Drawing on ongoing longitudinal case studies, this paper explores undergraduate students’ evolving language perceptions and practices as they develop pluri/translingual academic literacies at a bilingual Canadian university. Data triangulation reveals tensions between an institutional regime of parallel monolingualism and the students’ growing appreciation for more fluid language practices and repertoires.
Calls to better support multilingual literacy development through cross-linguistic and translingual pedagogies have generated debate in bilingual education research (e.g., Ballinger, Lyster, Sterzuk, & Genesee, 2017; Cummins, 2007). While some have proposed to “soften” language boundaries to help develop plurilingual literacies and the added ability to shuttle between languages (transliteracy, Baker, 2003), proponents of a strong version of translanguaging have questioned the very psycholinguistic reality of separate languages (Otheguy, García, & Reid, 2015). Drawing on ongoing longitudinal case studies, this paper explores undergraduate students’ evolving language perceptions and practices as they develop pluri-, cross- and translingual academic literacies at a large bilingual Canadian university. Participants were recruited because of their explicit commitment to simultaneously develop academic literacies in French and English, the two languages of instruction. Interview data as well as textual and video records of students writing practices are used to investigate these students’ stances and ideologies towards the language practices they observe and engage in as part of their academic studies and in out-of-school contexts. Triangulation with participant observations and document analyses (the university’s policies, website, and programs; course outlines; instructions for coursework) reveals tensions between a prevailing institutional regime of parallel monolingualism and the participants’ growing awareness of, and appreciation for, more fluid language practices and repertoires. At the same time, the students’ evolving stances and ideologies toward maintaining language separation or embracing language fluidity reflect their diverse positionalities in terms of languages of inheritance, expertise, and affiliation, as well as their pre-university literacy experiences. Their views also echo the tensions found in the literature (Ballinger et al., 2017) regarding how the status of a language might motivate minority language students to keep their languages separate within their studies and literacy practices rather than seeking out the advantages of practices that encourage greater fluidity and cross-linguistic exchanges.
