Translanguaging and place-making in writing for publication

Abstract

In this piece, we consider what the concepts of translocality as place-making and translanguaging can add to an understanding of current academic and creative writing. Our quest is informed by sociolinguistic theory and literary studies. We take up Hultgren’s (2020) call for interdisciplinarity in research on multilingual writing for publication and contribute to current debates that question dominant ways of knowledge production. By means of creative conversations between the authors, a sociolinguist in Stockholm, Sweden and a scholar of literature in Bangor, North Wales, we explore how academic and creative writing practices may be enriched by drawing on a broader range of writers’ linguistic repertoires. In contrast to previous research that focused on translocality in terms of writers’ mobility and networking, we pay attention to translocality as a process of place-making in writing. Drawing on narrative methods, we present four instances of condensed and partly fictionalized dialogue informed by our own lived experience. The creative form reveals various layers of translocal and translingual writing practices. Translanguaging is intricately connected to place-making and the evocation of communities in both fictional and academic texts. While limited by “regimes of comprehensibility” (Bodin, Helgesson & Huss, 2020), it carries potential for learning and for political activism. Ultimately, our insights and our writing experiment aim to question what counts as a legitimate text and to suggest alternative ways of meaning-making in academic and creative writing practices.