Translingualism

Translingual phenomena are words and other aspects of language that are relevant in more than one language. Thus "translingual" may mean “existing in multiple languages” or “having the same meaning in many languages”; and sometimes “containing words of multiple languages” or “operating between different languages”. Translingualism is the phenomenon of translingually relevant aspects of language; a translingualism is an instance thereof. The word comes from , meaning “across”, and lingual, meaning "having to do with languages (tongues)"; thus, it means “across tongues”, that is, “across languages”. Internationalisms provide many of the examples of translingual vocabulary. For example, international scientific vocabulary comprises thousands of translingual words and combining forms.

According to Steven G. Kellman, the author of Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft, translingual writers are authors who write in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one. Kellman further explained that this type of writers are authors who “flaunt their freedom from the constraints of the culture into which they happen to be born” ... “by expressing themselves in multiple verbal systems”. Thus, the translingual writer is an author who has the ability to cross over into a new linguistical identity. Kellman cites the "Sapir-Whorf thesis, the principle of lingusitic relativity whose premise is that language determines thought" as an insight as to why translingual writers choose to switch languages within their literary works.

It is important to note the distinction between translingualism and similar linguistic concepts like bilingualism, multilingualism, and ambilingualism. While all of these terms relate to knowledge of multiple languages, translingualism specifically stresses the process of teaching a second language. According to Tung-Chiou Huang, "Translingualism is a term from Steven G. Kellman (2000) and David Schwarzer et al. (2006), who see teaching an L2 as bridge building between languages that allow one to retain a unified mind and not be cloven into two for the sake of being multilingual." Supporters of this use of translingualism focus on the fluidity of language systems, thoroughly eschewing concepts such as "Standard Written English" and unaccented speech. The past decade, in fact, has seen a gradual increase in the number of second language scholars theorizing about translingualism (see Jain, 2014; Canagarajah, 2013; Canagarajah, 2012; Horner, NeCamp, & Donahue, 2011; Motha, Jain, & Tecle, 2012; Pennycook, 2007), perhaps in keeping with an emerging tradition of translingual activism (Pennycook, 2008), and suggests that a paradigm shift may be occurring in the way we think about language study, language teaching, and language use.

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