translanguaging
Copyright: © 2020 Sunny Man Chu Lau. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution,
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Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics ISSN 2209-0959
https://journals.castledown-publishers.com/ajal/
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3 (1), 42-59 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.29140/ajal.v3n1.299
Translanguaging as Transmediation: Embodied critical literacy engagements in a
French-English bilingual classroom
SUNNY MAN CHU LAU a
a Bishop’s University, Canada slau@ubishops.ca
Abstract
Translanguaging theory highlights linguistic and semiotic resources as an integrated communicative
repertoire for knowledge construction (Li, 2018). Language is learned and used in conjunction with
other modalities through processes of resemiotization (Iedema, 2003) or transmediation (Suhor, 1984)
where meaning is made and remade across modes. Through this translanguaging lens, dynamic
integration of languages with expressive arts helps mobilize embodied resources, whether cognitive,
sensory, or affective, for alternate avenues of knowing and awareness, an aspect much neglected in
traditional critical literacy approaches focusing heavily on rational ideological critique (Janks, 2002).
A trans-systemic approach also facilities second language learners’ full agentive participation as their
multilingual and multisensory resources are valorized for complex learning often considered beyond
their abilities. This article describes a university-school participatory action research study in a Quebec
elementary classroom, where the English Language Arts and French Second Language teachers,
through coordinated translanguaging pedagogy (Gort & Sembiante, 2015), facilitated critical bilingual
learning while providing respective language models. The children were engaged in a yearlong inquiry
into the issue of refugees, through discussing stories of migration and interviewing with refugee-
background students in both languages while engaging in visual arts for deepened understanding and
embodied reflections. Students responded positively to the coordinated bilingual engagements and
multisensory approaches to critical literacy, which afforded an aesthetic experience that fostered
reflexivity and civic empathy (Mirra, 2018). The study points to the affordances of translanguaging in
critical education, underscoring how embodied multilingual engagements allow students to be affected
and to affect (Ahmed, 2010) others.
Keywords: translanguaging, trans-semiotization, transmediation, critical literacy, empathy, critical
aesthetics, refugees, French second language, English language arts, bilingual education
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 43
Introduction
Translanguaging highlights an interconnected use of languages and other semiotic resources for
communication and knowledge construction. Everyday communicative practices involve processes of
resemiotization (Iedema, 2003) or transmediation (Suhor, 1984), whereby one discourse or semiotic
resource is transformed into another mode or a mixture of modes in time and space, mobilizing and
rendering new ways of knowing, being and acting. Translanguaging pedagogy hence values the
dynamic integration of languages, including the languages of arts (e.g., painting, dance, or drama) for
creative and critical bi/multilingual and pluriliterate learning (García, Bartlett, & Kleifgen, 2009).
Translanguaging and/or transmediation of embodied semiotic resources, be it linguistic, visual or aural,
gestural, etc. help disrupt the traditional logo- and verbo-centric notion of critical literacy (Janks, 2002)
that privileges rational textual critique over aesthetic or emotional engagements (Misson & Morgan,
2006). Such a trans-systemic approach challenges most deficit-oriented second language classrooms
where critical literacy and/or expressive arts are often considered beyond language learners’ abilities.
Elaborating on a university-school participatory research study, this article showcases the use of
coordinated translanguaging pedagogy (Gort & Sembiante, 2015) in an English-French bilingual
classroom whereby the two language teachers collaborated flexibly and creatively to provide target
language models while crafting a translanguaging space (Li, 2018) for multidirectional, pluriliterate
meaning-making possibilities. Engaging children in a yearlong inquiry into the issue of refugees, the
teachers of this multiage class (Grade 4-6) read and discussed related literature in both languages while
integrating visual arts to deepen understanding. Results showed teachers’ trans-systemic approach to
critical bi-literacies extended and expanded students’ understanding of refugees’ issues such as human
rights, discrimination, resilience, and hope. Particularly, these embodied multimodal engagements
helped open up creative and aesthetic spaces for students to be affected and to affect (Ahmed, 2010)
others through their expressive arts, affording an alternative avenue of critical awareness and
engagement that deepened reflexivity and civic empathy.
Theoretical Frameworks
Translanguaging as Re-semiotization and Transmediation
Translanguaging theory recognizes languages as fluid, hybrid ecologies in individuals and
communities characterized by their mutual polydirectional interconnections and interdependence
(Cook, 2002, 2012; García, 2009). Languages, rather than being bounded, segregated or complete in
bi/multilingual individuals and communities, are constantly evolving and developing as people
language (Swain, 2006) and trans-language features and structures from different languages they learn,
adapt, use in creative and functional ways across their life trajectories. Li (2018) draws on ecological
psychology in his recent theorization of translanguaging as a practical theory of language, highlighting
particularly Thibault’s (2017) view of languaging as “an assemblage of diverse material, biological,
semiotic and cognitive properties and capacities which languaging agents orchestrate in real-time and
across a diversity of timescales” (p. 82). Thibault’s view (2011) extends social constructivism to
include ecological, biological, and material dimensions to understanding language behaviors as a
whole-body, intersubjective sense-making process that is “materially embodied,
culturally/ecologically embedded, naturalistically grounded, affect-based, dialogically coordinated,
and socially enacted” (p. 211). This ecological view of language reconciles psycholinguistics and
sociolinguistics to offer a more complex and integrated understanding of language as involving neural,
affective and sociocultural engagements while underscoring the multimodal and multisensory nature
of communication. Language cannot be processed independent of the auditory or gestural, spatial,
visual or other non-linguistic systems; communication is always enacted through an ensemble of
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
44
multiple semiotic systems. This latest articulation of translanguaging theory transcends traditional
boundaries between linguistic and non-linguistic systems (Li, 2018), treating all languages and other
semiotic resources as an organic whole as individuals employ and deploy available cognitive and
bodily semiotic resources (of which language is one) to perform communicative acts and identities.
