The everyday politics of translingualism as a resistant practice

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to expand the translingual tradition through a stronger focus on ‘the political implications’ – a way to understand the ordinariness of everyday resistance. When people engage in linguistic resistance in everyday life, it might have mixed motivations; it might not be theoretically informed; it might draw from their cultures of resistance in their community history; it might need ideological analysis by scholars so that we can create more awareness among ordinary people. Drawing on the social media translingual practices of young people in different geographical contexts such as Mongolia and Japan, we consider the transgressive implications and the politics implicit in these young people’s everyday language choices. We seek to interpret these politics in a situated manner, in relation to the local and geopolitical contexts that impinge on these practices and language choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Translingualism
• linguistic resistance
• ordinariness or everyday resistance
• Mongolia
• Japan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Suresh Canagarajah http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1292-2366

Sender Dovchin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4327-7096

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science: [grant number 17K13504]; Australian Research Council (ARC): [grant number DE180100118].