Translanguaging as transmediation: Embodied critical literacy engagements in a French-English bilingual classroom

Translanguaging theory highlights linguistic and semiotic resources as an integrated communicative repertoire for knowledge construction (Li, 2018). Language is learned and used in conjunction with other modalities through processes of resemiotization (Iedema, 2003) or transmediation (Suhor, 1984) where meaning is made and remade across modes. Through this translanguaging lens, dynamic integration of languages with expressive arts helps mobilize embodied resources, whether cognitive, sensory, or affective, for alternate avenues of knowing and awareness, an aspect much neglected in traditional critical literacy approaches focusing heavily on rational ideological critique (Janks, 2002). A trans-systemic approach also facilities second language learners’ full agentive participation as their multilingual and multisensory resources are valorized for complex learning often considered beyond their abilities. This article describes a university-school participatory action research study in a Quebec elementary classroom, where the English Language Arts and French Second Language teachers, through coordinated translanguaging pedagogy (Gort & Sembiante, 2015), facilitated critical bilingual learning while providing respective language models. The children were engaged in a yearlong inquiry into the issue of refugees, through discussing stories of migration and interviewing with refugee-background students in both languages while engaging in visual arts for deepened understanding and embodied reflections. Students responded positively to the coordinated bilingual engagements and multisensory approaches to critical literacy, which afforded an aesthetic experience that fostered reflexivity and civic empathy (Mirra, 2018). The study points to the affordances of translanguaging in critical education, underscoring how embodied multilingual engagements allow students to be affected and to affect (Ahmed, 2010) others.