This ecological and multimodal view of language theorized by scholars in social semiotics theory
(Jewitt, 2008; Jewitt, Kress, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001; Kress, 2009) has been widely adopted by
researchers and educators in literacy classrooms. As early as the 1990s, literacy scholars have been
advocating for engagements with expressive arts to deepen and expand children’s understanding (e.g.,
Dyson, 1988; Eisner, 1978, 2003; Hoyt, 1992; Leland & Harste, 1994). The term transmediation was
first coined by Suhor (1984, p. 250) to refer to the process of translating content from one system to
another, allowing generation of new meanings and more complex understandings. Language is taken
to mean “the language of art, of music, and more” (Harste, Short, & Burke, 1988, p. 56); altogether as
sign systems, these languages help mediate and make sense of the world around us. Pictures or
drawings allow the expression of images and feelings that often precede words, hence visual
representations can further assist students’ understanding of the world (Elkind, 1988). Sketch to Stretch
(Harste et al., 1988) has been widely used to foster students’ personal connections and interpretation
of texts and social worlds, strengthening the reading and writing connections, especially for those
whose language, culture and life experience are beyond the mainstream (Gallas, 1991).
According to Mills (2011), the term transmediation gradually diminished in its use when
Multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) and social semiotics theory gained more currency in literacy
education. More recently, terms such as transduction (Kress, 1997) or resemiotization (Iedema, 2001,
2003) refer to the remaking of meaning across modes. Retracing these origins allows us not only to
pay tribute to past literacy research work but also to understand how concepts intersect, crisscross and
build on each other. Translanguaging is not new in the sense that it too draws on social semiotics theory
and Multiliteracies to challenge the artificial boundaries imposed on various semiotic systems.
However, positioning itself from the marginal, the in-between and the borderlands (Flores, 2014;
García & Leiva, 2014), translanguaging theory and pedagogy help advance a political agenda to
advocate for the political and education rights of marginalized languages and bodies, disrupting not
only segregation between modalities but also that between majoritized and minoritized languages. It
recentres minoritized sociolinguistic practices and identities as crucial to knowledge construction and
performance. While the use of expressive arts and Multiliteracies are widely accepted pedagogies in
literacy classrooms, it is often not the case in second or foreign language classrooms, particularly those
in non-English majority contexts where teaching and learning of discrete and decontextualized
language features still prevail. Expressive arts are often devalued in those classrooms and might only
be considered relevant for more advanced learners. Promoting the importance of creative employment
and deployment of resources across semiotic boundaries, translanguaging pedagogy can potentially
close the traditional divide between pedagogy in literacy classrooms and that in second or foreign
language classrooms. Some leading scholars in Second Language Acquisition (The Douglas Fir Group,
2016) have recently put forward a transdisciplinary framework for additional language education
across material and digital multilingual contexts, urging for its reconfiguration within learners’ social-
local worlds to involve neurological, cognitive, sociocultural, and socioemotional dimensions at all
levels: micro (individual), meso (institutional), and macro (ideological structures). The fundamental
principles of this transdisciplinary framework dovetail neatly with those of translanguaging.
Affective Embodied Learning for Critical Literacy – Aesthetics and Affect
Recognizing the cognitive, sociocultural, socioemotional, and ideological aspects of language and
learning opens up new possibilities for critical engagements in additional language classrooms. The
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 45
affective turn (Clough, 2007) in literary and cultural studies has sparked a renewed interest in the role
of emotion in language education, apart from the cognitive-oriented concepts of anxiety, motivation
and self-confidence (cf. Krashen, 1982). Critical literacy education traditionally tends to privilege
logo- and verbo-centric approaches (Janks, 2002; Johnson & Vasudevan, 2012), prioritizing students’
cognitive abilities to dissect and deconstruct texts for ideological critique. This rational
deconstructionist approach reinforces the mind-body dichotomy, relegating critical inquiry to mere
intellectual exercise (Keddie, 2008).
Rosenblatt’s (1982) theorization of reading as a process along a continuum of efferent and aesthetic
stances reminds us of the importance of aesthetic experience in critical reading. As we read, past
experiences, sensations, and feelings are evoked and lived through in the process. Aesthetic response,
however, is not a simplistic reflection of the reader’s private pleasures or emotions existing in a cultural
or social vacuum; rather it is often charged with one’s social and political values and concerns (Cai,
2008; Lewis, 2000). When viewed fully in its “personal, social, cultural matrix” (Rosenblatt, 1985, p.
103-4), one’s aesthetic response can serve as a starting point for criticism and ideological explorations,
rather than the end of the reading process. This idea of emotions as the point of departure for critical
engagement is well argued by poststructuralist and feminist scholars who theorize emotions as visceral
bodily sensations that shape and are shaped by sociopolitical relations and worldviews (Ahmed, 2010;
Benesch, 2012; Misson & Morgan, 2006). As Ahmed elaborates, “To be affected by something is to
evaluate that thing. Evaluation expressed in how bodies turn toward things. To give value to things is
to shape what is near us” (p. 31). Critical education puts great emphasis on students’ criticality and
reflexivity through which they actively and constantly seek to engage with and question different
perspectives and to evaluate and examine our own critical practices (Freire, 1970). Holmes (2010)
argues that critical reflections are fundamentally “emotional, embodied and cognitive” processes (p.
