Translanguaged siding is the term employed here for the rather under-researched phenomenon of student-to-student communication co-occurring with teacher-talk, but employing language and other semiotic resources that diverge from the teacher’s in order to mold grasp of the teacher’s meanings or to make other meanings. This paper draws on Fishman’s reflections on his 1965 question “Who speaks What language to Whom and When?”, and on Bakhtin’s work on dialogicity to explore the dynamics of semiotic choice in translanguaged siding as well as its functions in the experience of multilingual students at a South African University. Data obtained via diverse methods permit to state that (1) there are intricate chains of correlation covering subsets of identified siding variables, and (2) translanguaged siding can be back learning, contrary to associations of siding with Malinowskian small talk.