Rethinking translanguaging: (Trans)bordering, spatiality, and academic discourse socialization in a graduate TESOL classroom

Abstract

This study examines how an applied linguistics graduate course instructor socializes students into academic concepts and norms in a graduate TESOL class in the U.S. through (trans)bordering, a semiotic process in which individuals create, negotiate, and contest boundaries that define acceptable academic practices, identities, and modes of communication. While translanguaging as a political act seeks to deconstruct linguistic borders, this article argues that bordering remains necessary for individuals to make sense of the world. This multimodal conversation analysis (CA) study draws data from a larger linguistic ethnography examining international students’ communicative practices in a U.S. university. Findings reveal that spatiality, the dynamic use of physical and imagined space to shape communication and meaning-making, is crucial in (trans)bordering. By examining how a graduate course instructor leverages existing and imagined space with other semiotic resources, we learn that (trans)bordering functions as a holistic process that socializes students into academic concepts and norms and provides a flexible framework that instructors use to mediate understanding of academic discourse.