140) of individuals who seek to understand and feel about their lives in relation to others and the
environment. In the same vein, Gallagher (2016), drawing on Ahmed’s conceptualization of affect,
posits that “our ability to act in the world is inherently relational, as the outcome of both affect and
reason by means of the imagination” [original emphasis] (p. 84). To imagine is to go beyond where we
are, to engage in dialogue with “a critical other” (Bleazby, 2012, p. 102), just as we do in communal
inquiry with empathetic understanding of the others’ perspectives. Relations with and feelings about
others are hence central in one’s critical, reflexive practices. This brings us to the importance of
empathy in critical literacy education--its goal is to promote not only students’ comprehension of texts
but also their empathy and emotional capacity to relate to people and community with a sense of
agency and efficacy to act within it (Mirra, 2018). Empathy refers to the ability to “imaginatively
embod[y] the lives of our fellow citizens while keeping in mind the social forces that differentiate our
experiences as we make decisions about our shared pubic future” (p.7). Rather than a mere popular
feel-good gesture of seeking to establish a “nicer” and more understanding society, empathy is
conceptualized within the broader sociopolitical constructs and power relations, or what Mirra calls
critical civic empathy—it propels us to examine and recognize how our own social privilege or
marginalization influences our interpretation of others’ experience, and to seek ways to promote
democratic dialogue and civic action for equity and justice (p.7).
Visual arts, like other forms of expressive arts, provide a “material-discursive tool” (Murris &
Thompson, 2016, p. 2) for meaning-making. As the material properties of each medium influence how
a concept is expressed, felt and experienced, the transformation from one to the next generates new
meanings, raised awareness, and enhanced understanding. Arts affords what Matthews (1991) calls
somatic knowing: “an experiential knowing that involves sense, percept, and mind/body—whole
organism--action and reaction--a knowing, feeling and acting that is independent of distancing,
disembodying, discursive conceptualization” (p. 89). Mallan (1999) argues that aesthetic engagements
might seem to run counter to the tenets of critical literacy, yet visuals often stimulate interest and
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
46
prompt inquiry which may result in intellectual, emotional and personal shifts. Artistic representations,
he explains, give a sense of the real, recasting experience in a different light, thus providing means for
discussion, reflection and action (p. 201).
Context and Methodology
The project adopted a participatory action research (PAR) model to seek dialogic inquiry through
university-school collaboration, with researchers working and thinking together with practitioners and
inquiring into educational theories and practices of concern and interest to both parties. PAR aims to
disrupt the university-school and research-practice dichotomies to foster bi-directional flow of
knowledge between academe and the classroom (Duckworth, 2005; Paugh, 2004).
The teacher participants were two elementary teachers - English Language Arts (ELA) and French
Second Language (FSL) - who shared a multiage classroom (Grades 4-6) with 43 students. Mrs. Smith
and Madame Desbiens were experienced ELA and FSL teachers. They firmly believed in language
and literacy education as a conduit for fostering critical readers, writers and actors. Both were
conversant in the other’s language (not academic writing) and both adopted a dynamic, integrated view
toward bilingualism. They had previously tried out some ways to connect the FSL and English
curricula but not in a systematic manner. Eager to learn more about translanguaging and explore how
a coordinated use of both English and French might facilitate social justice education, the two teachers
participated in this university-school participatory/collaborative action research project. The project
first started as pilot study, which then evolved into a two-year research partnership when we obtained
government funding. The research study aimed to explore the educational potential of cross -curricular
and -language connections, seeking to answer these questions: 1) In what ways do the FSL and ELA
teachers collaborate?, and 2) How does their collaboration facilitate students’ complex bi-literacies
and critical learning?
The school was located in a small town, which originated as an anglophone community but has now
become a mix of both anglophones and francophones. The majority of the children were white and
most (61%) came from families with both anglophone parents. A quarter of the class indicated use of
both languages with either parents (23%), while a small portion used French only with both parents
(16%). Close to two-thirds felt comfortable with reading (n=33) and writing (n=30) in English while
7 found themselves equally confident in reading and writing in both languages. Only 3 felt strong in
French reading and 6 in French writing. As an active participant-observer, I made class visits, taking
detailed field notes and videotaping class interactions and activities (36 hours in total). Using
purposeful sampling (Creswell, 2015), based on the teachers’ initial assessment, three students of
different language proficiencies (2 girls and one boy) were invited for case studies and in-depth focus
group interviews (pre, during and post; 30 minutes each) about their opinions on translanguaging
approaches and their learning on social topics. Two teacher interviews (pre and post; 45 minutes each)
were conducted to collect opinions on student progress and implementation of translanguaging
pedagogy. Our bi-monthly research meetings allowed us to plan and evaluate our collaborative action
research cycles, discussing ongoing data to build and refine interpretations to co-develop emerging
curricular foci and strategies aimed to meet the students’ learning needs. Work samples of the nine
focal students together with the other data sets helped triangulate our analysis and interpretation of the
different literacy events.
Recursive process of qualitative analyses included the use of descriptive codes in the first cycle coding
(Saldaña, 2013) to establish the basic topic of data segments, then in vivo and emotion codings to
capture the students’ and teachers’ voices and gain insight into their felt experiences in class. In the
second cycle coding, data were clustered and reconfigured in an iterative manner to generate patterns
on which the narrative description of the findings were based.
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 47
Process and Findings
In response to increasing newcomers to our town, a yearlong theme on Refugees and Immigrants was
chosen at the beginning of the school year. Unbeknown to us, the issue of refugees and migrants would
become an international crisis by the fall, when the effects of the Syrian civil war resulted in the biggest
displacement of people in the world's history. We hence recentred our focus on the refugees’ experience
aimed to promote: an understanding of the personal and sociopolitical circumstances that force people
to leave their countries; an awareness of related social and ethical issues (e.g., human rights,
discrimination, resilience, and hope); and an empathetic understanding towards social challenges faced
by refugees.
