“Translanguaged EMI” as a Means of Negotiation of Meaning in Literature Classrooms: Reflections on Thirdness

Questioning The EMI Contexts

There is an immense growth of an understanding that monolingual policies of language instruction do not sufficiently grasp the nature of instruction in bilingual/multilingual contexts. As Wei (2018a) mentions, our lives in the 21st century are characterized by ‘superdiversity’ and that we are now in a ‘post-multilingualism’ era “where simply having many different languages is no longer sufficient either for the individual or for society as a whole” (p. 14-15). This shift of understanding is inevitably reflected in English-Medium Instruction (EMI) contexts where English-only policies in content instruction still prevail in vain and where “multiple ownerships and more complex interweaving of languages and language varieties, and where boundaries between languages, between languages and other communicative means and the relationship between language and the nation-state are being constantly reassessed, broken or adjusted” (p. 22). Therefore, more attention needs to be given to the language(s) via which content instruction is carried out.

Acknowledging that EMI is an ‘elusive’ term, Macaro (2018) defines it as “the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the first language of the majority of the population is not English” (p. 19). Based on this definition, one understands that the characteristics of an EMI context are four-fold: 1) English is used for instruction, 2) English is not the subject being taught, 3) proficiency in the English language is not the intended outcome, and 4) English is used as a second/foreign language in the setting where EMI is employed (Pecorari & Malmström, 2018). However, since EMI has not always been consistently defined in either research or practice (Paulsrud, Tian & Toth, 2021), these characteristics present many challenges in conceptualizing EMI. In other words, a plethora of definitions and concepts around EMI imply that the term is still blurry and not easily defined, albeit the consistent insistence on using it as a monolingual policy in contexts where students and teachers are at least bilingual. This chapter, thus, aims to portray that the ‘E’ in EMI is problematic in content classrooms, with particular emphasis on the blurriness of EMI in a jurisdiction that potentially deconstructs a one-language-only policy.

With this in mind and questioning the ‘E’ in EMI, in this chapter, we offer a translanguaged EMI lens for content instruction as an alternative to an EMI-only policy in English Language and Literature classrooms induced by superdiversity and post-multilingualism. As sociocultural theory sees education as a stable category, which is shaped by historical processes of socialization and by people’s engagement in educational activities, it can be assumed that the prior knowledge (in our case, L1) that one brings with oneself to the learning environment and the new knowledge (L2) becomes convergent thus hybrid, and turns into a third knowledge (third space) in learner’s mind through socialization and engagement in educational activities. Congruent with the brand-new postmodern constructs of translanguaging (Wei, 2018b), socio-psychologically constructed knowledge seems to be gaining significance in co-constructing knowledge in discipline-specific courses. At that point, a crucial question arises for EMI professionals to consider: Do translanguaged EMI practices used by instructors and students facilitate the construction of a third space to negotiate the intended meaning in content courses?