Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations

Translingual Practices: Lingua Franca English and Global Citizenshipintroduces a new way of looking at the use of English within a global context. Challenging the traditional approaches in second language acquisition and English language teaching that treat the norms of native speakers as the target learning model and English as isolated from other languages, this book incorporates recent advances in multilingual studies, sociolinguistics, and new literacy studies to articulate a new perspective on this area. The label translingual practices encourages a perspective on languages as resources people combine with diverse semiotic and ecological resources for communication in contact situations. Adopting this viewpoint, Canagarajah argues that multilinguals merge their own languages and values into English when they use it for communication. Translingual Practicesproposes that rather than leading to confusion or miscommunication, such hybrid language brings into play various negotiation strategies that help multilinguals to decode other unique varieties of English and construct new norms that facilitate communication across language difference. In this way, it is argued that the concept of translingual practices is an alternative to World Englishes and is in fact a far more accurate way of viewing the use of English in multilingual communities. Incisive and groundbreaking, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in Multilingualism, World Englishes and Intercultural Communication.