We started with Four Feet, Two Sandals (K. L. Williams & Mohammed, 2007), an illustrated picture
book about how a friendship between two pre-teen girls in a refugee camp in Pakistan is forged over
the sharing of a pair of sandals, each getting to wear the pair for a day. Our original plan was to follow
our previous practice to read alternately English and French storybooks on the chosen theme, with
French texts at a lower language level to meet the students’ needs. We found it relatively difficult to
find an appropriate French text in terms of content and language level, so after Four Feet, the teachers
used a UNHCR video titled To be a Refugee (Foster, 2010, March 11) to generate French discussions
based on English content. The video, featuring interviews with children and teenagers fleeing their
countries for different environmental, sociopolitical and economic reasons facilitated a better
understanding of the lived realities faced by refugees. We reached out to my university’s Refugee
Sponsorship Committee, a post-secondary college as well as a French elementary school to invite their
students and/or young adults with refugee backgrounds to share their life stories with the children. We
obtained ethical consent from the refugee-background students/adults to be "interviewed" by the
school children. To prepare for the literacy activity, the class brainstormed and formulated interview
questions in both languages. Most spoke English and/or French as their third or fourth language. After
each interview, the children discussed the lived experiences shared by the visitors, based on which
they wrote a report similar to a reading response. The life stories of the refugee-background students
offered complex and authentic texts for the children to collaboratively explore issues such as world
sociopolitical conditions, human rights, discrimination, resilience, and so on. The class also read other
texts about migration, for example, Brothers in Hope (M. Williams, 2005) and The Arrival (Tan,
2007)—a wordless picture book used for French discussion, to continue recursive inquiry into the
varied refugee experiences. Towards the year end, the teachers engaged the class in a drama project,
including playwriting and performance, recreating the story of a refugee family’s journey leading to
their resettlement in Canada. Given the expansive nature of the project, this paper focuses mainly on
the bilingual inquiry process, particularly the use of the two languages as well as the children’s
drawings to promote reflexive and empathetic understanding of refugees’ experiences.
To answer Research Question 1, I focused the analysis on the process of cross-curricular and cross-
language collaborations. Below are some key translanguaging practices that disrupted linguistic and
non-linguistic boundaries:
Coordinated Collaborative Translanguaging between English and French
The teacher-led translanguaging practices were mostly coordinated and collaborative, meaning they
both adhered to their respective language when leading class discussions and posing questions or
comments on the side when not leading. Their adherence to their own language of teaching was
intended to provide a target language model. Their co-presence and collaborative dialogue, however,
opened up a hybrid space where students participated in meaning-driven discussions using the target
language as much as they could and only the other language when lacking the appropriate vocabulary
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
48
or expressions. Here is an example of their collaborative translanguaging practice. The class was
discussing Brothers in Hope (M. Williams, 2005), a fictional story about the real-life experiences of
the “lost boys” of Sudan who trekked for miles to find shelter when the civil war broke out in mid-
1980s. Garang, an eight-year-old boy, makes his way to Ethiopia and settles in a refugee camp. Garang
takes up a leadership role for a group of boys and takes personal care of Chuti who is only five. When
the class was discussing the story’s main message, one student connected Garang with Terry Fox, a
Canadian teenager, often revered as a national hero who, despite his illness, ran a marathon across the
country to raise money for cancer research:
Mally: Garang and Chuti, they kept going, not afraid.
Smith: So what did he need a great deal of? What do we call that word?
Mally: Bravery […] Kind of like Terry Fox.
Desbiens: Qu’est-ce que c’est pareil avec Terry Fox? (What is the same with Terry Fox?)
Mally: He walked across the country even he was sick.
The conversation above showed how the two teachers worked together to help Mally extend and
elaborate his connections between Garang and Terry Fox on the theme of bravery. As the dialogue
continued, Grade 5 student Janet expanded the notion of bravery by building on an earlier remark made
by her classmate Mark that being brave is to have the ability to “look at the world different.” She
illustrated it by referring to Garang’s appreciation of the comfort offered in the refugee camp after
roaming in the wild for some time:
Janet: Well, it’s kind of like what Mark said about how [Garang] looked at the world different
[…] They didn’t have big houses, but/
Smith: Yes, so it is in comparing. You said on one of the pages when you go without food for
so long and then you get a few lentils and some flour, it seems like a feast, doesn’t it?
And he said the huts [in the refugee camp] look like/
Students: Castles.
Smith: Castles. You’re absolutely right, compared to what they had before. It depends on your
perspective.
Desbiens: Est-ce que quelqu’un sait comment on appelle ça? Cette qualité-là que le monde a
quand les choses sont difficiles. Quand tu vis des moments difficiles dans la vie mais
tu continues. Tu peux avoir… C’est plus que du courage. C’est un peu comme ce que
George disait : il faut que tu oublies ce que tu as vécu mais tu continues à aider le
monde autour de toi. Il y a un mot pour ça. Et moi je pense que c’est un thème
extrêmement important dans ce pays-là. C’est … la résilience. Ok, la résilience. En
anglais c’est quoi donc ?
(Does anyone know what it's called. This quality that people have when things are difficult.
When you live difficult moments in life but you continue. You can have ... It's more
than courage. It's a bit like what George said: you have to forget what you've been
through, but you continue to help the people around you. There is a word for that. And
I think it's an extremely important theme in that country. It's ... Resilience. Ok,
resilience. In English, what is it?)
Students: Resilience.
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 49
Desbiens: Resilience? Ça veut dire que de continuer à vivre bien, de continuer à être heureux
malgré les difficultés. Je pense que c’est un thème, un message qui est quand même
très important. […]. Ok, la capacité de continuer à sourire, de vivre, d’avoir du plaisir.
(Resilience? It means to continue to live well, to continue to be happy despite the difficulties. I
think it's a theme, a message that's still very important. [...]. Ok, the ability to continue
to smile, to live, to have fun.)
