Call for Proposals
Special Issue of International Journal of Multilingualism
Topic: The ordinariness of translinguistics
Guest Editors: Sender Dovchin (The University of Aizu, Japan); Jerry Lee (University of California, Irvine)
The guest editors of the International Journal of Multilingualism announce a call for article proposals for a 2018 special issue on “the ordinariness of translinguistics.” Recent debates in the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert, 2010) have problematized paradigms such as bilingualism, multilingualism, and code-switching for reifying static language boundaries and for their inability to account for communicative practices constructed out of a diversity of linguistic and cultural repertoires. Instead, terms such as translingualism (Canagarajah, 2013; Horner et al. 2011), translanguaging (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García, 2009; Li Wei & Zhu Hua, 2013), transidioma (Jacquemet, 2005, 2013), polylingualism (Jørgensen, 2008; Jørgensen & Møller, 2014), metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010; Pennycook, 2010), transglossia (Sultana et al., 2015; Dovchin, Pennycook & Sultana, 2017), and linguascape (Dovchin, 2017a,b), reflective of a translinguistic turn in sociolinguistics, have been introduced in an attempt to capture the critical complexity of language practices that are experiencing greater attention in the context of late modernity. This emergent tradition in sociolinguistics reflects the difficulty, if not futility, of demarcating linguistic features according to specific languages, for the fluid movement between and across languages requires different epistemologies and a new critical lexicon.
Yet, this recent tradition still tends to celebrate and thus privilege the presumed creativity or eccentricity of such language practices, in spite of the fact that scholars have insisted that they are indeed ‘quite normal’ (Blommaert, 2015), ‘unremarkable’ (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015), ‘ordinary’ (Dovchin, 2017a), ‘basic practice’ (Androutsopoulos, 2007), ‘everyday’ (Leppänen et al., 2009) and by no means a ‘new’ phenomenon (Canagarajah, 2013; see also Khubchandani, 1997; Makoni, 2002; Sugiharto, 2015; May, 2014). In so doing, scholarship inadvertently constructs and exoticizes a linguistic Other whose language practices are expected to be made legible according to normative epistemologies of ‘diversity’ (Lee, 2017). This special issue is based on the premise that the analytic potential of the translinguistic tradition, however, can be enhanced through a stronger focus on such practices as reflective of everyday, quotidian, basic, mundane, unremarkable, banal, and ordinary rather than as peculiar, exotic, eccentric, unconventional, or strange. It is important to recognize that translinguistics is ‘neither to celebrate nor to deplore, but something to observe and examine with interest like anything else’ (Sarkar & Low, 2012, p. 12). But simultaneously, given the exoticizing tendencies of translinguistic scholarship, it has become more urgent to acknowledge that there is nothing exotic, odd, or perhaps even ‘exciting’ about linguistic creativity, as it is inevitable that peoples and cultures have always been mixing and mingling.
This special issue will thus revisit the notions of ‘ordinariness’ and ‘unremarkability’ in the sociolinguistics of globalization. A potential point of departure is to be found in the work of Higgins and Coen (2000, p. 14-15): ‘we accept that as Homo sapiens, we are all the same in terms of genetic structure and cognitive potentiality. . . Beyond that, we do not think that as humans we have anything in common but our differences. . .’ As Higgins and Coen (2000, p. 15) add: ‘diversity is the given reality of human social action – it does not have to be found; it is already there.’ Further, following Pennycook (2007, p. 95), we emphasize the significance of ‘the ordinariness of diversity’ in the context of translinguistic practices, since linguistic difference is not constitutive of rare situations to be celebrated but reflective of ‘the quotidian ordinariness of everyday life.’ It is about ‘the same item being different’ and an understanding of ‘difference as the norm,’ with ‘sameness as in need of explanation’ (Pennycook, 2010, p. 50). As Pennycook (2010, p. 51) further indicates, ‘Language creativity is about sameness that is also difference’.
The paradox that remains, then, is how to reconcile the scholarly imperative to investigate that which is ‘unique’ or ‘noteworthy’ when the object or phenomenon of inquiry is anything but. Put differently, how does one inquire into the sociolinguistics of globalization in tandem with the recognition that translinguistics is inevitably an inquiry into the sociolinguistics of the ordinary? With these questions in mind, we seek contributions that will engage directly with the following conceptual dimensions of ordinariness in translinguistic diversity and creativity. Specifically, we seek proposals for articles that will accomplish one or more of the following:
- Provide ethnographic studies which reflect on the idea of ordinariness or theory of sameness of difference in discrete contexts.
- Address the effects of critical approaches to ordinariness of translinguistic creativity and diversity in varied contexts including institutional and non-institutional settings, online and offline environments, linguistic and semiotic landscapes, popular culture, language learning, teaching, and research in international contexts.
- Propose new directions for research and praxis by revisiting and retheorizing the notion of ordinariness, especially as it pertains to sociolinguistic inquiry.
Abstracts should be based on previously unpublished work. Based on the review of the proposals, authors will be invited to submit papers for possible inclusion in the issue. All papers will be rigorously examined by peer-reviewers.
Please send a 350-word proposal (including any relevant references) that clearly identifies how the full-length article will help to revisit the notion of ordinariness in translinguistic diversity and creativity and how it will address one or more of the foci listed above. Please kindly include author’s name, affiliation, email and a 50-word biographical statement. The deadline for proposals is October 30, 2017. Please send proposals and inquiries to the guest editors at dovchin@u-aizu.ac.jp and jwl@uci.edu.
Deadline: October 31, 2017
Timeline: Proposals due: October 31, 2017
Notification of acceptance/rejection: November 30, 2017
Manuscripts due: February 28, 2018
Final revisions due: July 31, 2018
Publication date: November 2018
References:
Androutsopoulos, J. (2007). Bilingualism in the mass media and on the Internet. In M. Heller (Ed.), Bilingualism: A social approach (pp. 207-232). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, J. (2015). Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. London: Routledge.
Creese, A. & Blackledge, A. (2010). Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: A pedagogy for learning and teaching? The Modern Language Journal, 94(1), 103-115.
Dovchin, S. (2017a). The ordinariness of youth linguascapes in Mongolia. International Journal of Multilingualism, 14(2), 144-159.
Dovchin, S. (2017b). Uneven distribution of resources in the youth linguascapes of Mongolia. Multilingua, 36(2), 147-179.
Dovchin, S., Pennycook, A., & Sultana, S. (2017). Popular culture, voice and linguistic diversity: Young adults on- and offline. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Otsuji, E. & Pennycook, A. (2010). Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal of Multilingualism, 7(3), 240-254.
Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge.
Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as a local practice. London: Routledge.
Pennycook, A. & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the city. London: Routledge.
Sarkar, M., & Low, B. (2012). Multilingualism and popular culture. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge & A. Creese (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of multilingualism (pp. 403-419). London: Routledge.
Sugiharto, S. (2015). The multilingual turn in applied linguistics? A perspective from the periphery. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 414-421.
Sultana, S., Dovchin, S., & Pennycook, A. (2015). Transglossic language practices of young adults in Bangladesh and Mongolia. International Journal of Multilingualism, 12(1), 93-108.