Alternative Ways of Seeing language: Translanguaging and Metrolingualism

Although for a long time the study of language was secluded inside of an intellectual tradition marked by structural and cognitive approaches, interdisciplinary fields such as sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and linguistic anthropology have been progressively shifting the focus from language form to language practice, from theory to fieldwork, from communication to identity and expression, and from discrete national languages to hybrid multilingual repertoires, thus producing more socially oriented ways of conceiving language.

The proposed event aims at introducing two such notions, “translanguaging” and “metrolingualism,” by engaging their most visible proponents (Ofelia García and Alastair Pennycook, respectively) in a dialogue with each other and with an audience of language educators, graduate students and undergraduates interested in language and linguistics.