Building on the students’ ideas of bravery and the ability to adopt a different perspective, Desbiens
introduced the concept of resilience to describe the strength of character Garang exhibits in the process.
The two dialogues above show how the two teachers’ coordinated efforts helped extend, revoice and
refine students’ ideas to make the two key themes of bravery and resilience salient and clear with
elaboration. The explicit effort in pointing out the cognate (resilence/résilence) also allowed students
to build bridges learning in both languages. Bravery and resilience as demonstrated in Garang is a
quality similarly exhibited in many refugees and immigrants, which often quickly dissipates from the
public discourse after their resettlement in host countries. The teachers were trying to help the children
recognize and appreciate these positive qualities displayed in people who experienced shifting and
unstable homes and reposition them as strong and resilient individuals in continuing to live with dignity.
Regarding their overall cross -curricular/-language coordination, Smith opined that a yearlong project
allowed room for creative maneuvering. Rather than being “compartmental” in content and language
allocation, they were fine with doing English for three days, for example because they were “on a roll
with something” and then went on to French. Desbiens added that their flexible collaboration followed
one key principle: “Let the students guide [them]”, that is, paying careful attention to the children’s
needs, in terms of their language, conceptual and emotional readiness and to work with them. They
shared that an emergent curriculum could be “scary” to teachers who felt insecure in not having
everything planned out. For Smith and Desbiens, what anchored them was their teaching philosophy,
that is, language for critical learning. So they were comfortable in making mistakes, treating them as
learning opportunities to better their teaching; just as they would correct each other’s language
mistakes in front of the children to show them the importance of taking risks in language learning.
Explicit Support for Transmediation Between and Among Semiotic Resources
Apart from fostering development in critical biliteracies, this project also aimed to prepare students
with the necessary skills to write school board and provincial exams, particularly reading responses in
ELA, reading comprehension and general writing in FSL. From our experience in the pilot, despite
having in-depth class discussions, some students struggled to remember and synthesize ideas discussed
in class. Reading response is a distinct genre of writing with its own features and expectations. Oral
discussions comprise mostly spontaneous speech, with individuals taking turns or sometimes
interrupting a turn to offer ideas, comments or musings, seldom complete or polished on their own. It
is often through a process of participative contributions will ideas become salient and concrete.
Transmediating the collaborative dialogue into a written reading response requires not only clarity of
thought but also a metalinguistic awareness of semiotic designs of different texts. The teachers made
explicit efforts in building such a meta-semiotic awareness in the students. This included an overt
naming and teaching of different comprehension strategies, e.g., making predictions and connections,
posing questions, visualizing, synthesizing, and so on, constantly referring students to the Reading is
Thinking poster on one bulletin board (see Figure 1) for those skills. They also created another visual
aid on response writing to remind students of its text elements and some writing prompts (Figure 2).
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
50
Figures 1 & 2 Visual aids for reading comprehension and writing reading response
During class discussions, Smith would stop to ask the class, “Is there something on that page that you
think […], ‘I should include that in my response’, or ‘I should make a reference to that’?” Similarly,
when Desbiens introduced the term resilience as a theme of the story, she reminded students to support
the theme with pertinent examples from the story: “Dans le livre c’est où qu’on voit ça qu’il n’y a
énormément que resilience? […] Quand on veut parler d’un thème dans un livre, il faut chercher des
exemples”. (In the book, where do we see a lot of that resilience? [...] When we want to talk about a
theme in a book, we have to look for examples.)
To prepare for response writing, after class discussions, students were asked to create a mind map in
groups, using three different colours to note down respectively the main characters, message and
personal connections with the story. Their mind map drafts were then brought back to the whole class
for further discussions, explanation and clarification. The final version of the mind map (Figure 3) was
co-created (transmediated or resemiotized) from their recursive collaborative dialogue, which was then
used as a visual aid for individuals’ write-up.
Figure 3 Resemiotization of class talk into a visual concept map for written reading responses
Explicit attention was also given to the examination of visual grammar (Serafin, 2009), for example
the use of colours, composition, use of symbols and so on to allow students to tap into other semiotic
cues other than linguistic ones to make meaning and engage in more complex discussions. Art was
used widely in this class in order to provide a different avenue of knowing and feeling. For this purpose,
the two teachers worked closely with an art teacher of a nearby high school to do an art project based
on the theme of A Happy/Safe Place. The idea was to engage students in artistic imagination and
expression to show what it was like to be surrounded by danger or sadness, and how one might seek
refuge amidst the turmoil. Before the art workshop, the children were invited to observe the art
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 51
teacher’s class whose students were completing a painting on the same theme. To prepare for the visit,
the children brainstormed questions about painting techniques and elements. For example: If you could
give a title to the painting, what would it be? Does it remind you of anything? What details, if cut out,
would make it a different story? Responding to these questions, the teachers remarked:
Desbiens : Ok, wow c’est drôle hein ? Moi j’entends beaucoup de questions qui ressemblent
aux questions qu’on se pose quand on lit un livre. (Ok! Wow! It’s funny. I hear many
questions that resemble the questions we ask when we read a story.)
Smith: That’s what I was just thinking-- the responses are the same.
Desbiens made a comparison between drawing and reading while Smith extended it to writing, and
they continued:
Desbiens : Avez vous remarqué ça ? Hein, souvent, quand on va lire un livre, on va cacher le
titre, on va dire qu’est-ce que ça pourrait être le titre ? Qu’est-ce que vous pensez qu’y
se passe après ça ? Qu’est-ce qu’on sent? Qu’est-ce qu’on entend quand on entend
cette histoire-là, c’est fou hein ? Ça ressemble vraiment beaucoup. […] c’est le genre
de questions qui sont importantes de se poser. […] quand on fait notre propre peinture,
[…], on a une idée générale, puis on va faire le dessin en gros, […] et c’est les détails
[…], c’est ce qui rend, c’est un peu comme une histoire, c’est//
(Have you noticed that? Huh, often when we read a book, we will hide the title, we will
say what could be the title? What do you think happens after that? What do we feel?
