For much of its modern history, linguistics has taken an ontological stance on language as a structural entity, with a wide set of implications for how languages are understood as bounded entities. This is not about the different epistemological approaches to a structural version of language taken by various schools of linguistics, but about the basic ontological assumptions about what language is. A structural ontology made it possible to treat language as an object amenable to scientific study, enabling descriptions of languages around the world and facilitating many advances in our understandings of languages as structural entities. Yet this very tendency towards seeing languages as autonomous systems has enabled those forms of thinking that emphasize boundedness. When we contrast a structural ontology with a practice ontology, where the focus is on what people do with available linguistic resources, it becomes clear that in some of the recent translanguaging debates, people are talking about different things, language as structure and language as practice. Because structural and social (practice) language ontologies are so different, the debates about translanguaging have become mired in misunderstandings.

This chapter zeroes in on the similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition. First, the chapter breaks down the term “second language acquisition” by discussing each of those words. It revisits the components of language (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and pragmatics) from second language acquisition perspectives. It then introduces different second language acquisition theories such as input processing theory, skill acquisition theory, usage-based theory, sociocultural theory, complex dynamic systems theory, translanguaging, and Monitor Theory. The applicability of those theories to classroom second language teaching is discussed.

In this chapter, the authors underline the need for a lay-oriented approach to translanguaging. They explicitly retain the trans-prefix – not merely to transcend the language systems and structures of the mainstream paradigm, i.e. ‘language’ as count, but to question the very nature of ‘language’ as mass. Adopting a southern perspective, they suggest that ‘language’ (mass) may possess multiple natures i.e. they move from a critique of ‘languages’ as socially constructed fixed-codes, i.e. hermetically sealed entities, to a critique of ‘language’ as having a universal ontology. They argue that linguistics needs to be lay-oriented, whereby ‘lay-orientedness’ is to be construed in two ways: (i) it takes seriously the most diverse cultural and individual views on what constitutes ‘language’ (and ‘a language’), i.e. it moves beyond northern folklinguistic categories and conceptions to include the Global South as a rich field of radically different lay metalinguistic discourses. And (ii), it theorizes language and communication in ways lay people might not express it, while allowing them to recognize their own communicational practices in the theory, irrespective of cultural differences. On that view, ‘languaging’ is not a separate or separable activity – pace translanguaging scholarship – the reason being that it does not possess a determinate ontology.

Drawing on an online ethnographic case study of a young Australian Aboriginal artist, ‘Kambarni’, this study explores how translanguaging can be understood through the negotiation of both playfulness and precarity. When this artist is online in his public social media Instagram account, he constructs his cultural identity artistically and multimodally, often in playful ways, represented through his art - reflecting his personal, social and political lived experiences; his strong alignment to his traditional culture; and his ability to walk with confidence in non-Aboriginal ‘youth’ society. Yet the monolingual ideological precarity is apparent as he rarely uses anything but Standard Australian English (SAE) on his public Instagram account, despite the fact that his Instagram account targets both an Indigenous and non-Aboriginal audience. When he is offline interacting ‘inside’ his own peer group, on the other hand, he employs translanguaging playfully and creatively, using varied resources such as SAE, Aboriginal English and traditional language lexicon. The authors, therefore, argue that translanguaging should be understood from its playfulness aspects within in-group communication, while it might lose its playfulness when it moves beyond its boundary and clashes with other ideological precarities such as judgements, stereotypes and racism against the Aboriginal people.

In this chapter, we explore how multilingual Australian Aboriginal children who have Standard English as an additional language/dialect engage in translanguaging practices through both playfulness and precarity in the school context. We begin by exploring their various linguistic repertoires and then examine how they playfully use translanguaging to move fluidly between these languages as they engage interactively both inside and outside the classroom. We discuss how such ‘translanguaging’ can contribute to learning by enabling Aboriginal students to take advantage of all the linguistic resources they have at their disposal which allow them to ‘construct, manage, negotiate and perform’ activities in positive ways within the classroom. However, there is precarity in the classroom meaning-making process because of the inherent linguistic racism of school as experienced by such students. Teachers often lack any understanding of the languages the students bring to school, which can result in teachers viewing student languages within a deficit model as ‘poor’ or ‘broken’ English. Yet the students’ facility with their languages, and the ease and confidence with which they move across languages, amply demonstrates the equality of their language to that of English. We propose that despite the challenges, language play can mitigate against the precarity.

