Teaching language in the library : A translanguaging pedagogy in the city

Drawing on data from a four-year linguistic ethnography in a large city library, this chapter considers encounters which support language learning when a range of different proficiencies across a variety of languages are in use. It describes the pedagogic skills of a library staff member as she strategically performs a communicative competence which embraces semiotic resources not typical of the professional genre. Words and phrases from different languages become mobile resources for her to create convivial moments in situ in what are otherwise mundane encounters about library membership and book loans. The chapter describes this pedagogic approach as translanguaging because less attention is paid to language boundaries, correctness in structure and form and more to creativity and communication. In this translanguaging environment linguistic, difference is seen as a resource rather than a problem. The chapter argues that urban superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007) provides the backdrop for these translanguaging practices in which language lessons create convivial moments between strangers.