What do we hear when we hear this story, it's crazy huh? It really looks like a lot. [...]
these are the kinds of questions that are important to ask yourselves. [...] when we do
our own painting, [...] we have a general idea, then we will do the overall drawing,
[...] and it is the details […], that's what makes it, it's a bit like a story, it's//)
Smith: The same with writing—all the words that you put in…the word choice.
Desbiens made links between reading a narrative text and a visual text, both requiring focused attention
to, for instance, what the title suggests, how the details excite our senses, etc. Hence, painting requires
a similar attention to details to make its story come alive. Smith extended the comparison to writing
that like the details of a picture, our word choice matters in the craft of writing. Later in the art
workshop, the art teacher introduced and demonstrated the key elements of a painting and
demonstrated different ways of representing an idea on a two-dimensional space by changing the
composition of objects including their positions, sizes and angles to render new suggestions and
interpretations. Tapping into the art teacher’s expertise, the ELA and FSL teachers orchestrated and
coordinated efforts in creating a translanguaging space where linguistic and non-linguistic resources
were leveraged for complex learning and performance. To demonstrate how their fluid collaboration
facilitated students’ critical understanding of the topic of inquiry (Research Question 2), the following
are the three main findings.
Affordances of Language Connections for Deep, Integrated Learning
The constant connections drawn among different languages and modalities, be it English, French,
interviews, videos or drawing, allowed students to see all these semiotic resources as equally important
and necessary in constructing complex meaning. These semiotic connections helped expand and
extend the children’s collaborative inquiry about refugees in an integrated and unified manner, as Janet
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
52
commented in the second focus group interview:
Well, I like it that we are doing the same project in English then in French coz then you’re just
focusing on one thing more.
The children also felt that because of the connected learning, students who were highly proficient in
English and those in French could consolidate their strengths and offer mutual support to meet the task
demands. The teachers’ collaboration also demonstrated to the students the importance of co-learning
and sharing of expertise, as Grade 5 student Gina commented, “They kind of know how to work with
each other […] they’re school friend teachers and outside [as well].” The teachers’ collegiality and
friendship inspired the children’s mutual trust and distributed expertise, which further facilitated
collaborative, socio-affective learning in class. Below shows how Grade 4 students Alexis (highly
proficient in English) and Cherie (highly proficient in French) finished off each other’s sentences:
Alexis: I like it [English-French connection] coz if there is a word in English that I do not know
how to say in French then//
Cherie: Then you ask me.
The connected use of languages allowed students to see that their learning went beyond arbitrary
institutional and curricular boundaries:
Terri: You’re listening to two languages regularly, like you’re always//
Rowan: Like you don’t have to switch classrooms, right?
For Terri and Rowan, two fourth graders, connecting the two languages allowed them more exposure
to both—having both teachers present at all times and learning from them simultaneously without
restrictions and disruptions from fixed curriculum and scheduling. This comment echoed the teachers,
in Desbiens’ words: “Because we are now all the time together, we kind of always do things bilingually.
[…] Some write-ups are in French and others in English, but I don’t think that one kid could tell you
we have learned this in French about refugees […] compared to this in English.” They admitted that
the mechanics of language were not their key focus, which needed to be strengthened, but for both,
conceptual clarity and coherence and critical language learning took on a higher priority, as Desbiens
said:
That’s my belief--if you don’t have ideas, you can have all the mechanics you want, you are not
going to put them down and no one is going to see them. The opposite is much easier.
As with the previous years, the teachers compiled students’ different bilingual writings done
throughout the year into a book. The preparation process for its publication allowed for not only
multiple writing opportunities but also imbued the processes of editing and proofing with authentic
social importance, as Smith shared:
[The children] write with so much emotion. When I read them, like the poems they wrote, […]
there were so many mistakes. I asked them to go back […] they were not happy […], so we
talked about publishing. […] And it was pretty good after.
Painting as somatic knowing for critical civic empathy
Painting was found to be a useful means of deepening the children’s embodied understanding of the
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 53
refugees’ experience. Students were asked to write bilingual descriptions for their paintings, with at
least one sentence in French. Figure 4 shows an example from Gina who chose to write her description
all in French.
“L’image que j’ai fai[t] c’est un petit garçon
avec rien que du mal ou de la destruction. C’est
comme le temps s’est arrêté. Dans tout le mal il
y a une petite lumière qui brille. Et ça deviens
plus grande chaque seconde. Une place en
sécurité. Une place sans noir et rouge. Une
place avec une AMI IMAGINAIRE qui le
réconforte.” [original emphasis]
(The image I made is a little boy with nothing
but trouble or destruction. It's like time stopped.
In all badness, there is a small light that shines.
And it's getting bigger every second. A safe
place. A place without black and red. A place
with an IMAGINARY FRIEND that comforts
him. "
Figure 4 Gina’s painting
When interviewed, Gina showed in her painting a little boy surrounded by danger and as such, “he felt
trapped” without help as his whole family was killed in a war. The red flicks and dark colours
represented all the bad things that had happened in the boy's life, she explained:
in this one moment he was just sitting alone and this little creature […] and that little friendship
that was little seconds, it comforted him […], like nothing dangerous can happen to him.
