On the quest to “go beyond” a bounded view of language. Research in the intersections of the Educational Sciences, Language Studies and Deaf Studies domains 1997–2018

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, a growing body of scholarship has recognised the inappropriateness of conceptualising and representing communicative practices in terms of essentialized codes where different named language-varieties and modalities mutually exclude one another. At the same time, making visible complex practices has resulted in methodologies and representational techniques that, while seeking to “go beyond” boundaries across language-varieties and modalities, may, in fact, deploy and even reinforce such boundaries. Empirical studies across the last 20 years that focus on analyses and representations seeking to contribute to such a “going beyond” agenda are identified and scrutinised here. The concepts of Languaging, and its neologism Translanguaging, are focused upon in this study, with the aim of shedding light on how such a “going beyond” agenda is conceptualised and adopted in the research on Bilingual Education of Deaf Individuals, BEDI. The findings of this systematic search illustrate the fragmentation of the fields related to languaging and BEDI, highlighting that the “going beyond” agenda has, in fact, still not managed to reach beyond its own boundaries in terms of disciplinary epistemologies and ontologies.