Translanguaging: developing its conceptualisation and contextualisation

Following from Lewis, Jones, and Baker (this issue), this article analyses the relationship between the new concept of “translanguaging” particularly in the classroom context and more historic terms such as code-switching and translation, indicating differences in (socio)linguistic and ideological understandings as well as in classroom processes. The article considers the pedagogic nature of translanguaging in terms of language proficiency of children, developmental use in emergent bilinguals, variations in input and output, relationship to the subject/discipline curriculum, deepening learning through language development, cognitive development, and content understanding, and the role of children, including Deaf children, and in the use of translanguaging in educational activity. The conceptualisation of translanguaging is also shown to be ideological.