After thought: Why not a prism?

This paper is a reflective retrospective that suggests a new image of multilingualism. Instead of a "cat's cradle", the author proposes viewing multilingualism as a prism through which to view languages as different but non hirarchical and equal in value.

Learning through Linguistic citizenship: Finding the “I” of the essay

In recent years, the South African higher education system has seen growing calls for broadened epistemic access, decolonised curricula and transformed institutions. Scholars across South Africa have taken up the challenge and are working on new theoretical approaches to teaching and learning in higher education. In this paper, we reflect on students’ experiences of a multilingual, multimodal module called Reimagining Multilingualisms, which was jointly offered by the Universities of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch in April and May of 2018. In this paper, we provide an overview of the module and the different types of activities it involved. We reflect on these experiences using the theoretical lenses of decolonial scholar Mignolo (2009) on the ‘locus of enunciation’, and Stroud (2018) on ‘Linguistic Citizenship’. We present extracts from focus group interviews with students from both campuses to illustrate the involvement of ‘the body’ in ‘knowing’ and the ways in which the module enabled different ‘voices’ to emerge. We focus particularly on the role played by students’ perceived ‘vulnerability’ in the transformative benefits of the module and discuss this by way of conclusion. In sum, we suggest how the centring of multilingualism and diversity – not only as core pedagogic principles, but also as a methodology for transformation – may be used to enhance access and recapture voice in the building of a more integrated and just society.

Project proposal for Mellon Supra-institutional project on the Decolonial turn (unsettling paradigms) – 2018.

This is a proposal text submitted to the Mellon Foundation entitled "Languages and Literacies in Higher Education: Reclaiming voices from the south", to secure funding for the module.

Introduction and Decolonial Pedagogies, Multilingualism and Literacies

The Introduction gives an overview of the journal contents and a short account of the genesis and structure of the module within which the papers, poems, and artefacts were produced.

Poems and reflections on language and the theme of home

This section comprises poems and reflections on language in relation to the theme of home.

Re-imagining the Writing Workshop: The Creation of Multilingual, Collaborative Poetry

The following contributions describe the process of the writing workshop and the concrete writing and editing of a jointly produced multilingual poem.

Commentaries on Omphile and his Soccer Ball: Colonialism, Methodology, Translanguaging Research

Commentary on “Omphile and his soccer ball: colonialism, methodology, translanguaging research”

Family Language Policy ten years on: A critical approach to family multilingualism

Family language policy (FLP) has been establishing itself as a field in the past decade. Yet, much of the scholarly debate around family multilingualism has remained within the boundaries imposed by Western-centric epistemologies. In order to address this issue, this article reviews FLP studies published between 2008 and 2017, and discusses accomplishments and limitations of recent publications. The main argument presented here is that a critical approach to family multilingualism might contribute to the development of FLP in an unexplored direction. More specifically, this paper shows how drawing on a decolonial approach allows for an express engagement with debates that have only been marginally tapped into in current FLP scholarship, for instance, the intersectional dimension of social categorisations such as social class, race, and gender. Furthermore, a decolonial approach provides a robust frame to examine transnational practices by reconciling perspectives that tend to privilege either the material basis of the economic relations of production, or the cultural domain as a locus where these relations gain meaning. Finally, a decolonial approach to family multilingualism takes a step towards redressing the extant underrepresentation of southern theories in sociolinguistics.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Can the Other be Heard? Response to Commentaries on ‘Omphile and his Soccer Ball’

I welcome the invitation to a right of reply that Multilingual Margins journal has extended to me; and I thank all nine discussants for sharing their thoughts on my paper ‘Omphile and his soccer ball: Colonialism, methodology, translanguaging research’. Eight of the nine discussants (Kathleen Heugh, Alan Carneiro, Manuel Guissemo, Kanavillil Rajagopalan, Zannie Bock, Lynn Mario T. Mendezes de Sousa, Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, and Torun Reite) provided what I consider to be balanced critiques that highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the paper. One reader, Don Kulick, did not find anything positive about the paper. Instead, he raised numerable objections that are pitched in a somewhat confrontational tone that is radically at odds with the views proffered by all other discussants. For this reason, I decided to organise my response into three short sections. The first is a rejoinder that builds on and engages those critical points raised by the eight discussants who are overall in concert with each other. In the second section I provide a rebuttal of Don Kulick’s review, which I find to be largely dismissive and bereft of any semblance of collegial engagement with the arguments advanced in the paper. I then close with a short paragraph that reiterates my original invitation to engage in dialectical conversations about how best to carry out social science research projects in ways that are consistent with the quite contemporary anti-colonial, anti-foundational and transformative agenda being pushed by decolonial and other like-minded scholars.