This paper addresses symbolic inequality (Zhu & Kramsch, 2016) through investigating translanguaging pedagogy as boundary-making/ unmaking counter-discourse. This paper uses nexus analysis (Scollons, 2004) to ethnographically research on the Multimodalities-Entextualisation Cycle (MEC) (Lin, 2015; 2018) in a Critical CLIL classroom for 72 bilingual Public Relations Writing students in Hong Kong.
This paper attempts the symposium panel questions in communication symbolic power and conversational inequality (Zhu & Kramsch, 2016) through investigating its research/ pedagogical implications on Critical CLIL in Hong Kong. Being digitally-native, tertiary students are presumed to enjoy boundary-free and colourful language portraits (Busch, 2006; 2018), signifying the co-existence of "different languages, varieties or linguistic resources that the language user has various levels of knowledge of and emotional affiliations to" (Busch, 2014, p. 3) in the process of language, culture and identity assimilation. However, in reality, symbolic inequality permeates in "many Southeast Asian countries (e.g. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore), serious government attention is given to promoting English-medium education, whereas in many countries in continental Europe, the implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is in full swing (Pérez-Cañado, 2012)" (Lo & Lin, 2015, paper abstract). Such socio-political backgrounds may account for how English is prioritised as the "global lingua franca" or "international language" (Lo & Lin, 2015) in most non-English speaking regions. As English has been recognised as treasurable linguistic capital for privileged access to socio-economic status/ power and language-identity mapping, symbolic inequality may potentially influence the way language and culture is valued in higher education, foreshadowing how English is symbolically depicted as "dollar signs" in some language policy and education programmes (Lin and Man, 2009) thick-stemmed from linguistic and socio-cultural imaginaries in EFL contexts. To deal with symbolic inequality, this paper uses nexus analysis (Scollons, 2004) to ethnographically research on the roles/ impacts of the Multimodalities-Entextualisation Cycle (MEC) (Lin, 2015; 2018) in a Critical CLIL classroom for 72 bilingual Public Relations Writing students in Hong Kong, providing a pilot empirical study for teachers, researchers and learners to socially interact with symbolic inequality through translanguaging pedagogy (Canagarajah 2017, Garcia & Lin 2017, Li Wei, 2017) as boundary-making/ unmaking counter-discourse.
