Translanguaging as a Clarion Call and a War Cry From The Global South

Abstract

This paper seeks to point to the role of the phenomenon called ‘translanguaging’ as a wake-up call, as well as a call to action against the hegemony of the Global North in the way it has traditionally disparaged the Global South, undercutting the latter’s bona fide aspirations to a place on a level playing field. In undertaking this task, it explores the potentially subversive aspect of translanguaging and also ignores the reclaimings of equal action fields to all that work there. It is argued that it is all too easy to miss the wood for the trees here by those who would rather look at the phenomenon as fundamentally a question of switching between different languages – so-called ‘code-switching’ – with great abandon and true spirit of laissez faire. In this paper, I shall turn my attention instead to what I call the ‘politics of translanguaging’. By that, what I intend to mean to press home is that people, especially in postcolonial settings, have used translanguaging as an effective means to challenge the last vestiges of colonial power that persist thanks to the lingering effects of coloniality by deliberately ‘muddying the communicative waters’ through their translanguaging practices – a process that will be analysed in closer detail through examination of postcolonial literary works. Postcolonial writers of the likes of Arundhati Roy are past masters at this.