging
• stance

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Acknowledgements

The data comes from the research project PRAMS00042121: Negotiating Multilingual Identities in Migrant Professional Contexts, whose Principal Investigator is Professor Suresh Canagarajah.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2020.1825285)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lupe Rincon-Mendoza

Lupe Rincon-Mendoza is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University.