Publications
Publication details [#63025]
Pennycook, Alastair. 2017. Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. The International Journal of Multilingualism 14 (3) : 269–282.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Routledge
Annotation
This article asks what translanguaging could begin to look like if it integrated an extended version of language and questioned not only to the borders between languages but also the borders between semiotic modes. Evolving the idea of spatial repertoires and assemblages, and looking at data from a Bangladeshi-owned corner shop, this article proposes on the one hand that it is important to include a broad set of semiotic possibilities in any assay. On the other hand, however, we cannot only add more semiotic items to our translinguistic inventories, but need instead to seek out a way of grasping the relationships among a set of forms of semiosis. The notion of assemblages permits a comprehension of how different trajectories of people, semiotic resources and objects meet at particular moments and places, and thus helps us to see the importance of things, the consequences of the body, and the significance of place alongside the meanings of linguistic resources.