Translanguaging and Epistemological Decentring in Higher Education and Research: (39 Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education)

Using data from multilingual settings in universities and adjacent learning contexts in East Asia, North Africa, Central and North America and Europe, this book provides examples of the heuristic value of translanguaging and epistemological decentring. Despite this and other theoretical and empirical work, and ever stronger calls for the inclusion of other languages, epistemologies and constructions of culture in higher education, decentring and translanguaging practices are often relegated to the margins or suppressed in research and education because of the organisational structures of education institutions and prevailing language norms, policies and ideologies. The authors draw on research on pluri- and multilingualism within education studies, as well as post- and decolonial theoretical contributions to the research on the role of language in education and knowledge production, to provide evidence that decentring cannot happen until learners have been given the tools to identify which sorts of centring dynamics and conditions are salient to their learning and (trans)languaging.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Chapter 1. Heidi Bojsen, Petra Daryai-Hansen, Anne Holmen and Karen Risager: Introduction: The Nexus of Translanguaging and Epistemological Decentring in Higher Education and Research Chapter 2. Heidi Bojsen: Translanguaging, Epistemological Decentring and Power: A Study of Students’ Perspectives and Learning Chapter 3. Marta Kirilova, Anne Holmen and Sanne Larsen: More Languages for More Students: Practice, Ideology and Management Chapter 4. Deborah Charlotte Darling and Fred Dervin: Glimpses Into the ‘Language Galaxy’ of International Universities: International Students’ Multilingual and Translanguaging Experiences and Strategies at a Top Finnish University Chapter 5. Petra Daryai-Hansen, Danièle Moore, Daniel Roy Pearce and Mayo Oyama: Fostering Students' Decentring and Multiperspectivity: A Cross-Discussion on Translanguaging as a Plurilingual Tool in Higher Education Chapter 6. Rutie Adler, Annamaria Bellezza, Claire Kramsch, Chika Shibahara and Lihua Zhang: Teaching the Conflicts in American Foreign Language Education Chapter 7. Heidi Bojsen, Joshua Sabih and Khalid Zekri: On Matrouzity: Translanguaging and Decentring Plurilingual Practices in Morocco Chapter 8. Louise Tranekjær: Foreign Language Learning ‘in the Wild’ and Epistemological Decentering Chapter 9. Karen Risager: Strategies of Decentring in Translingual Research: Reflections on a Research Project Chapter 10. Introduced by Heidi Bojsen, Petra Daryai-Hansen, Anne Holmen and Karen Risager: Student Testimonies: Translanguaging and Epistemological Decentring from a Student Perspective Chapter 11. Abstracts of Chapters 2-9. A Courtesy for Selective Readers Index

About the Author :
Heidi Bojsen is Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research in plurilingual learning and communication, and its ties with epistemological decentring is inspired by the works of Caribbean, Maghrebian and West African intellectuals. With Ismaël Compaoré she directs the international research network Media, Security Crises and Youth in West Africa. Petra Daryai-Hansen is Associate Professor and coordinator of cross-disciplinary courses and degrees at the Department of English, German and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her main research area is foreign language education with specific focus on plurilingual education, Content and Language Integrated Learning, intercultural education and teacher/student cognition. Anne Holmen is Professor and Head of the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She took part in the first longitudinal Danish study on the development of bilingualism in school-age children (the Koege-project) and in a number of Nordic collaborative projects, including school-related projects in Greenland. Karen Risager is Professor Emerita in Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research field is language and intercultural education from a transnational and global perspective. She has published widely, including Representations of the World in Language Textbooks (Multilingual Matters, 2018; re-published in China by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing, 2021).

Review :
While multilingual scholars are dazzled by the creativity in communication at local contexts of classroom and society, they overlook the larger epistemological shifts promised by translingualism. This book is timely in addressing the resistant knowledge embodied and enacted in language diversity through speech communities we don’t often hear in translingual scholarship. By tightening the nexus between translanguaging and epistemological decentring, the authors here confront us with how knowledges and languages are legitimized and taught in higher education. Blending students’ classroom experiences and analyses of educational policies in many national contexts, the book provides a multiplicity of perspectives that makes evident how language and knowledge are being manipulated in the struggle for power between people with competing interests. This book launches a challenge for us to decolonise language and culture through epistemological decentering as linguistic practice. It proves that neither northern nor southern epistemologies can remain irremediably apart or imprisoned in their geographical cages. Both travel with and around us, in-between us, ready to trigger immense intercultural wealth, which eventually re-establishes life sustainability, once we let them engage in listening and talking to each other.