The imaginary friend/creature depicted in Gina’s painting represents a certain symbol of hope or faith
that the child hangs onto as a protective shield against the surrounding chaos and danger. When asked
how this activity promoted her understanding of the refugee experience, Gina said:
When I was painting and going through what I wanted to show on my paper, I kind of felt like
I felt it […] I know it wasn’t possible, but drawing and making what I wanted to make on the
paper, I felt like what the refugees were experiencing. [emphasis added]
The material process of transmediating the ideas of suffering and hope through colour contrasts,
composition, and use of space afforded Gina certain visceral, bodily connections with the refugees’
experience, especially their sense of pain and strength in holding onto hope. Another student, Susan
expressed a similar sentiment in the drawing process:
Well, while I was doing it, I could imagine being that girl, sad and lonely and alone. [emphasis
added]
Rowan mentioned a similar impact painting had on him. In the mid-year interview, he talked about
how he got the idea for his painting (Figure 5):
I’m not that good with paint, so, I was imagining […] like there is a guy who is laying in his
bed in a refugee camp, and so then he’d be thinking of his friends and family. He’d be playing
soccer […] back where he was and so the war came and then he had to get out safely. [But]
all of his other relatives and family members didn’t make it. [emphasis added]
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
54
“My painting is about a refugee that
had to flee his home because of war
and leave everything behind. He
also lost his parents when he was
fleeing his country. Dans la peinture
le garçon pense de ses ami et sa
famille.” (In the painting, the boy
thinks of his friends and family)
Figure 5 Rowan’s painting and description
Despite his alleged poor painting skills, Rowan focused his imagination on the circumstances faced by
a little boy who survived his family and friends and reminisced on those good moments of being
together. Rowan opined that the painting allowed him to “put [himself] in a refugee’s shoes” to begin
to understand what it felt like to be alone in the world without friends and family. This affective
connection helped him gain a new insight into the issue of Syrian refugees:
I think that the refugees that come here [from Syria], they must be like very, very thankful that
they were one of the people that came here. But when we interviewed one of the refugees, he
said that he came alone, like he didn’t bring any of his family members with him.
The process of transmediating a refugee’s life story from the oral interview into a visual representation
prompted Rowan to reevaluate critically an assumed belief that with a new home, all problems faced
by refugees were resolved and that they must be feeling thankful. The painting process afforded Rowan
a new critical affective awareness to feel and realize the possible enduring impact of losing one’s loved
ones.
Consciousness of one’s social privilege and responsibility
Students’ embodied learning and civic empathy for refugees also fostered a greater consciousness of
their own sociopolitical privilege, hence reflexivity on one’s civic responsibilities. Gina divulged that
seeing and hearing both the videos and stories shared by the refugee interviewees, especially the
meagre living conditions in the refugee camps, she realized the privileges she enjoyed and the so-
called difficulties in her life paled in comparison: Losing her iPad was nothing compared to losing her
family. As our town was expecting the arrival of some Syrian refugees at the time, the class responded
to the Refugee Sponsorship Committee’s call to donate and/or knit woollen tuques to extend a warm
welcome to these new arrivals. When asked about what they could do to help make change happen,
the children had different answers. Gina thought about donating school supplies to newcomer children
to let them know they were cared for in their adaptation to the new school environment. Janet, on the
other hand, felt she could contribute by sharing her knowledge about refugees gained from this project:
At the beginning of the year I’d heard the word [refugees], but I didn’t really pay attention to
it […] I guess because we know now, we can let other people know how to help them and maybe
they can make a bigger difference, since we’re just like kids.
Janet’s desire to share her knowledge about refugees was in some way inspired by Garang in Brothers
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 55
in Hope who takes the advice of a refugee worker to share his story in order to “move caring people
to help” (n.p.). Janet felt she could continue with the example set by Garang as well as the refugees
who came to share their stories with the class. Another student, Alice, said when her family sponsored
a refugee girl before, she had no interest to know more; but now she would ask more questions to get
informed of the situation.
The class interviews with students and young adults with refugee backgrounds had made the project
real to the children. Sitting together, listening to how they trekked from one place to the next, how they
lost touch with their parents or other family members. Particularly, when hearing these newcomers
using French or English as their newly learned languages to tell their stories, these children felt inspired
to take the risks to improve their second language. As Desbiens said in an interview:
I don’t think that they will hear the word refugee and not have so many thoughts and images
with it.
The way the teachers viewed critical literacy had also changed. Before, Desbiens thought critical
literacy was just about reading and writing:
“But now I see it more as a whole process. You know like the [art] and drama we did, the
interviews, the talking, the living. And that’s how it changed for me.”
In other words, critical literacy is about embodied learning; it is not only through reading and writing
but also thinking, listening, drawing, dialoguing, acting, relating, and interacting with people and
material to allow for cognitive, socio-emotional, full-bodied ways of sensing, feeling and thinking
about the social issue. As for Smith, she found our prolonged collaboration research had made teaching
critical bi-literacies easier, as she said, “it has come more naturally”. She found that students had made
some substantial achievement though often not reflected in report cards because, in her words, “You
know we cannot see the critical literacy on the report card.”
Discussions and Conclusions
The findings above showed that the teacher-directed translanguaging practices were mainly
collaborative. In other words, the two teachers spoke their respective languages most of the time to
maintain a language model, yet their co-presence and translanguaging efforts focused on coordinating
meaning-driven discussions, working together fluidly to extend, challenge and support the children’s
thinking and discussions. This echoes studies on coordinated bilingualism (Gort & Pontier, 2013; Gort
& Sembiante, 2015) where language teachers used similar collaborative, parallel monolingual practice
to create and coordinate a translanguaging space (Li, 2018) in the classroom for students to take risks
using their target language but switching to the other just so they could participate in and contribute
meaningfully to class discussions. The children in this multiage class felt that their learning in/of
English and French was not truncated or compartmentalized but rather integrated with new building
each other. They saw their English and French lessons as a coherent unit, fostering transversal
development in both language skills and conceptual depth and clarity. Coordinated bilingualism also
helped protect a pedagogic space for students’ weaker language (French in this case), ensuring rich
input and exposure to the target language while tapping into new learning from their stronger language
(English) to make sense and connections. In the process, they each felt their own language strengths
could be put to good use as they collaborated and shared expertise.