In this Afterword, I provide additional comments on Sender Dovchin, Rhonda Oliver, and Li Wei’s edited book’s central argument, namely that a rather romanticized view of translingualism as the celebration of playfulness despite the precarious conditions of life of translingual users needs to be addressed. The chapters in this book do an interesting reading of precarity in terms of ontology, social practices, and the conditions of inequality in today’s world. To further enrich the response to the critique that translanguaging scholarship ignores the actually existing conditions of precarity and suffering under neoliberalism, I draw on my own experience as an editor of an applied linguistics journal in Brazil and on the (in)securitization of everyday life experienced by interlocutors in my fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro favelas. I conclude that imagining forms of life that do not surrender to or freeze in the face of precarity seems to be an urgent task for sociolinguists.

In this chapter, language choices in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) are examined in relation to official language policy and personal language choices. Particularly significant are signage units which express messages using two or more languages or other linguistic codes. Different codes can express the same message, but they may display different messages which may be aimed at different audiences. Rather than simply putting messages into particular linguistic envelopes, units of the LL develop intricate communicative actions in the choices of size and placement for particular languages, and in the different ways in which languages make references to texts and cultural features which lie outside the signage itself. Using photographs from 11 countries, the chapter also shows that the LL provides a forum for language play, displays of elite language, cross-linguistic typographical effects, and the incorporation of visual images into writing systems.

This chapter addresses two theoretical issues of importance to this book. The first involves ‘Southern theory’ in the social sciences, discussing the extent to which the author’s research may contribute in this emerging area. It argues that, by presenting concrete suggestions for how we may learn ‘from the South’ (not simply ‘about the South’), it may help to provide the foundations for what might be called ‘practical Southern theory’ in the social sciences. Example constructs and terms are offered for how this may be achieved, both from this study and others. The second area of theoretical interest involves how teacher expertise studies may contribute to a wider systematic and sustainable framework for building context-specific understandings of teacher expertise. The proposed framework is oriented around collaborative inquiry and practitioner research and may contribute both to the identification of appropriate good practices for a given context, and to supporting and encouraging practitioner-led (bottom up) teacher professional development within the wider educational system.

The chapter ’Meow and More’ lead us to the sociolinguistic concepts of code, code-switching, bilingualism, and multilingualism. It describes transnational communication, polylanguaging, translanguaging, and networked multilingualism by using cat-related examples, going over the technological aspects of computer-mediated communication to show how technology affects multilingual online discourse. The chapter also illustrates how we use language to construct our identity in the cat-related digital spaces.

In Chapter 6 the same approach to evidence gathering is adopted in the context of the Spanish polity by focussing on two of the 17 Autonomous Communities, namely the Basque Country and Navarre. It is here that the new speaker concept has been most readily welcomed and has entered into official discourse. Accordingly, we may expect to find examples of good practice which should be applicable in other jurisdictions. Detailed consideration is given to such excellent initiatives as the Euskaraldia: 11 Days in Euskera campaign in the Basque Autonomous Community. Here civil society activists and local agencies are far more inclined to argue that the needs of new speakers should be an integral element of official language policy than were those charged with the formulation and implementation of such policies at the national level. The chapter explores to what extent this official reticence is a result of ideological stances, a caution as to the costs involved or a conviction that current policies already cater very well for the needs of new speakers, even if they are not described in those terms.

