Thinking about languages between fixity and fluidity: what can a translingual perspective teach us about language policies in the global South?

Abstract

Moving away from the tradition of treating multilingualism as a problem and language as an autonomous system, current theoretical approaches have shifted from monolingual principles toward translingual perspectives to investigate the relationship between language policy and ideology. In this text, I take on such a position to explore how multilinguals’ attitudes toward their languages are shaped by ideologies that highlight both the fixity and fluidity of contemporary communicative practices. In order to do so, I analyze data taken from a larger study that problematized online translingual practices of individuals from post-colonial countries through the use of questionnaires and interviews. Drawing on the notions of translanguaging, languagised worlds and Bakhtin’s concept of centripetal and centrifugal forces, I argue that in order to better account for the impact of language policies in multilinguals’ lives, scholars should turn their attention to the implications of fixed and fluid notions of language for the negotiation of competing language ideologies.