Co-constructing a translanguaging space: Analysing a Japanese/ELF group discussion in a CLIL classroom at university.

Translanguaging is an emergent concept in bi/multilingualism and language education. It refers to discursive practices where multiple languages are used by plurilingual individuals as an integrated linguistic repertoire (García and Li Wei 2014). This study focuses on the use of translanguaging in a group discussion in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classroom at a Japanese university, where three Japanese students and one Arabic student talked in Japanese and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). The study examined why (the function) and how (the process) the participants translanguaged from Japanese to ELF in this particular context. During a forty-minute discussion, the participants spoke in Japanese most of the time, and ELF was used for less than ten minutes in total, especially between a Japanese and an Arabic speaker. Based on Gumperz (1982) and Klimpfinger (2007), four functions of translanguaging were identified: (1) addressee specification, (2) assertion, (3) clarification and (4) appealing for linguistic assistance. The process of translanguaging was also examined in relation to turn-taking structure. The results show that the use of response tokens in ELF and meta-linguistic comments functioned as cues for translanguaging. In so doing, the participants co-constructed a translanguaging space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]