Words that don’t translate: investing in decolonizing practices through translanguaging

Abstract

Drawing on the pedagogical framework of critical multilingual language awareness, this article demonstrates how the production of a YouTube video explaining lexical gaps can help language learners construct a translanguaging space and invest in decolonizing practices. Based on a study examining the language and literacy practices of university students in Hong Kong, it explores how English majors enrolled in a communications course created three-minute videos explaining Cantonese words that do not have equivalent terms in English. By explaining these translational gaps, learners were able to not only reflect on their languages and cultures, but also articulate a cognitive and affective awareness of the way language works. They were able to initiate translanguaging practices that displaced the privileged position of English and enabled them to resist colonial ways of knowing. Learners reframed their identities as knowledgeable experts who had the authority to speak confidently about their L1, while the non-Cantonese speaking instructor became learner and listener. By reconfiguring relations of power, learners were able to initiate and invest in decolonizing practices that asserted their identities as legitimate, multilingual speakers and enabled them to claim the right to speak.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

This article describes the pedagogical value of having students use their different languages to explain how a word in their first language can have no exact equivalent in another. In this study, English majors enrolled in a communications course in a Hong Kong university were tasked to create a YouTube video to discuss a Cantonese word that cannot be translated into English. To achieve this goal, students used Cantonese, English, Mandarin, and other multimodal resources to discuss the differences of these languages, and how they reflected cultural differences. The study showed that this task not only enabled an awareness of how language works, but also stimulated different emotions and encouraged specific practices and ideas about their identity and culture. It enabled them to rethink the privileged position of English as a colonial language and as a language of instruction. They drew on pop culture and other non-traditional sources of information to develop their ideas. By talking about their own language and culture, students were able to position themselves as knowledgeable experts who had the authority to speak confidently about their mother tongue, Cantonese, while the non-Cantonese speaking instructor became learner and listener. Thus, through this pedagogical task, the learners were able to challenge colonial ideas and representations, introduce new ways of thinking, and assert their identities as multilingual speakers.

ABSTRACT (CANTONESE)

本研究借鑒Prasad和Lory發表於2020年的批判性多語語言意識教學框架, 展示了一個解釋詞彙差异的視é »製作活動如何幫助語言學習者構建超語空間, 並對去殖民化實踐進行二語投資⸰ 基於此項針對香港本科生語言及讀寫實踐研究, 本文探討交流課程中的英語專業學生如何創造三分鐘視é »以解釋沒有英語對照翻譯的粵語詞彙——學習者通過解釋一個概念在兩種語言翻譯的差距, 不僅能對他們的多語和文化進行反思, 還能闡明他們對語言運作管的認知和情感意識, 並且啟動能取代英語特權地位的超語實踐, 從而抵制殖民主義的認知方式⸰ 本研究結果顯示, 通過參與此項教學活動, 參與者能重塑個體身份, 作為知識上的專家, 自信地介ç´¹自己的母⸰ 同時, 非粵語使用者的講師成為了學生⸰這樣的權力關係重置幫助學習者對去殖民化實踐進行投資, 以維護他們作為正當多語使用者的自我認同及身份斷言的權力, 從而使學習者自主主張話語權°

Keywords:

• Critical multilingual awareness
• translanguaging
• decolonization
• identity
• investment

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ron Darvin

Ron Darvin is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His research interests include digital literacies, identity and investment in language learning, and decolonial and antiracist pedagogies. He has published in TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching and Language Learning & Technology.

Yue Zhang

Yue Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Department of English Language Education, The Education University of Hong Kong. She has earned her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Applied English Linguistics in the Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research areas include language identity and investment, L2 motivation, computer-assisted language learning, critical inquiry and pedagogy, and language teacher education. Her publications have appeared in Computer Assisted Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, System, and Chinese Journal of ESP.