Chapter 4 explores potential advantages of multilingual upbringing in relation to further language development. It argues that any such advantages play out more forcefully and are easier to identify in regard to general proficiencies rather than specific grammatical phenomena. Chapter 4 further argues that type of bilingualism, as operationalized in terms of language dominance, and the type of language knowledge investigated play a pivotal role for understanding language learning processes against a multilingual substrate. Cross-linguistic influence, as observable in different grammatical domains and the lexicon, can aid additional language acquisition by means of cumulative enhancement, but certain constellations also produce inhibitory effects. The assumption of universally facilitating effects has turned out to be overly optimistic and needs to be tempered. Much of the discussion in Chapter 4 is based on the acquisition of English as an additional language in bilingual heritage contexts (third language acquisition). Besides general CEFR-proficiencies, the case studies concern determiners, subject–verb agreement, tense and aspect, word order, and lexical cross-linguistic influence.

Classroom language ecologies are increasingly diverse as a result of mobility, migration, and information technology. In these spaces, interlocutors may draw upon shared linguistic and cultural resources but also bring in others. Prime examples are additional-language (AL) classrooms, where there is a shared target language, but where students may have different first languages from their classmates and teacher. In this chapter, we review empirical research on interaction in multilingual classrooms in approaches such as ethnography, translanguaging, and conversation analysis (CA), and discuss methods and findings in relation to the growing field of intercultural pragmatics (IP). Additionally, we offer an empirical illustration from video ethnography research in multilingual English AL classrooms in Sweden. With a CA approach, we demonstrate how a group of students participating in a vocabulary game manage an instance of diverging understandings of an English word. We show how, in resolving this interactional trouble, participants draw on the target language English and the societal/school language Swedish, and we discuss the observations in light of the IP concepts of salience and common ground. Finally, we argue that classroom studies detailing social actors’ language repertoires by using audiovisual data are essential in advancing our understanding of multilingual AL classrooms.

The present chapter discusses children’s multilingual landscapes and language practices in social interaction and in their play. It presents studies on children of various ages, specifically focusing on how children with multilingual linguistic potentials and various kinds of language proficiency encounter a variety of social settings where multilingual or monolingual discursive practices are used. It discusses main theoretical perspectives on multilingualism, children’s learning and play, and introduces a bottom-up conceptualization of children’s multilingual landscapes. Research highlights how children, in their peer interactions, can use various language ideologies and resources. Children exploit the multilingual character and varieties of languages available in the social context and engage in translanguaging. The chapter reviews research on children’s multilingual peer play, language creativity and metalinguistic awareness. Further, it discusses how children co-create language norms and social order in multilingual peer groups, and how linguistic assets within multilingual families and in multilingual educational environments are invoked and exploited.

The chapter begins with a review of foundational studies on how monolingual children develop emergent literacy, then moves to explore how children develop multiliteracy by learning to interpret symbols and icons in their immediate contexts. The research shows that children find ways to experience and construct meaning from their local scripts in each of their multiple languages. Studies presented in this chapter show that children can interpret symbols in several different scripts, and that they find strategies to navigate multiple languages and become competent speakers in their communities.

Cross-disciplinary research in recent years on the intersections between both translation and translanguaging and translation and identity has sought to emphasize the diverse multilingual practices of translators while acknowledging the agency of translators in negotiating power and meaning, and foregrounding the often marginalized practice of translation itself as a creative and multiply boundary-crossing activity. In this chapter, we review current research on translation, translanguaging, and identity in order to better understand the ways that identity is operationalized in multilingual and collaborative translation practice; propose a new model of translator identity that addresses the diversity and collaborative nature of much translation work; analyze multilingual translator identity in practice by highlighting two examples of collaborative translation data from a global multilingual literacy project; and make the case that recognition of the multifaceted, translingual practices of translation, together with our enhanced model of translator identity, may help reconcile divergent understandings of translanguaging and the role of the translator across disciplinary boundaries.

Recent assertions about ‘post-multilingualism’ (Li Wei 2016, 2018) are based on the growing body of work in what may be called the ‘4T’ approach or perspective: translanguaging, transmodal, transindividual, transspecies. If this is seen as superseding multilingualist approaches, such a subtractive development stands to impoverish understanding of language use. This chapter argues for them instead to be conceived of in an additive, complementary way – not in opposition to one another, but in joint use to provide as strong as possible an alternative to deeply rooted views concerning purported disadvantages of multilingualism and the erasure of its existence in various areas of linguistic research.