There was relatively less effort in explicit teaching of discrete cross-linguistic comparisons (for
example, how certain grammar structures are different between French and English), although
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1)
56
consistent effort had been made in drawing students’ attention to shared cognates to expand their
vocabulary and strategies. The teachers acknowledged that this discrete focus on grammar and
mechanics was one limitation in their coordinated bilingual class. However, they both prioritised
students’ deep and critical understanding of social issues. For them, language education is critical
education; one could not be separated from the other. They believed that children’s mastery of the
conventions and mechanics would improve, especially when they were asked to read and write with a
real purpose, something socially meaningful in which they had great emotional investment. The
yearend publication of their bilingual writing as a collection of their research and developing
understanding of the topic of refugees was an impetus for the children to perfect their writing skills,
not just in idea generation and experimentation of creativity but also in editing and proofreading, two
very difficult skills they had come to learn in action.
Given the importance placed on critical understanding, rather than mere discrete language structures,
the teachers saw the benefits of connecting all language and modal resources to stretch students’
learning and provide different avenues of somatic knowing involving the whole body experience
(Matthews, 1991). They did that through, first, constant meta-talk on the designs of different semiotic
resources. Through the recursive, explicit references to inter-textual relations (for example, the similar
skills used in reading/viewing and writing/designing narrative and visual texts), students were
sensitized to how design features in multimodal texts construct meaning and in turn learned to make
agentive choices themselves about these design features to articulate ideas and express emotions.
Further, transmediating/translanguaging between and among the different media--class reading, oral
discussions, videos, posters, mind maps, interviews, painting, and writing, all done in both languages
in a coordinated manner, the teachers facilitated multi-layered, multi-sensory, multi-systemic learning
experiences for the children to gain nuanced understandings. Through discussing, thinking, feeling and
imagining, the children became aware of their own privilege and imaginatively embodied the lives of
the new arrivals, albeit momentarily. They showed appreciation of such an integrated way of learning,
making in-depth inquiry into a topic that they felt intimately connected and compassionate about.
Language learning became imbued with a meaningful social purpose, an intellectual pursuit and
critical inquiry that they were proud to participate in and to be able to act on. The varied embodied
multimodal engagements opened up aesthetic spaces for students to be affected, and some came to
believe in their ability to affect (Ahmed, 2010) other people through donations (like Gina), sharing
what they learned and engaging others in related conversations (like Janet), or getting themselves more
informed of the matter (like Alice). Some, such as Rowan, came to question the social assumptions
behind the general savior attitude in erroneously believing that finding a new home for refugees was
the be-all-and-end-all remedy for the challenges faced by them. Through his drawing, Rowan
connected viscerally to the pain refugees endured in losing their loved ones, gaining a more mature
understanding of the issue and intimating to more diversified support beyond resettlement. It was
definitely our wish to move these students beyond the mere do-good-feel-good sentiments to become
more critically aware of the broader sociopolitical inequities and our own complicity in perpetuating
those power structures. These surely cannot be all accomplished in one academic year; we saw these
efforts to promote students’ critical reflexivity and civic empathy as all necessary “drops in a bucket”
that need to be continued and sustained.
As Smith and Desbiens commented, teachers might feel insecure about translanguaging practices, but
it is important to feel “secure” about the centrality of critical affective learning in any language
classrooms. This recognition will help guide translanguaging practices to go beyond surface language
connections or transfer to transmediation between and across multimodal, multisensory, and
multilingual resources for critical inquiry that promotes reflexivity, multiple perspectives, and civic
empathy and engagements. As Desbiens succinctly put it, “Let the children guide you”: What do the
class discussions tell you about the thinking or concerns of the children? What needs to be further
Lau: Translanguaging as transmediation 57
supported, explored, expanded, and challenged? The same applies to language: Who is stronger in the
target language and can be pushed further and who needs more help? Code-switching, translation or
re-voicing ideas in another language can provide a scaffold for these students to continue participation,
clarify concepts and express emergent understanding. The two teachers’ flexible, responsive teaching
was akin to the concept of translanguaging shifts (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017) which describe
teachers’ momentary instructional decisions and shifts to flexibly address students’ emerging language
and learning needs. It is the care, willingness and flexibility to adapt content and language use in a
coordinated manner that helps de-compartmentalize content and language learning. Translanguaging
practices can and must take different forms depending on the contextual needs, as they present
themselves in language policies, curricular guidelines, assessments, multilingual practices at personal
and societal levels. Smith and Desbiens’ creative and critical collaborative efforts described here
extend an invitation to other teachers to, whether individually or with others, create and orchestrate a
translanguaging space unique to their own contexts to expand language boundaries and enable multiple
opportunities for students’ learning that reflect authentic multilingual environments within and outside
classrooms.
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Author biodata
Dr. Sunny Man Chu Lau, Associate Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University in
Quebec, is the recipient of the 2012 International Society for Language Studies’ Founders’ Emergent
Scholars Award. Her three recent research projects (SSHRC, FRQSC, and The Higher Education
Hub—Estrie) examine the use of translanguaging pedagogies in promoting students’ critical
bi/multilingual learning. She co-edited Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and Creative Endeavors for
Equitable Language (in) Education (Lau & Van Viegen, 2020) which engages critically with the recent
theoretical shifts in applied linguistics and highlights plurilingual pedagogical approaches to teaching
and learning across educational contexts.