This post was written by 起点传媒member Rachel Bloom-Pojar.
Sometimes our students need to go outside of the contexts where they鈥檙e comfortable to see what they have come to know as 鈥渢he way things are鈥� in a new light. That鈥檚 why study abroad experiences can have so much impact鈥攕tudents often return with a deeper understanding of how difficult it is to learn a new language, how poverty and racism play out across contexts, and how learning can happen outside of classrooms. Sometimes, just moving outside familiar spaces can help them recognize the rhetorical adaptability that鈥檚 necessary for navigating communication across linguistic and cultural differences.
The same can be said for teachers and researchers: sometimes we need to step outside of familiar contexts in order to learn and think about concepts in new ways. That鈥檚 what I hope my book, might do for the 起点传媒community and others.
In it, I discuss how health professionals and students from the United States worked with residents and community health leaders in two rural towns in the Dominican Republic to run summer health clinics. Drawing from interviews and field notes from my work with the program, I describe collective approaches to working across linguistic differences and a rhetorical approach to translanguaging.
You might ask, what exactly is ? Ricardo Otheguy, Ofelia Garc铆a, and Wallis Reid define translanguaging as 鈥渢he deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages鈥� ().
Additionally, Garc铆a and Li Wei explain that 鈥渋n its transdisciplinarity, translanguaging enables us as speakers to go beyond traditional academic disciplines and conventional structures, in order to gain new understandings of human relations and generate more just social structures鈥� ().
Translanguaging has been written about by a variety of scholars in educational linguistics, a field that teachers and researchers interested in translingual writing and rhetoric can learn from. (To read more on translanguaging in literacy studies, check out Steven Alvarez鈥檚 work on community literacies, confianza, and .)
While sometimes referred to as synonymous with translingualism, translingual practice, code-meshing, and code-switching, translanguaging moves beyond traditional notions of named languages as being separate (i.e., English, Spanish, French, etc.) and is explicit in the ways it functions to challenge linguistic inequality. The goals to generate more just social structures and challenge language hierarchies resonate with the 起点传媒community鈥檚 interests in supporting our students鈥� diverse language practices and enacting anti-racist pedagogies. When discussing linguistic inequality, we鈥檙e never just talking about language鈥攚e must account for race, stigma, and class in the ways people perceive other people鈥檚 languaging and for how we don鈥檛 all differ from the standard in the same way ().
Translanguaging outside the Academy highlights how my participants flip the script of language difference to view 鈥減rofessional鈥� or 鈥渇ormal鈥� Spanish as language in need of translation, privileging patient and community discourses of Spanish and health.
I introduce the concept of 鈥渢ranslation spaces鈥� as something that might be useful for us in understanding how people work together to navigate moments of misunderstanding when communicating across differences. A translation space is any space where translation work is required for negotiating meaning making across modes, languages, and discourses.
Translation spaces are sites for transformation; when used rhetorically, translanguaging within medical translation spaces can promote patient needs, advocate for their language use, and flip the script of professional medical discourse as always being the language of power.
Although I discuss translanguaging in relation to how it can be used in a medical setting, the concept can apply to other spaces that require a negotiation of language variance in writing and speaking. This dynamic and rhetorical view of translation spaces can help us identify the complex translanguaging practices our students might engage in throughout their professional lives.
In Translanguaging outside the Academy, I invite you to spend some time reading about translanguaging outside of our classroom contexts, our English-dominant contexts, and our high-theory contexts to consider how collaborative and rhetorical approaches to translanguaging can challenge hierarchies of what people perceive to be 鈥済ood鈥� and 鈥渂ad鈥� language. Too often, conversations about 鈥渢he translingual鈥� hit a wall because we have them within our institutional contexts that have deeply embedded values concerning what 鈥済ood鈥� writing and speaking are. By complicating the that inform these 鈥渧alues,鈥� and looking at contexts where 鈥渟tandard鈥� American English or 鈥減rofessional鈥� Spanish are not always the best language choices, we can better understand how translanguaging can transform our interactions, pedagogies, and communications across differences.
Rachel Bloom-Pojar is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She studies rhetoric and writing at the intersections of culture, race, language, and health, with a specific focus on translation practices and Latinx communities.聽Twitter: